I love a good thriller/horror book and I'm glad I was approved for this! Final Girls is a very compelling story that will have readers itching to find out what happens next. I don't usually get freaked out from reading, but there were definitely a few moments that sent chills down my spine. Since I read a lot of thrillers, I started to become bored in the middle because I thought I had it all figured out and was beginning to find the book was too similar to others to really enjoy. And then I read the twist at the end. Honestly, I probably sat there mouthing the words, "what the f**k" over and over for a good couple of minutes. The fact that it took me by surprise that much says a lot, so kudos to Riley Sager. I gave the book an extra star for that ending alone. Final Girls is a captivating thriller that will have you hooked from the beginning!

When Stephen King calls a book a great thriller, what do you do? You pick it up and read it, that’s what you do!

The Final Girls of the title is what the press has named three women who were the sole survivors of a murderous rampage. The story is mainly about Quincy Carpenter. She seems to be living her life in a “normal” way. She has a baking blog. She lives with her boyfriend Jeff, a public defender. She still talks to Coop, the police officer who’s arms she ran into on the night of the murders at Pine Cottage. But things are not always what they seem. When Lisa Milner, a final girl who wanted to be friends, is found dead of an apparent suicide, things change. The third final girl, Samantha Boyd shows up at Quincy’s and it is obvious that she is after something. She wants Quincy to remember just what happened. You see, Quincy does not remember what happened at the cabin. Why is it important for Samantha and why does she feel the need to bring out a darker side of Quincy? You will just have to read and find out.

The whole book is tinged with an eerie dread. It goes back and forth between the present and the night at Pine Cottage. You know something is going to happen, you feel it coming. You also know that something awful happened and maybe you don’t want her to remember. It is unsettling. It is uncomfortable. It is so hard to put down! I admit there were a few times that I felt a little scared and I was safe and sound, tucked into my bed. It will really take you out of your comfort zone. It takes you exactly where a thriller should. You will not be disappointed. But maybe read it when you are not alone and in bed.

I happily received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Penguin Group Dutton in exchange for an honest review.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

This is the story of Quincy Carpenter, a "final girl". Quincy was the only survivor of a massacre that happened while she was vacationing in a cabin with other college friends. The thing is, that Quincy does not remember what happened that night, it's been years since the massacre happened and when somebody from the past shows up in the present Quincy's world is shaken.

First, let's clarify what the title means:

"Final Girl: The final girl is a trope in horror films (particularly slasher films). It refers to the last woman alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in many films including Alien and Halloween" (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl)

The story is told from the point of view of Quincy, and it alternates between her present life and flashbacks from the past.

Overall the book was GREAT. It captivated me and kept my heart beating fast till the very end. It has all the elements that a good mystery should have like complex characters, good pacing and an interesting story. I HIGHLY recommend it to all thrill-seekers and book-loving people.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

About the author:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/riley_sager
Website: https://www.rileysagerbooks.com/

Oh.. a final note, the book started by describing the main character baking chocolate-cherries cupcakes and that grabbed my attention right away. Baking goods and murder, you know the book is going to be good.

"We were, for whatever reason, the lucky ones who survived when no one else had."

Quincy Carpenter is the sole survivor of a bloody massacre ten years ago. She has tried to put all the memories and notoriety behind her, in fact remembering very few details of that terrible night. She keeps in touch with the cop that rescued her but otherwise lives her life anew, with her attorney boyfriend and a baking blog that keeps her occupied.

But all of a sudden she starts hearing from and about other Final Girls, as the sole survivors of these tragic events have been labelled. And her life is turning topsy turvy again.

This was a fast-paced thriller, with lots of turns and false leads. The characters were well described but I didn't find any of them especially likeable. Some of the happenings stretched the "believability" factor too. It was an okay story but not one I would read again.

I received this book from Net Galley and Edelweiss in exchange for my unbiased review.

I was intrigued by the concept but by 50% I was forcing myself to read. I don't care about any of the characters but I am still kind of curious about a resolution. I may finish it at some point just to answer the questions, but I didn't find it compelling or gripping enough to make me HAVE to keep reading...

