Final Girls by Riley Sager review

    FINAL GIRLS by Riley Sager is right up my wheelhouse since I am the kind of guy who read MEN, WOMEN, AND CHAINSAWS by Carol J. Clover for the intellectual stimulating discussion of the slasher movie with not a trace of irony. The premise of the novel is a simple and intriguing one: what if a typical slasher movie plot "really" happened? Well, the survivors would be traumatized as well as media sensations.

    Quincy Carpenter, a nice reference to Quincy Harker and John Carpenter probably, is the survivor of a camp ground massacre in her college years. A twisted maniac went on a rampage and murdered all of her friends, leaving her as the sole one to escape. It's been ten years and she is a baking vlogger with an apartment she pays for with money from a number of lawsuits filed on her behalf. She's an emotional mess kept going by Xanax and grape soda but a fairly realistic model of a trauma survivor.

    Quincy just wants to pretend that her life is fine and she's moved past her horrific ordeal but this is impossible due to the inability to fully confront it. Quincy doesn't remember what happened for an hour of events and the media enjoyed bringing it up repeatedly. Not only was her ordeal similar to a horror movie but she and the other two "Final Girls" who suffered similar experiences are conventionally beautiful women who are perfect for generating cheap ratings.

    Quincy's faux-perfect life takes a downturn when Lisa, the strongest of the Final Girls, seemingly commits suicide. This results in the other Final Girl, Samantha Boyd, coming to visit Quincy in New York. Quickly, events start to spiral out of control as Samantha repeatedly tries to trigger Quincy's long-suppressed rage. Was Lisa's suicide really that and why does Sam want to force Quincy to remember what really happened that night?

    The book is entertaining for about 90% of its page count but doesn't quite manage to successfully land. The best part of the book is following Quincy through her daily routine and how she's adjusted to being a survivor of a horror movie in "real life." I also enjoyed the flashbacks to the Pinewood Cottage massacre even if they're a deliberately cliche (camp ground, Indian burial ground, insane asylum). The final answer to the mystery is actually more cliche than all of the invoked tropes and I wish the author had gone with a more original twist.

    Fans expecting a book that reads like a slasher pic are going to be disappointed as this is mostly a psychological horror piece. Quincy is badly damaged by her experience while simultaneously irritated with how everyone treats her like a fragile piece of china. I like her relationship with Samantha and was interested in seeing them develop a friendship that puts a wedge in her relationship with her boyfriend. I was a bit reminded of the Anna Kendrick/Blake Lively movie, A Simple Favor, that had similar characters to Quincy and Samantha but the roles reversed.

    I think the biggest problem of the ending is the fact that it doesn't really tie into the rest of the book's themes. Much of the book is about how there's no such thing as a "Final Girl" and that it's a media created moniker to cover up a traumatizing event. One of the other characters suffered horrific child abuse and killer her attacker but was labeled a monster because, presumably, it wasn't Hollywood-esque enough a premise. Then the ending introduces a villain straight out of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and we're meant to treat her Final Girl status seriously.

    Still, I enjoyed reading the book and if you're a fan of 80s horror films then you'll enjoy most of the references even if they strain credulity that there's been three or four incidents that perfectly mirror a typical horror movie, complete with beautiful survivors. Then again, we're living in a time with spree killers so what do I know. I recommend the audiobook version narrated by Erin Bennett and Hillary Huber as they do an amazing job bringing the main characters to life.

Available here