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.
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.
Another fantastic book by Riley Sager! Had I read this one first, it would have been a five star read, but after reading his second novel, The Last Time I Lied, this one didn’t quite measure up to that one, though it was very close! This was a whirlwind of a novel and yet another Sager book that kept me up reading, needing to binge and finish even though it was past midnight.
When Quincy was a sophomore in college, she and a group of friends rented a cabin in the Poconos to celebrate Janelle’s birthday. It’s nestled deep in the woods, not too far from a psychiatric hospital (or “insane asylum”, as it is referred to in the novel, which I didn’t super like, tbh). On their first night there, terror strikes — a murderer is on the loose, killing every single one of Quincy’s friends. She is the lone survivor, found by a rookie cop at the end of the road as she streaks through the forest in an attempt to get away, her white dress turned red from blood. She is the sole survivor of the massacre, and with her survival, she becomes one of them – the Final Girls. Quincy is the third final girl after Lisa, the original, and Sam, who was also young when she survived a murder spree at a motel. Quincy has kept in loose contact with Lisa, but Sam has been off the grid for years, not seen or heard from by anyone. One day, however, Quincy finds out that Lisa has died of an apparent suicide. Shortly after, Sam also appears in her life, seeking her out after also learning of Lisa’s passing.
The novel flips from the present to the past, where we slowly find out what actually happened at Pine Cottage the day that all of Quincy’s friends died — though its been ten years, Quincy still doesn’t really remember WHAT happened that night. She remembers the events leading up to it, and she remembers running into the arms of Coop, the rookie cop she finds at the edge of the forest who was out there, looking for the escaped patient from the psychiatric hospital down the road. Everything in between, though? A big, black hole for Quincy.
Although on the outside, Quincy looks relatively well adjusted – she is engaged, she is well off financially due to legal settlements after the attacked, and a baking blog she runs and operates – inside, she’s a huge mess. She relies on Xanax to get through her days, and is barely able to keep it together. So much so that when Sam arrives, she exposes parts of Quincy she didn’t know existed; parts of her that scare and shame her.
This book was truly a ride, the last 100 or so pages in particular. It was filled with twists and turns, some I expected beforehand, many that didn’t even cross my mind. It’s another binge read book; you want to keep flipping pages to find out what is going on not only in the present, but in the past as well. Sager’s writing is fantastic yet again, his prose easy to read, always pulling you deep into the story. It very much has a slasher film vibe, an homage to movies in the same vein. Speaking of, the rights have also been sold to Universal to be made into a film — which I think it would do wonderfully.
If you like thrillers, or just well written books in general, I would highly recommend this. Another win for Riley Sager!
Book Drunk 