- Genre: Thriller/Horror
- Length: 352 pages
- Buy: Final Girls: A Novel
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 Take:
I recently received a copy of SURVIVE THE NIGHT in my Book of the Month box, but since this one has been on my shelf for months, I decided to give it a read first. I’m so glad I did. It is hands-down my favorite Riley Sager novel so far.
Sager has this unrivaled ability to create an unreliable narrator who the reader wants to root for, which is never more evident than the protagonist here. Quincy spends the first 1/3 of the novel attempting to convince herself that she’s “moved on” from that awful night she survived the mass murder of her friends, but it’s clear from the start that she has secrets–that there is some secret shame she’s hiding from everyone around her.
This book kept me guessing from page one, and Quincy’s jaw-dropping journey from fragile final girl to true fighter is absolutely gripping. At the end, I sat staring at the final page and longing for a sequel. Guess I’ll have to read SURVIVE THE NIGHT instead.
A Couple of B's 
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