Reviews with content warning for Eating disorder - Final Girls

Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'

Final Girls by Riley Sager

24 reviews

percys_panda_pillow_pet's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

At this point in time, Riley Sager is a popular thriller author online, having published several successful thrillers in the past few years. Final Girls is his first thriller, published in 2017. I picked up this book partially because of the author's name and partially because a friend of mine who is into 80's slasher really got me into horror and the concept of a final girl, the one who survives all the horrors of a single terrible night.

Sager's Final Girls isn't unique in wanting to explore the idea of the final girl further, of what it's like after everything. Previously, there was The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones in 2012 and later, in 2021, Grady Hendrix's The Final Girl Support Group. All of these books follow a similar storyline: there are these "final girls" who each survive what is by all accounts a massacre and then they are seemingly being killed off until the main character is left. This leaves the main character a "true" survivor, I suppose.

My problem with Sager's Final Girls isn't that there are other books like it, there are many ways to tell the same story after all. More so, I could tell Sager was still inexperienced at writing when it was published. While I appreciated the thematic nature of the past being told in the third person point of view and the present told in first person point of view, since the main character and narrator, Quincy, is unreliable due to her amnesia of the horrible night all her friends were killed; in the end, I found the switch in POV jarring to go between.

As well, I could tell Sager was inexperienced in writing women specifically. Quincy herself was very annoying, and constantly got in her own way. But there was not only a strange love triangle between her, her boyfriend Jeff, and Coop, the cop who saved her life, there were also strange homoerotic tones between Quincy and her female friends/acquaintances. I felt like the was supposed to be a commentary on sexuality perhaps, especially when it comes to final girls (Check out Dead Meat Podcast Episode 15: Final Girl on YouTube for more information about that), but so much of it flopped and came off as cringey.

I liked that Quincy was unreliable and I was intrigued by the complexity of several of the characters. However, they were often too unlikable for me to really invest in them fully, and I constantly found myself hating each and every one of them at different points in the book.

Overall, I personally think that maybe the concept of finals girls should be left to the movies, or perhaps women authors who may be able to understand the deeper fears that persist in today's society of violence against women.

Content Warnings

sapphicpenguin's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

4.0

Much more suspense/mystery than action/thriller. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did! I did often get mad at the main character, but I guess I'll give her a pass for the, y'know, slasher-movie trauma. The plot twists were well set up/thought out, and kept me guessing till the very end. I liked the subversion of movie tropes, plus the writing was very satisfying. Great nonlinear storytelling. A good all-in-an-afternoon read. I guess I don't have the patience for too much mystery, though, as sometimes I just wished we could get to the next thing.

ACAB btw

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_fallinglight_'s review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

Content Warnings

ramunepocky's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.75

I really enjoyed this book, it certainly kept me on my toes with guessing what was going to happen next, I never knew I could be so wrong and so right simultaneously about what had happened, and what was going to happen. There were certain bits that lulled a bit, but I feel like that worked fairly well as a contrast to the fast paced bits and were equally important to the plot. I didnt particularly like any of the characters, or have any form of attachment to them, but it still interesting to see their development and see how their stories unravelled.

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theinstabookworm's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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breadwitchery's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Content Warnings

ivegotyourpaperback's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

2.0

Unpopular opinion: I didn’t love this. I didn’t even really like much of it. Which is disappointing because I went into it thinking it was going to be right up my alley. Unfortunately this alley had a few wrong turns.

Let’s start with what I did like. I enjoyed the switching of narratives depending on the time period (Present day = 1st person narrative and the Past = 3rd person). I’m thought it made for interesting storytelling.

The thing I could barely stand? The main character, Quincy Carpenter. It’s a bit of a problem when a book’s main character is so annoying that it makes you want to throw the book across the room (which I would have done, had this not been a library book).

Quincy is so stupid in the present tense that it’s irritating. I don’t know if it’s because she’s been through a trauma so she’s prone to more risk-taking behaviour; or if the author has intentionally made her act stupidly as an homage to horror films (so the reader/audience is shouting “don’t do that”, “don’t go there”, “at night, really?”). Either way, it grated on my nerves.

But the cherry on top of this Moron Pie was when Sam convinced Quincy to walk around Central Park at night hoping someone will mug her so she can try some vigilante bullshit to show she’s ‘strong’. But uh oh, she then ends up kicking in the skull of a dude who was possibly hungry/probably drug affected (but didn’t actually do anything wrong), just because she thinks he tried to slap her (don’t worry, this isn’t a spoiler - it literally had no bearing on the story).

This is where I put the book down at 46% seriously reconsidering whether I really wanted to continue following a dipstick of a main character. The only thing keeping me intrigued at this point were the flashback chapters detailing the night of the massacre.

I then skim read the rest of the book only because I wanted to find out how it ended and I’m behind on my Goodreads reading goal. I actually enjoyed the tension once the story reached it’s crescendo, but getting there just felt like a slog.

Content warnings:

⚠️murder (duh)

⚠️depression/PTSD

⚠️eating disorder

⚠️mention of suicide

⚠️substance abuse

Content Warnings