A review by ivegotyourpaperback
Final Girls by Riley Sager

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 
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