Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Final Girls

Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

diredreamings's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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aseel_reads's review

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

I thought this was going one way, which had me concerned, but then it went a different way and I was pleasantly (and horrifyingly) surprised. I thought the plot was well done and very suspenseful.

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kyriannaj's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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percys_panda_pillow_pet's review

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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.

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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

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sarah_onyxartemis's review

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Good book just not at all my cup of tea. I'm only just crawling out of a major reading slump so I'm not going to force myself to get through it. Not right now at least. Maybe I'll pick it back up down the road.

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bookishgoob's review

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

2.0

“I’m the moth that got careless with the flame. Now i’m engulfed” slow paced and utterly uninteresting in the first half, you follow a girl with no memory of what happened to her after being the only survivor of a massacre that left all of her friends dead. she was the only survivor. she was a “final girl” a term used when talking about horror movies most of the time to describe the girl at the end of a movie that is the only survivor of what happened. the first 50% of this book left me with the feeling of wanting to just not finish at all but I don’t like to DNF books unless it’s so terrible or uninteresting so i pushed through and finished it. the twists and turns were surprising, but only to an extent. i called a few of them from a mile away, a few of them though were not so easy to spot. switching from the final girls perspective to a 3rd person account of what happened to her 10 years early was an interesting choice, just not very well executed in my opinion. not getting much on either end of the story made it dull and it felt slightly repetitive. all in all, i’m glad i finished it but i would not read it again and i don’t think i would really recommend it. unless you like slow paced stories that really feel like they have no direction in the beginning. i give this read a 2/5. it was an okay spooky season read. but if you have a choice between this title, or another thriller, i would vote that you get the other one.

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maria1085's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

🔪🔪🔪🔪/5

This was my first of Riley Sanger’s books, and it definitely was a twisty, edge of your seat thriller. Those last 30 pages had me SHOOK. I love a good thriller that gets my adrenaline going and heart beating quickly.

The story follows Quincy who was the lone survivor of a massacre at Pine Cottage. Labeled as a Final Girl the only person she talks to from that horrible night is the cop who saved her, Coop (as she calls him). She doesn’t remember anything that happened, nor does she want to. Now living with her boyfriend in NYC trying to bury the past she thinks she’s left behind…

That is all about to change when Sam shows up at her her door. Sam is the second Final Girl, but why is she showing up now?

When they find out that Lisa, the first Final Girl was found dead it’s a race to find out the truth. Did Lisa really kill herself? Is Sam telling the truth? Why is she so intent on making Quincy relive that horrific night?

With twists and turns and a quick plot this story hooked me from the start. Riley Sager wrote an addictive thriller that kept me guessing until the end. My mind is still twisting trying to wrap my head around that ending! Riley Sager has quickly become a new favorite thriller author! Can’t wait to read more of his books!

Which one of his is your favorite?

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