Anyone that regularly reads my reviews knows that I'm constantly trying to read outside my comfort genres. I love romances & YA fantasy, so that is what I read the majority of the time. What I don't mention, is that I prefer to read books written by women. So when I picked up this book that was obviously out of my comfort zone, I assumed it was written by a woman. It's not, and what's funny about that is that I shouldn't have assumed Riley was a female, as one of the best guys in my life has the same name....

What I didn't know was that I'm not the only woman that prefers books written by other women, so the pen name of Riley Sager was chosen specifically to get around this bias. I have to say that as much as it annoyed me when I found out, that I'm also kind of glad because I really did end up enjoying this book more than I expected to. I never would have picked it up otherwise.

Final Girls felt slow moving at the beginning of the book and I often cringed at the actions of Quincy as they got increasingly more erratic. What kept me going was the desperate need to find out what actually happened that night. I had many guesses, and never really settled on one. I also had a "I hope this happens" that didn't pan out. What did happen, was that I got blindsided by the truth. I didn't particularly like the reveal, but it was shocking and I always like that.

I love horror. It's my favorite genre because it consistently keeps me entertained. I like how in horror you can examine your very real fears often in settings that are unreal which makes it feel safer. I also like the fight and will to survive. And a good jump.

Lately there's been an increase in turning slasher stories into longform stories. It sounds counter-intuitive and it is in many ways. Still, I enjoyed the TV shows Slasher and Scream more than I enjoy the typical slasher film. They allowed me to dig in deeper with the characters, care about them more, and thus be more invested in the stories and their outcome. Plus because the narrative needed to be sustained over time, they each had a great "who's the killer?" mystery. So when two fiction books came out last year with the same theme, I was interested. A lot interested.

One of them was Final Girls. If you know horror, you know in slasher films there's a trope where basically a bunch of people get butchered but one girl survives. She's the final girl. Apparently, the term was coined in 1992 by Carol Clover in her book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws Gender in the Modern Horror Film.

So last woman standing, final girl. This book centers on Quincy, a final girl who doesn't remember a lot about the night a lot of her friends got killed. She's one of three in the nation, and she has since moved on building a successful website/blog and maintaining a relationship with a significant other. News comes that one of the final girls has killed herself which sets in motion a series of events that forces Quincy to take another look at her life and what happened in the woods all those year ago when her friends were killed.

Final Girls is an engaging read. I enjoyed it. It's a good mystery with interesting developments. It's fairly quick paced and I was able to get engrossed in it easily. The ending is very satisfying with some delicious irony.

It goes back and forth between the past and present but not every chapter or anything like that, mostly when it fits within the current timeline's narrative to do a flashback.

I liked it, but I also wish it had been more, if that makes any sense. I'll be looking for more books in this genre and I will definitely read more from this author.

I absolutely loved this book! I almost feel bad that it took me so long to read it because it was so good. I had just finished reading the Woman in the Window and with all the unexpected plot twists in that book, I didn't think any other book could phase me. Boy was I wrong! Final Girls was an amazing, quick intriguing read with some unexpected plot twists that I absolutely loved. Finishing this made me want to read more from Riley Sager. I definitely am a fan now :)

Final Girls is the story of three girls that survived unspeakable, violent tragedies and now someone is hunting them down and trying to kill them off. Quincy Carpenter is one such girl. A grown woman now with a seemingly content life that is disgusted with being labeled a Final Girl. However, her brutal past comes back to haunt her when Lisa, one of the Final Girls, is found dead in her home. At first her death is ruled a suicide but when it is revealed her death was a murder, Quincy is left to face her past in order to do what she does best... survive.

Final Girls is filled with an amazing cast of characters, some of them so dynamic it's difficult not to love them. From the quiet police officer Coop to tough as nails Sam, to Quincy to the one she cannot speak the name of all of them capture the page easily. The story was fast paced and exciting and hard to put down. It made me sad when it was done and left me wanting more. If you're a fan of suspense and thriller this is certainly a book for you. Definitely a top ten recommendation! Until next time, happy reading ;)

This book had me guessing until the very end. I really didn’t know who to trust throughout the whole story. It’s challenging to read a book in which the main character seems like she could be slightly off her rocker because of past events.

