Laurie Strode in Halloween. Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Sidney Prescott in Scream. Cindy Campbell in Scary Movie. Sienna Shaw in Terrifier 2. Pop culture has labeled these lone survivors of the horrors committed by crazed killers as Final Girls.
In Riley Sager’s novel, Final Girls, he explores the real-world implications and complications that arise from being labeled a Final Girl through the eyes of protagonist Quincy Carpenter. While Quincy in desperate to move forward with her life and her future, the past seems desperate to pull her back into the horrors she faced during a massacre at Pine Cottage where she was the sole survivor.
When a fellow Final Girl is found dead and another pops up unannounced on Quincy’s doorstep, Quincy finds herself in a bizarre psychological game that leads her to places she’d rather forget, and back to memories she’d rather erase.
This novel had so many great twists and turns that I had a hard time ending a chapter and putting the book down. There were plenty of moments where I was sure I had figured out what was coming and then BANG! I was wrong!
Final Girls is also an excellent commentary on how we turn crime victims and those who commit horrific crimes into pop culture icons, how the media salivates over these massacres in order to profit from the pain and trauma left in the wake of such terrible acts, and how the survivors devolve into tabloid fodder while their assailants achieve cult-like status and obsessive fanbases.
Sager’s novel is an excellent companion piece to The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix. Both books do a superb job exploring these topics and provide insightful commentary and thrilling and suspenseful reads as well.
If you’re looking for a novel that will leave you guessing until the very last page, I highly recommend Final Girls by Riley Sager.