Guys I am super excited to be a part of this Blog Tour. This is my first one ever and I’m honestly so happy it was for this book. The moment I saw the blurb by Stephen King, “The first great thriller of 2017”, I was very intrigued by this book. When I saw the opportunity I had to take a chance. I am very happy that I did. So now let’s get into it.
So I have to say I overall really enjoyed this book. I really thought it was going to go in one direction which I thought for most of the book and I was like okay this is going to be super predictable but it ended up not being so I’m happy for that. I should have realized that because it was super obvious and I feel if that was how it was going to be then you’re not doing the whole thriller/mystery genre correctly. I always get mad at myself for not realizing but it also makes me enjoy a book a lot more because I wasn’t expecting the outcome.
I didn’t love Quincy as a main character but she wasn’t bad. She obviously had been through a lot. Nobody should have to go through what she had been through. I did have to say I was a bit annoyed how easily she let Sam into her life. Sam is another girl who was the only survivor of a horrible tragedy. I understand why she ended up making that choice but I didn’t like Sam at all. So I spent the whole time questioning her and wasn’t thrilled that she was allowed to stay at Quincy’s apartment when they just met. I obviously didn’t like Sam at all. None of the other characters really stood out to me.
One thing I thought was really cool was the way the book would go back and forth in time. You would get a couple chapters in the present and then it would go to the past for a chapter and repeat. The cool thing about this was that the past I felt was suppose to give you a horror movie type feel. It wasn’t written in first person like the present was. I would assume that’s what the author was going for. I thought that was really interesting. I mean I know the whole book is you looking in on what is happening but I feel with the first person you’re suppose to be going through the motions and then in the third person you really are just someone looking in. I haven’t seen that much with books that go from past to present. I felt it really worked for this book. I was never really creeped out but I enjoyed that it was written to be like I was watching a horror film.
One thing I didn’t like was that Quincy’s best friend that was one of the people that died at Pine Cottage was one of those girls you’re friends with that you’re always doing things you don’t like for but you do it to please them and she does messed up stuff to you but you’re still friends. I caught that in another thriller I read and I guess I’m not a huge fan of that. I know I’ve dealt with people like that before and it sucks. I guess that’s why I don’t like that but I’ve caught that in a couple of books. It wasn’t brought up too much but when it was I couldn’t help think of the other book.
Overall I enjoyed this enjoyed this book. I thought it was a quick read. I would have finished it sooner if work wasn’t in the way. I had bad luck with books lately so it was nice to have this one help with that. I am extremely thankful for getting the chance to read this. I am super curious who Riley Sager actually is. I will be trying to figure this out. I would love to check out more books by them

A great summer thrill beach read! I can't wait to show this to my customers looking for a little suspense in their reading.

Well, then. This just might be my biggest disappointment of the year so far.

Let’s start with the things that I kind of liked. I thought the flashback chapters to what happened at the cottage were more entertaining than anything else. It reads very much like any number of horror movies and while it was basically just one big cliché, it was entertaining. There was also several chapters towards the end of the book where the writing was a little more suspenseful and even though I could guess pretty much everything that was happening, I didn’t want to put it down during that short time.

This book could’ve been a little better for me if the characters weren’t so dang annoying. I HATED them. Quincy was ok in the very beginning, but then Sam showed up and it just all went down hill from there. Sam was the clichéd bad girl psycho who was there to lead Quincy off the straight and narrow. But you can’t really feel that bad for Quincy because she was so easily manipulated and made so many bad decisions and she’s kind of a psycho herself. I spent the vast majority of this book being so unbearably annoyed by both Sam and Quincy that it just ruined the whole experience for me.

I know there are a lot of people that have really loved this book, so I’m sure I’m in the minority opinion here. But, as someone who has seen a good deal of horror movies and reads a lot of this genre, this was not very mysterious or thrilling. I also recently read another book that had a similar storyline with a girl who escapes a murderer and has no memory about what happened and the conclusion was pretty similar. Overall, this was a big disappointment for me.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 2 Stars

Quincy and Jeff live in a quaint apartment in Manhattan, where Jeff practices law and Quincy has a successful baking blog where she shows off her culinary creations. On the surface their lives are idealistic and enviable, but Quincy has a dark past that just won't let go and an unexpected visitor is coming to make certain of it. When Sam shows up she's destitute with no money and nowhere else to go, so Quincy agrees to let her stay for a few days and that's when the secrets begin to unravel. Secrets that threaten to destroy Quincy and everything she loves, but who can she trust and why can't she remember that night?

Sager has written a stunning debut that will keep readers up at night turning the pages. Highly recommended!

Kept me on the edge of my seat. Blindsided at the end. Never saw it coming.

Thanks to Netgalley, Dutton, and Riley Sager. This was a great book! I loved Quincy. Her character was interesting and complex at times. There was a lot of mystery and suspense in that I had a hard time putting it down, always wanting to read one more chapter..I loved the ending, so perfect ! I can see this story continuing if the author wanted it to. It was a great read. I would definitely recommend this book and author.
My reviews are on Goodreads, Twitter. FB, Amazon.