Quincy Carpenter is known as what is called a Final Girl. That is, the final living member after a complete slaughter of the people around her. Lisa, another final girl, turns up dead one day, wrists slit while laying in her bathtub. Was it a suicide from trying to deal with the past or did someone kill her? And if so, why? Then Sam, another final girl ends up on Quincy’s doorstep. Sam, who has hidden herself from the media all these years. Is she scared? Or does she have an agenda? This book was a fantastic read for fans of thrillers. It had plenty of action and left the reader wondering throughout the story. The ending is also quite satisfying.

Thank you to Netgalley, Riley Sager, and Dutton for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was absolutely amazing! It had such an original concept and the thrills and twists were also amazing. Every time the author wanted you to move to a new suspect, she was able to take you easily to that suspect and then bam slap you in the face with a new one. The ending was so far off from what you will think, your head will be spinning in great ways!

This book was ok. I mean I went into it thinking it would be a slasher horror but it really isn't .I didn't even find it to be much horror.

The story was decent though. I mean I did keep reading but I was expecting scarier than what it is.

Once I started this book, had difficulty putting it down. It pulls you into the well-thought out plot and
before you know it, you are captive to the story.

Summary from Goodreads:

"Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.

Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.

That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished."

My Thoughts:

Final Girls was on my radar to read before it was even released which makes it so crazy that I waited until now to read this book! I read that premise and just KNEW that this was a book that I had to read. Let me tell you though that this book deserves all of the hype and praise that it has gotten! This was one whirlwind of a ride and a book that I won't be forgetting about any time soon! I'm not going to lie - I picked this book up with pretty high expectations after seeing so many other readers love this one. Happily enough this book was able to live up to those high expectations and so much more. I picked this book up and was basically hooked from page one. I found myself unable to set it down and really didn't want to. For me, this was one of those books where I just had to see what was going to happen next. And even when Quincy was making stupid choices, I didn't want to stop reading.

One of the things that I loved most about this book was the horror vibe that it had going on. I'm not a huge horror movie fan but I've watched enough of those types of movies to recognize that same feel in this book. It really added this layer of suspense and tension to the story! I also really enjoyed the fact that as the reader I didn't know whether or not to trust Sam and her intentions. I'm pretty sure that isn't a spoiler as it is alluded to in the above summary. Books where you aren't sure who to trust are basically my reader catnip. I just cannot resist books like this! I found myself just so completely caught up within the pages of this book. I can't say it any better than that! And that ending was just absolutely not what I was expecting in the least! I am being very careful here as I don't want to overshare and spoil anything but wow, wow, wow! I loved the way that this book ended and I won't say any more than that.

This book was easily a five star read for me and made my top reads list for 2017! It was such an intense reading experience! I will be reading anything/everything that this author writes after loving this book so much. What makes it even better is that he has a new book releasing in 2018 for me to look forward to! I read this one in a matter of a few days because I just couldn't stop reading and had to see how it would all end. It was a wild ride and one that I won't be forgetting about any time soon. I would highly, highly recommend this book! Such a great read!

Bottom Line: One of the best thrillers that I read it 2017!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book thanks to the publishers and NetGalley.

Let me start by saying I do NOT like horror movies. Never have, never will. I don't like the gory, gross, vivid depictions of violence. But, weirdly, I have always enjoyed this type of fiction... And equally weirdly, my imagination is WAY more vivid than any movie I've ever seen - which means that I've *seen* more disturbing imagery in my head than I ever have on a screen, large or small. As a result, I've never been able to understand my absolute and utter refusal to watch horror movies. After reading Riley Sagar's latest, I think I have started to catch a glimpse of part of the reason why: the concept of the Final Girl.

