Reviews with content warning for Blood - Final Girls

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

meeshell89's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

fallandfox's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

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

3.0

Dez anos atrás a estudante universitária chamada Quincy Carpenter sobreviveu um massacre digno de filme de terror que matou seus 5 amigos e o assassino no final, a partir desse momento ela ficou conhecida como uma das 3 garotas finais. As outras duas garotas finais sendo Lisa que sobreviveu a o massacre na sua sororidade em que 9 jovens morreram pela mão de um homem que tinha desistido da faculdade e a Sam que lutou contra o homem do saco durante seu trabalho.
As três nunca se conheceram mesmo com a mídia desejando isso, e agora Quincy finalmente sente que possui sua vida nos trilho.
Honestamente eu nem lembro mais onde foi que eu descobri esse livro só sei que coloquei na lista de espera da biblioteca e fiquei esperando o melhor momento.
Eu fui sem expectativas realizar a leitura e mesmo assim me senti decepcionada com ela.
Eu lembro de terminar ele e pensar “serio mesmo que foi assim que terminou?”
Eu já tinha lido livros desse gênero muitas outras vezes e senti que autora criou expectativas em mim em momentos para logo após não ser nada e eu me senti completamente lezada por ela.

Um dos meus principais problemas com a leitura foi que a autora falou bastante mas não disse absolutamente nada de importante nos 50% do livro fazendo com que o plot twist final desse para mim uma sensação de que foi acelerado.

A protagonista Quincy é uma mulher que ainda tem muitas marcas do que aconteceu com ela mas que tenta ser “normal” e “superado” o que aconteceu com ela e seus amigos quando na verdade não poderia estar mais afundada na sua dor.
A Sam foi uma personagem que eu tinha expectativa de ser interessante mas em alguns momentos eu me perguntei se ela tinha realmente algum objetivo além do caos.
O relacionamento entre a Quincy e o policial é uma das parte importantes do livro e eu estava realmente torcendo por eles no inicio e me sentindo culpada por isso.

Talvez a sensação que eu tive de arrastamento seja algo próprio mas pelas outras resenhas que li foi algo que incomodou outros leitores então fica a decisão do leitor essa aventura.
Tinha uma historia interessante quando começou a pegar o ritmo da escrita e os plots twists foram bons para algo tão de apressado.

Content Warnings

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