Um….you guys….this book is fantastic.

Riley Sager knocks the ‘thriller’ out of the park with “ Final Girls”

Ten years ago, Quincy Carpenter is the only survivor after a weekend getaway with her college friends. All the other were brutally murdered. Instantly, Quincy is a member of a club that no one is rushing to be a member of …. the Final Girls. Quincy moves on with her life, finishing college, moving to New York and is now a successful baking blogger. (not as lame as it sounds)

Then…Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead.

And that’s where this story begins. Twists, turns and insane amounts of grape soda follow. There are shifts in time, from present day to the time of the Pine Cottage incident. This goes beyond the normal “it was X who did it”. I was guessing the entire time.

There’s a reason Stephen King liked this book.

Thanks to NetGalley, Riley Sager and Penguin Group Dutton for the advance copy of this book in exchange for this review.

This is another highly touted book of summer that just didn't work for me. I grew up in the 80s with the classic horror films of Friday the 13th, Halloween, Scream, etc and several blurbs have likened this book to a combination of those films....I didn't see it at all. I had an issue from the get go with Quincy, the main character, and her convenient total memory loss of the night at Pine Cottage. For me, that's a pretty 'take the easy way out' type of plot technique that requires the reader to suspend a whole lot of disbelief. When we first meet Quincy she's presented to us as a fairly stable girl who does have some issues and is on medication for anxiety but overall she's in a pretty good place with her boyfriend, apartment, and her baking blog. When Sam, one of the 3 Final Girls shows up on her doorstep out of the blue saying she wants to get to know her after they've both just found out that the other final girl has been killed, she not only lets her in but invites her to stay...knowing nothing about her and not bothering to even check to see if she is who she says. Almost immediately Quincy's personality changes and she starts behaving completely erratically and the 2 of them start behaving in completely unbelievable and implausible ways. None of it gelled for me plot wise and I found the whole story far fetched and not in any way scary. I also felt the author pounded me over the head with the use of the word Xanax which was repeated over and over again...I get it, she's addicted to Xanax but I didn't need it repeated to me tons of times. The Pine cottage storyline of flashbacks was underwhelming for me as well and by the end I had already figured out most of it but found I didn't really care what had happened anyway.

The three of them are the Final Girls, sole survivors of terrible events that seem like they came straight out of a horror movie. Lisa wrote a book about the massacre at her sorority house. Sam disappeared from public view years ago. Quinn runs a baking blog and tries to get on with her life. She can't remember the details of that night at Pine Cottage and doesn't want to. Then suddenly Lisa is dead by her own hand and Sam bursts into her life, determined to make Quinn revisit her past. I can't tell you much more without venturing into spoiler territory and I never want to do that.

I read this one on the flight home from our trip and it kept me engrossed for five hours, even through clear air turbulence and worries about blood clots. At times, I thought I knew what was going on, but I was wrong. The plot shifts from Quinn's present life to that fatal night at Pine Cottage, but it never felt like the author was deliberate stringing me along. And, even though Quinn is kind of a mess, she never seemed whiny or childish. There's some blood and gore (because that comes with the territory when you're reading about horror-movie style massacres) but it's not the bulk of the plot and not horribly detailed.

I couldn't put it down. What a wild ride! I hope Riley writes many more books because this was just plain old fun. I do wish there was a bit more character development with the main character, fewer awkward sex scenes and that some details I thought would mean more would actually have been integral to the plot but I still loved it!

As the sole survivors of a massacre, Quincy, Lisa and Samantha have been dubbed "Final Girls" by the media. When Lisa seemingly commits suicide, Samantha seeks out Quincy, determined to connect with her. However, not everything is as it seems. Samantha seems to pull the rage out of Quincy, leading her from one bad situation to the other. In the middle is Coop, the police officer who rescued Quincy all those years ago.

I'm not going to give away the twist, but the author did a poor job of building up to it. It was expected rather than dramatic. Overall, not a book I would reread.

So I started Final Girls and finished it late in the night around 1:30 am. All I can say is YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED THIS BOOK. Request it on Netgalley, preorder it, go stand in line --- whatever you have to do to get your hands on a copy. I was reading along, pretty proud of myself that I had the killer figured out and the mystery solved and tra la la aren't I smart, and then Riley Sager slapped me in the face with the killer reveal and I still haven't picked my jaw up off the floor yet. If you read only one thriller this summer, let it be Final Girls. IT. IS. FANTASTIC!!!!!! Thank you so much to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for an advanced copy of this heart stopping thriller in exchange for my honest review.