For those who aren't in the know, the Final Girl is the last man standing in your (stereo)typical horror story. The one who gets away. The girl who lives. The one who, despite all odds, sees another day. They're the Disney Princesses of horror - the one-in-a-million story that ends well. But, does it really end well for these "survivors"? Or, as is more than imaginable for the DPs and anyone who has ever asked "but what happens next??" (a phenomenon of curiosity evidenced by the proliferation of the genre of fairy-tale retellings and continuations), is there maybe more to the story than we think, with happy endings never truly happy - or endings?

In Final Girls, Sagar explores this idea in great depth - and in reading this tale, I came to realize that one of the things I've always found most disturbing in horror movies (as in Disney movies, come to think of it) is the randomness of things. One girl gets hack-sawed; one walks away. One girl marries a prince; the other lives a life of servitude. There are elements of "she deserved it" in both genres - the pretty, spunky, worthy girl usually (but not always) manages to pull through. The selfish, stupid, silly ones usually (but not always) bite it. But life - and personality - is infinitely more complex than that, and that's one of the things that always frustrated me in the movies but which books, with their ability to give us much better glimpses behind the curtain of personality and motivation, allow the opportunity to work-around.

Enter Final Girls, the book.

This was a very engaging tale of violence and secrets and fear and loathing, and a psychological analysis of what it means to survive - all wrapped in a narrative that felt like a movie but read like a book. The characters are infinitely more real than horror movie figures, even when they are described almost literally as such. The layered motivations and hidden agendas were a large part of what made this so interesting a read. Sure, there's also seat-of-your-pants action and edge of that self-same seat suspense - I expected that. But what I didn't expect was how much it made me think about women and fear and the impact of the latter on the lives of the former - even the ones who have not suffered from even a fraction of the violence that Quincy and Sam have... As Quincy attempts to pull her life back into some semblance of rationality and order, her efforts are often as difficult to *watch* as the violent flashbacks. This is a girl who is almost literally hanging by a thread, and her story is a study in self-control that I found thoroughly plausible. Sam is a delightfully dark enigma from her first appearances, and as her role shifts and shudders throughout, only becomes more so. The motivations of these women are fascinating to read and anticipate, and that anticipation definitely contributes to the overall eerie theme of the novel. There's more here than meets the eye, and the ending delivers a one-two punch in that direction that I thoroughly enjoyed and didn't entirely anticipate.

I would definitely NOT be able to watch this movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed my trip down the rabbit hole of the book!

A scary, heart-stopping thriller, the kind of book you probably shouldn't read when your husband/wife/roommate/partner is out of town. It's that scary.

I loved this book !!!! It was addicting !! soooo... addicting I think I went a little crazy reading this book because of how much I was thinking about this book even when I wasnt reading it !!!. Final Girls is excellent thriller filled with twist and turns that I did not see coming at all !!! I cant to see what Riley Sager will read next !!

About In A Sentence Or Two: Three girls, who have never met, are bonded together by being what the press refers to as the “Final Girls” as they are all the only survivors of brutal massacres and attacks. Ten years later, one of them is found dead and the other shows up on Quincy’s, the last Final Girl, doorstep making her relive the past that she’s put behind her and question why Sam has come to find her.

Thoughts: I was in such a mood for a thriller and this one definitely was a good one for me! I feel like I don’t want to say much because I love leaving my thoughts for thrillers/mysteries pretty sparse as to not spoil it for others! SO ADDICTIVE — even if you do guess who-dunit (which I didn’t until later on!!). I found myself super into the flashbacks but I also did like the present day as well. I really felt Quincy — can’t imagine how you would rebuild your life after something like that. If you are in the mood for a thriller you will absolutely blow through…pick this one up!

This book was just not my cup of tea and I was not able to finish it. It just moved slower than I expected from a thriller novel. Thank you for this opportunity, though!

This twisty thriller had me glued to the pages as I tried to find out what happened at Pine Cottage when Quincy and her friends went for a party weekend and only Quincy survived to come home. Quincy doesn't remember. The whole horror of the trip is lost in a dark hole in her memory.

Quincy has tried to rebuild her life. She is a cooking blogger, has a lawyer boyfriend, and a cool apartment in New York City paid for the by the settlements she got from a number of lawsuits regarding the crime. But Quincy is also lonely and living an wine and Xanax. The only one she can trust is Coop - the police officer she ran into when she was running from the horror at the cottage.

