Quinn Carpenter is the only survivor of the Pine Cottage massacre. She has no memory of the massacre, but she knows a knife-wielding maniac murdered her closest friends and stabbed her three times. She only survived because she ran into a police officer while the killer was chasing her.
Shortly after the incident, another Final Girl, Lisa, reached out to Quinn to teach her how to handle the aftermath. Lisa wanted her and Quinn to meet Sam, another Final Girl. She thought they could support one another and be friends, but Quinn wasn’t ready.
Ten years later, Quinn is living in New York City with her fiancé and running a successful baking blog. She tells anyone who asks that she’s put Pine Cottage behind her, but her drinking and Xanax dependence tell another story. When news breaks that Lisa was found dead of an apparent suicide, Final Girl Sam shows up on Quinn’s doorstep. Feeling guilty she wasn’t there for Lisa, Quinn is determined to be friends with Sam, even though Sam brings out the worst in her. As Quinn learns more about Lisa’s death, she starts to remember what happened at Pine Cottage. But someone doesn’t want her to remember.
I thought I would love Final Girls. I love horror movies and books with strong female leads. I liked the previous Riley Sagar novel I read. But the first half of the book is unhappy people doing things that make them unhappy, which I hate in real life so I really don’t want to read about it. I guess it’s a good character study of complex PTSD, but I wanted a straight up thriller. The second half was more to my liking but by then I was no longer invested in the book. There were some nice twists and interesting developments. The characters were well-developed and the entire book was written in such a way that you can picture each scene. It’s a good book, just not to my liking.