This book was actually a gift from my dad! I wasn't familiar with it, but he said it seemed like something I would like, and he was 100% correct. This was a thrill from start to finish, and I loved every page!
“Pretty girls covered in blood. As such, we were each in turn treated like something rare and exotic. A beautiful bird that spreads its bright wings only once a decade.”
What do Quincey Carpenter, Lisa Milner, and Samantha Boyd have in common?
They each were the sole survivors of horrific murder sprees.
Quincey witnessed the brutal murders of five of her friends at Pine Cottage, and eventually fled through the woods in search of help. With the killer hot on her heels, she was saved at the last second by Officer Franklin Cooper, who had been searching the forest for a patient that escaped from a nearby asylum.
Lisa survived a vicious attack at her sorority house by hiding out in a closet, and eventually confronting the killer. She sustained several injuries in the process, but managed to take him down. When police arrived on the scene, Lisa was barely alive.
Lastly, Samantha was working an overnight shift at the Nightlight Inn when a man with a potato sack on his head entered the building. He began slaughtering Samantha's coworkers and hotel guests with power tools, and Samantha was forced to fight for her life by using one of his tools against him.
Each of them has become an object of media fascination, dubbing them Final Girls—but, where are they now?
Well, Lisa wrote a bestselling book about her experiences, and dedicated her life to helping other women who are struggling. She even reached out to Quincey and Samantha, offering her support in any way she could.
Samantha hasn't been seen or heard from in years, and seems to have dropped off the grid altogether.
Quincey? Well, she's fine. Ten years later, her life is surprisingly normal. She has a beautiful home in New York City, a loving boyfriend, has maintained a close relationship with Officer Cooper, known affectionately as Coop, and she's fortunate enough to have no memory of the horrible events of Pine Cottage—just the before and after.
She even has a successful baking career, taking the advice her dad gave her as a child and applying it to her real life circumstances.
“There’s such a thing as too much sweetness, Quincy. All the best bakers know this. There needs to be a counterpoint. Something dark. Or bitter. Or sour. Unsweetened chocolate. Cardamom and cinnamon. Lemon and lime. They cut through all the sugar, taming it just enough so that when you do taste the sweetness, you appreciate it all the more.”
Despite many media attempts, the three Final Girls have never met in person—and sadly, they never will.
While putting the finishing touch on a batch of cupcakes, Quincey receives a text from Coop saying they need to talk immediately. She rushes to their usual meeting spot, where Coop breaks the news: Lisa is dead.
Quincey isn't sure how to feel. She and Lisa weren't exactly friends, but they had a connection that no one else could possibly understand—except Samantha. Quincey handles the news fairly well until she checks her email and discovers that Lisa desperately tried to contact her less than an hour before her death.
Shortly after Lisa's passing hits mainstream media, Samantha, who prefers Sam, appears outside Quincey's home, saying it's about time they talked.
At first, Quincey is thrilled to have someone in her life that understands her, and the two begin to form a close friendship. However, Sam's story of how she ended up in New York seems to constantly change, and she's developed a weird obsession with helping Quincey regain her repressed memories of that night at Pine Cottage.
As the circumstances of Lisa's death become more and more suspicious, Quincey can't help but question Sam's intentions. She even finds herself questioning her understanding of what happened at Pine Cottage ten years ago.
“You can’t change what’s happened. The only thing you can control is how you deal with it.”
This was good, guys. Really, really good. It kept me hooked from start to finish, making it practically impossible for me to put down.
Towards the end, I knew the story was building to the final twist, but it was nothing like I expected. I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but that was not it.
If you're looking for a thriller or if you're a fan of old-school slasher films, you'll definitely want to give this a read!
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts:
Have you read Final Girls?
Have you read any of Riley Sager's other work?
Do you want to, based on this review?
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'•.¸♡ Thanks for reading! ♡¸.•'