Quincy is only the most recent of what the press call the Final Girls. Lisa survived a massacre at her sorority house and Sam survived horror at the motel where she worked the night shift. They are joined together by their situations but the women have never met.

When Lisa dies, apparently a suicide, Quincy is forced to think back to the time she is trying to put behind her. When it is learned that Lisa was murdered, things get even more tense. Then Sam shows up at Quincy's door in New York. Quincy feels sorry for her and feels that she might be the only one who can really understand what Quincy went through.

But Sam is hiding things, keeping secrets. She really wants Quincy to remember what happened at Pine Cottage and to show the rage she must be feeling. Sam goads her into doing things that she would normally not even think of.

Twists and turns abound in this fast-paced thriller. Characters aren't who they seem. The memories that finally resurface add even more confusion as Quincy tries to figure out what really happened on the night that changed her whole life.

This was a totally gripping story that made me suspect that all the characters were lying. I really enjoyed trying to dig out the truth about Quincy and the other Final Girls.

I have always been a lover of slasher movies. Even as a child, I couldn't get enough of them. So when I heard rumors of a book going around that was basically a slasher in book form, I knew that I had to get my hands on it.

I dove in as soon as I had it in my hands and I was instantly hooked. The more that I read, the deeper I fell in love with it and the more eager I became to finish it and learn all the secrets that Quincy held. Reading about Pine Cottage really was like reading a slasher movie (if that makes sense) and had all the elements to it that I love about a good slasher.

The characters were cryptic and mysterious and full of their own secrets. The story in itself was full of twists and turns and constantly made you realign your suspicions and consider that things might not be exactly what they seem.

Life did end up getting in the way, however, and it took me forever to finish the book. As a wife and stay at home mom of a seven month old and a 4 year old, it isn't always easy to find time to sit down and read. I know that If I had had the time, Final Girls would have been a book that I would have finished in one to two sittings. I loved it so much.

I was expressing my excitement for the book to my husband and told him that if it were a movie, it would definitely be one that I would be obsessed with. And then I realized... a few weeks back I saw that Final Girls WILL be made into a movie. I can't freakin' wait.

Highly recommend for fans of slashers, suspense, and thrillers. A truly great read.

Rating: 5 Stars.

Quincey is a survivor and survived a horrific attack that left her alive and all of her friends dead. But she’s not the only one. Two other girls survived similar horrific ordeals and the media termed them Final Girls. Quincy thought that she was getting her life back in order until one of her fellow final girls ends up dead and the other shows up on her doorstep.

While this book definitely kept the pages turning, it wasn’t my favorite thriller that I’ve read this year. I liked that the author would give you little snippets into the ordeal that Quincy survived which kept me guessing until the very end.

Stayed up way past my bed time to finish this. I'm torn between a 4 and 4.5 as my rating. Even though I read this book so much faster than I normally read, I found the suspense to build slowly. However, the end of each chapter had me wanting to read more... and so I did! As for the ending, it shocked me and I didn't see it coming. This was the best part of the book, about the last 80 pages or so. This book is like nothing I've read before and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I've seen mixed reviews about this book, but I really loved it. I liked that the timeline alternated between current events and then the moments leading up to Quincy's attack at Pine Cottage. When I saw that this was a "horror" book I did expect it to be a little bit more gory, but I felt like this fell more into the suspense or thriller genre. I guess when I think of horror, I think of the Saw movies and while there are some descriptive scenes of the attacks that made me cringe, it wasn't cover my eyes gore like the Saw movies (thank god!)

The author did a fantastic job of keeping me on the edge of my seat and I kept see-sawing between what I thought was going to happen and which characters I was supposed to dislike and love.

I really enjoyed Quincy, she's not your typical book "heroine" that's perfect all the time. She has her broken edges and is trying her best to hold everything together which makes her so much more relatable, until the author throws you through the spin cycle again and then you're like "Oh God, is Sam the heroine? I don't even really like her, do I? Maybe I do... WTF is going on!"