Extremely well written. This book kept me at the edge of my seat the entire time. There was not one boring moment. The format of the story was very unique, how it was flip between past and present, and how the parts that took place in the past were told in third person so the source was reliable. This book had me fooled lots of times. At points I was very sure that I had it all figured out, but I was very wrong. This book will shock you. definitely a favorite and I will most definitely recommend it to friends.

I'm between 4 and 4.5 stars here.

This book kicked some serious a--!

"We were, for whatever reason, the lucky ones who survived when no one else had. Pretty girls covered in blood. As such, e were each in turn treated like something rare and exotic. A beautiful bird that spreads its bright wings only once a decade."

Ten years ago, Quincy Carpenter went to the woods with five of her friends to celebrate her best friend's birthday. But instead of the carefree celebration they planned, that night turned out to be something out of her worst nightmares. She was the only one to survive a brutal massacre. She can't seem to remember what happened, nor does she want to—all she remembers is being covered in blood and being rescued by a policeman after outsmarting a killer she can only refer to as "Him."

With that incident she became part of a group the press called the "Final Girls," with two other sole survivors of massacre-style attacks—Lisa, who witnessed an attack on her sorority house which left nine of her sorority sisters dead, and Samantha, who survived a late-night attack at the motel where she worked. The three girls want nothing more than to put their lives back together and somehow shake the memories that haunt them, as well as the guilt that they survived when their friends or others did not.

"Even before Pine Cottage, I never liked to watch scary movies because of the fake blood, the rubber knives, the characters who made decisions so stupid I guiltily thought they deserved to die. Only, what happened to us wasn't a movie. It was real life. Our lives. The blood wasn't fake. The knives were steel and nightmare-sharp. And those who died definitely didn't deserve it. But somehow we screamed louder, ran faster, fought harder. We survived.

Quincy has done fairly well pulling her life together, thanks in large part to her Xanax prescription, which helps keep any lingering anxiety at bay. She has a successful baking blog and a handsome, steadfast fiancée, Jeff. She also knows that Coop, the policeman who saved her life all those years ago is always looking out for her, ready to come if she needs him.

But then Quincy finds out that Lisa, one of her fellow "Final Girls," has apparently committed suicide, despite how hard she fought to survive all those years ago. If that isn't enough to cause Quincy to lose her composure, it turns out Lisa emailed her right before she died, trying to make contact with Quincy. And then Samantha shows up, ostensibly to check up on Quincy once she heard about Lisa's death (despite the fact that they've never met).

It appears Samantha has other motives in mind, too, as she is intent on getting Quincy to relive that night at Pine Cottage 10 years before, and challenges Quincy's carefully composed life. The more she forces Quincy out of her comfort zone, the more Quincy wonders why Samantha really appeared, and whether everyone else in her life is right to be suspicious. When new information about Lisa's death is revealed, Quincy doesn't know where to turn, or whom to trust, and whether she can handle reopening her memories to the trauma she survived 10 years ago.

Final Girls is full of suspense and twists and turns. Riley Sager is definitely a talented storyteller, and she knows how to throw a few misdirections the reader's way, so you don't know how things will be resolved in the end. She does a great job illustrating the dichotomy of Quincy's life, and how quickly the calm she has come to know can be shattered. I also like the way she developed Quincy and Sam's characters—I don't feel as if the other characters were given the same complexity and depth.

This is definitely one of those books which will make a terrific movie. I really enjoyed this a great deal, although some of the shifting back and forth between past and present was a little more jarring than it should have been. If you're a fan of suspense novels, this is one you'll want to pick up. It certainly will make you think the next time you hear about a sole survivor of a horrific incident.

NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Dutton provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

For being pegged a thriller, this book was a bit slow to start for me. To clarify, I enjoyed the beginning of this book, but I wasn't nervous or freaked out while the suspense slowly built. I didn't start feeling nervous or anxious about the plot until well into the second half of the book. Again, I enjoyed reading the entire novel, I just didn't peg it as a thriller.
Quincy is the prototype of the unreliable narrator. She simply doesn't remember anything after she found her friend bleeding to death on the night of the massacre up to the point where she found Coop, her rescuer. As readers, we know that the murderer was shot on the night of the massacre, but since this is a thriller, you know not to trust that the murder is actually dead!
In addition, you are given the suspense of the new investigation of Lisa (one of the other final girls') death. So, we get to be involved in figuring out what happened at two totally unrelated (or are they?) scenes that take place years apart.

I really enjoyed this novel. Its not a crazy and amazing literary masterpiece, but it is well written, it is fun, and it will keep you guessing until the end.

4.5/5 stars

I received a free e-copy of this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I highly recommend this book for horror lovers.