The Final Girls by Riley Sager is a dark, compulsive pyschological thriller. Quincy has survived the massacre of her college friends. She has become a member of an elite group called the Final Girls, young women who have also survived similar killings. When one of their number is found dead, Quincy has to confront her darkest fears in order to survive. An enjoyable thriller with twists that make the reader wanting more.

Lisa, Sam and Quincy are three young women who survived mass murders. The media decided to borrow from film nomenclature and nickname them "Final Girls".

The story is told in first person through the eyes of Quincy. She lives with her boyfriend and earns a living as a baking blogger. At the beginning of the book, she learns that Lisa has died and braces herself for the press avalanche that is bound to come her way. What she does not expect is that Sam, who's been living off the grid, will come out of hiding and look for her.

[book:Final Girls|30215662] is a character-driven book and I found it to be lacking in plot. Basically, the story is dependent on Quincy's poor judgement and fantastic ability to jump to conclusions/actions without thinking things through. <spoiler>Sam has shown up on my doorstep? Great, I'll ask her to move in! Why did Sam choose this moment to contact me? She must have killed Lisa and I am next! You know, that police officer did mention she has a criminal record. Drunken brawls, unpaid speeding tickets... That is not very far from murder!</spoiler>

As you will have noticed, I did not like Quincy and not liking the main character in a first-person narrative does not bode well for the overall enjoyment of a book.

Not a title that I would personally recommend.

(Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!)

I didn't see it coming! Interesting and easy read and all the way through, probably like most people, I tried to guess what the 'twist' would be. Certainly surprised me. Light and enjoyable.

Qunicy, Sam and Lisa are the Final Girls, so called by the press as they each survived a horrific massacre that left many others dead.

Quincy is doing well, she has a successful baking blog, a loving, understanding boyfriend and a never-ending supply of Xanex. She has no memory of what happened in the cabin in the woods the night her five friends were slaughtered and she wants to keep it that way. Her survival technique is to forget, Sam’s is to disappear and Lisa’s is to face it head on and try to help others with what she has learned. So when Lisa is found in her bathtub with her wrists slit something does not seem right to Quincy. Of all of the Final Girls she was the proudest of her survivor crown and committing suicide does not fit that bill. When Sam suddenly arrives on her doorstep Quincy realises she is not the only one with questions about Lisa’s death. Terrified that someone is trying to finish what was started years ago, the girls begin to investigate.

This is a twisting, gripping thriller from start to finish, one where everyone has a secret and no one is who they seem. Each chapter casts suspicion on a different character so that even the most shrewd of detectives will have to read right to the end to discover the truth. A great read that is both well written and well paced. Deserving of a spot on the best thrillers of 2017 list.

I enjoyed the fact that the characters presented in Final Girls weren't just clichés, and that each of them had their own complex internal mental states. It would have been easy to present them as either wretched and broken or as saintly survivors, but the author does a good job of making them feel like real people who've survived terrible circumstances.

The main plot of the novel is secondary, in my opinion, to its nature as a character study. I didn't personally feel that the twist at the end really added very much to the story and I felt a little let down by the fact that there weren't really any clues in the preceding narrative that might have let me come to it any earlier than I did.

Still, this was a solid read that I thoroughly enjoyed for its unusual premise and the rich characterisation of the main characters.

A gripping, tense roller coaster of a novel! Just when you think you know where the story is going it doubles back on itself or takes a twist and leaves you guessing once more. I read a lot of books of this genre but I can honestly say I have never been so fooled so many times. A fantastic story that I can easily imagine translated to the silver screen.
I would recommend this book to any that enjoys a mix of crime, mystery and horror.

The blurb should already have you wanting to read this book like it did me, and what a fantastic read it is too.

If you especially like trying to guess the outcome and still enjoy a surprise then this is definitely worth a read because with all the twists, turns, thrills and spills you will be kept page turning to get to an incredible ending.
Like so many people already have said, this is a must read for 2017 and Sager has written a sure-fire hit. Brilliant.

Thank you to Netgalley for a free copy in return for an honest review.