If you're a fan of WTF plots like Gone Girl, then you will enjoy this book. With all the different timelines going on and the multiple mysteries you are trying to solve, I guarantee you will be up all hours trying to finish this one!

The easiness of being able to read this book was very pleasant. It was like I was surfing through the pages, reading chapter after chapter. The way we slowly got to know more about Pine Cottage was integrated very well in the story. Revealing a little bit every time. It was a terrifying story, and Quincy (and her friends) must have been gone through hell when they were there. Besides Quincy, the other final girls, Sam and Lisa must have had terrible experiences as well.

The cases of the final girls were very interesting. I felt a vibe of Criminal Minds and CSI when I read about the murderers, and I happen to love those kind of crime cases.

I absolutely enjoyed the characters. I loved Quincy's baking obsession and the blog she has. It felt so Martha Stewart to me. The complete opposite character of Sam was a good counterpart to Quincy. The complete opposite, but still so alike in a way. Until you figure out what is going on in the books. I felt from the beginning that something was off about Sam, but when all the truth came out in the end I was actually surprised it went a whole different way. I have to say that I didn't expect the turn in the story.

The plot was good. The story didn't get stuck, there being a twist every while to keep me interesting in the book. The pace was quick, which also made you fly through the book. In the middle part of the book I sometimes felt like I was ready for the finale, but we kept repeating the same scenes between Quincy and Sam. Like the baking, walks in the park, drinking together. It started to feel a little bit repetitive. Though overall I enjoyed it a lot!

At the beginning, it seemed to me that this is going to be just another one in a series of those plain and lukewarm kind of thrillers which have recently filled the shelves of so many booklovers. To begin with, it is enough to mention that the heroine of the novel, Quincy Carpenter, is another in a series of major thriller characters suffering from amnesia. The situation is even worse when the subject of heroine's suppressed memories is the most tragic event of her life, the birthday party of her best friend that turned into a terrible massacre.

For years after the tragedy, Quincy's memory is still suppressed, and she struggles to continue her normal life; she bakes, she writes her successful blog and enjoys a quiet life with her partner Jeff. In difficult moments she has her friend Coop by her side, the young police officer who found and rescued her in the night of the tragedy. Still, their quiet life is interrupted when the public becomes aware of the death of Lisa Milner, so Quincy once again becomes interesting to the media.

Lisa Milner, Samantha Boyd, and then Quincy Carpenter herself, became known in the American public as „Final Girls“, which is a popular name for the last surviving woman at the end of the horror movie. Though their stories were not related, Lisa, Samantha and Quincy indeed shared a truly unique experience - all three survived in horrific tragedies that had shocked the American media and the public. While Lisa survived a massacre in a sorority house in Indiana, Samantha survived a similar crime in the „Nightlight Inn“, a motel on the motorway near Tampa, and Quincy was the only survivor at „Pine Cottage“, a wood cottage rented by her friend Janelle's parents for her birthday.

Although the aforementioned three women never met, they occasionally contacted to share their experiences and the methods they used to cope with the burden of the tragedies they experienced in the past. For this reason, Quincy is not overly surprised when Samantha Boyd visits her after they found out about Lisa's death. However, this visit dramatically changes her life and slowly but surely opens the door to some painful memories from the Pine Cottage. With every new detail, it becomes clear that things are not what they seemed for years and that all this time Quincy's mind was hiding really amazing secrets.

And, that's all I can tell you, because I do not want to spoil the rest of the story with my comments. So, I'll left you with all those surprises prepared for you by the author hidden under the pseudonym Riley Sager. And there are so many surprises, believe me. That first, somewhat lousy impression of the book automatically changed in those moments when the plot was crowned with multiple turns that took the story to a completely new and unexpectedly interesting level. So this book became the queen of my Horror Week.

So, ignore the amnesia and give this book a chance! I believe you will not regret it. Also, the same thing was confirmed by the popular author Stephen King, who called the „Final Girls“ – „the first great thriller of 2017“. Enjoy your reading!