Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout’s knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media’s attempts, they never meet.
Book Summary
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.
That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy’s doorstep. Blowing through Quincy’s life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa’s death come to light, Quincy’s life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam’s truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.
Final Girls is a suspenseful horror novel about three women who survived mass murders in their past, only to be reunited years later when a new killer begins targeting them. The novel is well-paced and has some interesting twists and turns, but it is ultimately let down by its unrealistic portrayal of female characters and its cynical view of justice.
Sager does an excellent job of building suspense and keeping the pace up throughout the novel. The characters are somewhat multi-faceted and generally relatable, and the novel explores a number of important themes, including trauma, survival, and the nature of good and evil.
The novel focuses on the struggles of the “Final Girls,” as termed by the media, in the years after their survival of the horrible crimes that marked them forever. However, Sager does not take this idea to its fullest potential, mentioning the problematic intrusions of the media in their lives but never really to the extent the reader expects. The character Sam comes across as especially unrealistic, and the main character Quincy is written with an unrealistic, obviously male gaze-centered perspective with token hobbies and interests. It was clear from the descriptions the women gave of themselves, and any other minor female character that appears in a scene, that this is a novel written by a male author. Furthermore, I found it frustrating that the author fails in these most basic details of writing female characters, given that the topic of the novel is male-perpetuated violence on female victims, and women are disproportionately the victims of such crimes in real life, as well as unfairly blamed for the actions of such violent perpetrators. I would have expected a more nuanced take on the female victims that were the main and secondary characters of this novel, and it cheapens the topic when basic flaws such as over-sexualized descriptions are frequently displayed in the writing.
One major negative for me was that I was able to immediately guess the mysterious killer’s identity in the first scene they appear. This seems to be a common experience with other readers. The twists are similarly predictable, suspicion thrown on various secondary characters in obvious red herrings that are easily picked up on by the reader.
While one may argue the predictability of the novel is a feature of it being a commentary on the horror/serial killer genre, I would disagree. While the novel uses tropes from the genre and terms familiar to genre readers, it fails to deliver any meaningful message about the horror genre or about survivors of crimes. At the end of the novel, I still was left without a true answer to what a “Final Girl” really was in the real world or world of the novel, and that cheapens any message the author was attempting to share in my opinion.
Another major theme of the novel is the search for justice by victims of crimes, and how such justice is denied to them in many cases. The novel revolves around horrific violent crimes and one expects such a novel to take a strong stance on the concepts of justice, vengeance, innocence, and the impact of crimes on victims. This is discussed through the novel, however, I found that the message is greatly undermined by the fact that the main character and others actually commit violent crimes themselves during the book on innocents, and get away with it. Indeed, they cover up crimes for one another, seemingly for no real reason, and never confess or face any retribution for their actions. This was very frustrating to me, as it seemed to be added purely for manufactured moral ambiguity/complexity, and played out in a highly unrealistic manner.
Finally, given the subject matter of the novel, I expected more commentary on how the justice system in the United States operates, and how successful it is (or is not) in pursuing justice for victims of horrific crimes. I also expected more commentary on the police.
The novel straddles the line between a modern thriller and a campy horror novel, and cannot seem to decide what bucket it falls in. In my opinion, it did not deliver on either premise in any meaningful way.
Overall, Final Girls is a mediocre horror novel with some interesting ideas that are ultimately let down by its execution. I would recommend it to fans of the genre who are looking for a quick and easy read, but I would caution readers to be aware of its flaws.
In The Library 