The Final Girls is a book that really keeps you guessing. The characters are far from straightforward and, at times, are not too likeable but they are always believable. I found that I trusted none of the characters and that each one had some kind of secret or mystery about them. There are twists and turns that I certainly didn't see coming and I'd definitely recommend this book to friends and would read more by this author.

As usual I just want to specify that there will be no spoilers in my review, so read at will!

Thank you very much to NetGalley for facilitating, and to Ebury Publishing for allowing me to read this book in exchange for a review. And finally, a big thank you to Riley Sager for letting me READ a horror film!

When I read the description of this book I thought it sounded a bit teenage (but probably purely because my teenage years were spent watching Scream and Nightmare on Elmstreet on repeat). However, it struck an nostalgic chord in me and I wanted to give it a go. And I'm so happy that I did.

This is actually written exactly as a horror film would be, feeding you snippets and further details of things you already touched on in the first scene (in the form of dreams and "flashback chapters"), mixed with the dramas of present day that gradually begin to pick up pace until the past and present collide in a thrilling climax.

This is what I always hope for whenever I pick up a best selling thriller, but they always stop themselves short of going full on "slasher movie". This book went there. And just like when those types of movies are on TV, you don't want to look but can't tear your eyes away - you don't want to read the next chapter but you literally can't stop because Sager is pulling you along in a strong and growing riptide.

I am so familiar with the general formula behind horror films that I usually have it all figured out quite early on, but this one I didn't get until about a sentence before all was revealed. It definitely kept me guessing which was actually really impressive considering I am usually pretty quick with horror analysis! lol!

I wasn't expecting to genuinely like this, I just thought it would be a welcome distraction for a few days, just something to fill my time and maybe keep me mildly entertained whilst my hubby plays on GTA for hours on end. But actually I loved this book. I thought it was awesome.

I could not get into this book. It did not grab my interest enough to carry on reading. I did not get to the end of the first chapter.

I must admit I'd never heard the phrase 'final girl' used before so it took me a little while to realise it was a 'thing' rather than just a great choice of title by the author. Nobody wants to be a final girl but Quincy seems to be coping. Unable to remember the crucial details of the night her friends were murdered she has settled down with a nice man and fills her time running a baking blog. When a fellow final girl is found dead in her bath however Quincy is going to be forced back to the dark woods surrounding Pine Cottage in order to uncover what really happened that night.
This is a cracking thriller that really keeps the reader guessing mostly about Sam but sometimes even about Quincy herself. The ending is a real surprise I'm normally quite good at predictions but this came out of left field. Highly recommended.

The story is centred around Quincy, labelled by the press, as "a Final Girl" . She is not the only member of this group that nobody wants to belong to - to qualify the girls have survived horrific acts of violence whilst their friends have not fared so well. Their stories are interwoven and told in flashbacks as well as in the present day until events eventually collide.
The book is fast paced and easy to read, there is a lot of violence and sex that I found a little distasteful at times. Overall the story was not predictable, which is always a plus, and I did not guess the ending correctly.

I am a huge fan of horror films, specifically slasher films. I saw Scream when I was eight years old and it became one of my favourites even to this day. Why? Because Sydney Prescott was a complete badass. She fought back, she didn’t give up. She fought and won. She was a Final Girl.
So when I saw that there was a book about not one but three Final Girls I knew I had to read it. The problem was as soon as I saw the cover and read the synopsis I had built up the book immensely in my head, imagining characters and a story I was worried the book wouldn’t be able to live up to.
I needn’t have worried.
Final Girls was incredible.
Within pages I’d been pulled in to a sharp, fast paced world where each character carried secrets that brought twist after twist. I couldn’t stop reading and even when I went to prepare lunch or stopped to feed the cats I was thinking about Quincy and trying to figure out what would happen next.
The ending… that ending. I’m worried about saying too much as I don’t want to give away anything vital so I’ll just say this. You may think you’ve finally figured it out, that the pieces have all come together and the secrets of Pine Cottage are revealed.
But you’re wrong.

Quincy Carpenter is a final girl. A girl who survived a brutal mass murder. She has tried to move on from this trauma but then the combination of another final girl dying and a third turning up on her doorstep forces her to think about who she is and what has happened to her. This is a very well written story and I expect it will be widely read once it is published. The present day story is told in the first person and this is interspersed with flash backs told in the third person. There are a good number of twists and turns in the story meaning it keeps you gripped throughout

Thanks NetGalley and the Publisher. This was a fantastic book and its a great crime read. This is about Sam, Lisa and Quincy who have been through unspeakable things. This book mainly follows Quincy. It is a total gripping story that the hooks the reader from the start hence the 5 star review

The title of this book immediately puts it into a sub-genre with Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train and with it themes of violence and the unreliability of narratives/memories that is fair enough.
To some extent the book even address the uncomfortable use (to some) of "girl" in these titles.
For me , the title also emphasised the issue of unreliable witnesses which did make me distrust several characters and look for misdirection . Despite this I was taken aback by the last couple of twists.
Over all this is a taught psychological thriller which address the what happens next of so many of the bloody narratives we see in movies and TV series such as Criminal Minds

YES! So much YES!

This book feels like it picks up at the end of a horror film, the bloodstained heroine survives a terrible ordeal and we join her 10 years later when she’s coming to terms with the fact that she’ll have to spend the rest of her life as a ‘final girl’.
Final girls are doomed to become media fodder every time a similar event crops up and the target of weirdos and fetishists, while they try to recover from the trauma of their past.

The synopsis of this book tells you what’s going on, so no need for me to add any more here or I’ll spoil the fun. I will, however, say that it's nothing like anything you've ever read before. What I enjoyed the most is how Sager has written very complex and developed characters - everyone has a good and a bad side in this book, they're capable of anything and that's what keeps the tension going until the very last page.

Sager builds nail biting tension throughout this book, combining the art of the unreliable narrator and characters with everything to hide. I didn’t have a clue how this book was going to end right up until the final chapter and it was BRILLIANT.

Quincy is very easy to connect to as a main character, she’s understandably a neurotic mess after everything that’s happened but she’s moving forward and trying to keep herself together. She’s not a perfect human being, she’s a little too reliant on Xanax and red wide, and she has a fiery temper but she’s doing the best with what she has.

When Sam sweeps into town and forces her to dredge up the past, things start to get messy. The dynamic between the two characters is fascinating, it’s completely unhealthy from the very start but they’ve both survived the most unimaginable hell at the hands of other people and know that the other can understand them.

If you’re a horror film, thriller or murder mystery aficionado: this book will rock your world. It’s the ultimate survivor’s story, which left me with that ‘you go girl!’ feeling at the end.

Final Girls by Riley Sager

Wow, what a fantastic book! It really is something different, and I cannot remember the last time I was so scared and worried about the main protagonist.

Quincy is the sole survivor of a massacre where she witnessed the murder of her friends. Years later she is still traumatised by the event; even though it is clear she has blocked it from her memory. Her financial security has been gained through various law suits and this only serves to compound her feelings of guilt and her existence is focused on her wish to avoid any contact with the media. Her cooking blog gives her the opportunity to work from home and avoid the curiosity of the outside world. At home she is protected and lives a semblance of a normal life with her boyfriend; it is the place where she feels in control.

However, Quincy is just one of three Final Girls; Samantha who has disappeared from the grid and Lisa.

Then it starts to unwind when Lisa dies and Quincy feels her security is threatened, by exposure to the media, by Samantha?

This is really well-written with exciting, unexpected twists and turns and the characters are amazing.

Think ‘Gone Girl’ or ‘The Girl on the Train’ and then multiply it by four. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

An extraordinarily original concept, this book had me gripped in anxiety from start to finish. A fabulously written piece that just teases with snippets from the past - enough to let you know that all is not as it seems, but not enough to give the plot away. Each character had the potential to be friend or foe as layers of their personalities were exposed. An excellent book all round that is without doubt going to be a huge success.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. Thank you to the author, Riley Sager, and the publisher, Ebury Press, for this opportunity.
Final girls is one of those psychological thrillers that slowly starts and manages to grip you by the throat when you’re about halfway. And just when you think you have it all figured out, the author has some very nice surprises for the reader.
What I especially liked about the book was the fact that the story is told with flashbacks, and you can almost feel the anxiety that is building up in Quincy, the main character. There is really something happening here, and we, the readers, have to wait and see what the real story is behind everything that is happening.