JULY 2017 - AudioFile
Narrators Erin Bennett and Hillary Huber partner beautifully in this gripping psychological thriller about a group of young women who survived attempts on their lives—whom the press calls “Final Girls.” Both narrators add intensity and drama to the mystery and to the personality of each survivor. Bennett is passionate in her delivery, intriguing in her tone, and edgy in her dialogue. Huber helps define the key points in the mystery. Each of the three Final Girls, Lisa, Quincy, and Sam, has a story, but the real story begins when Lisa is found dead and Quincy must revisit her past with Sam. Quincy's past and present are perfectly intertwined and remain a mystery until the very end. D.Z. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
05/22/2017
Quincy “Quinn” Carpenter, the heroine of Sager’s uneven thriller debut, and five college friends spend a weekend in the Pennsylvania woods at the remote Pine Cottage, where a knife-wielding maniac kills everyone but her. She is only spared because Officer Cooper (“Coop”) shoots the culprit. Quinn, who remembers no details, isn’t the only lone survivor of such a massacre around the same time: Lisa Milner survives a sorority house attack, and Samantha Boyd fights off a motel killer. Lisa is the only one of the three who embraces the media’s “final girl” label—a trope familiar to horror movie buffs, referring to the girl who survives the bloodbath—and even writes a book about her experience. Quinn wants nothing to do with her fellow “girls,” and 10 years later has settled down in Manhattan with a boyfriend, a baking blog, and lots of Xanax. Then Coop shows up and tells Quinn that Lisa is dead, and the nightmare starts anew. Sager does a good job building suspense, but some readers may find the book’s themes of casual male power and female subservience after trauma deeply unsettling. Agent: Michelle Brower, Folio Literary Management. (July)
From the Publisher
Praise for Final Girls
“Deliciously scary.”—New York Times Book Review
“A terrific read!”—Karin Slaughter, New York Times and international bestselling author
“Sager does an excellent job throughout of keeping the audience guessing until the final twist. A fresh voice in psychological suspense.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Sager cleverly plays on horror movie themes from Scream to Single White Female, creating an homage without camp. Despite comparisons to Gone Girl, this debut’s strong character development and themes of rebirth and redemption align more closely with Flynn’s Dark Places.”—Booklist (starred review), “The Year's Best Crime Novels”
“The tale builds to a fantastic conclusion that will have readers thinking of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train....This brilliant horror/psychological thriller will fly off the shelves.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“You know the cold dread that washes over you while you’re watching a slasher flick? That’s how you’ll feel reading this blood-spattered mystery.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Part thriller, part horror story, Final Girls borrows riffs from Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Single White Female, but remains its own sophisticated creature....Taut and bloody, this chilling mystery invites Gillian Flynn comparisons. Readers should prepare to sleep with the lights on.”—ShelfAwareness
“Stephen King dubbed this page-turner about three women with a seriously grim bond the ‘first great thriller of 2017.’ So yeah, it’s good.”—Cosmopolitan
“A twisty thriller that keeps you guessing whodunit.”—Family Circle
“In horror movies, the 'final girl' is the one young woman who makes it out of a slasher film alive. But in Sager's story, Quincy, who survived a mass murder, refuses to play into the 'final girl' trope. Instead, she creates a fulfilling life in NYC. Then, a woman like her dies of an apparent suicide, and Quincy's well-crafted facade gradually begins to unravel. This one will keep you guessing until the very last page.”—PureWow
“Final Girls is a twisty horror novel that will keep you perched, terrified, at the edge of your seat until the very last page.”—Bustle
“Sager quickly ratchets up the mystery and the psychological suspense in classic slasher-movie fashion...[and] takes time to delve into the head of the main character, creating an emotionally charged experience readers won’t soon forget.”—BookPage
“The tone of this book is absolutely spot on—more Dark Places than Gone Girl—but it’s creepy as hell and it evokes the best qualities of ’80s slasher movies.”—Book Riot
“Far and away the best thriller that came out this year.”—PopSugar
“A cleverly devised, expertly written psychological thriller.”—Fresh Fiction
“Final Girls is the reason they came up with the term ‘page-turner.’ ”—PopHorror
“Riley Sager’s loving ode to the slasher film, Final Girls, was 2017’s perfect summer read.”—CrimeReads
“Readers won’t want to put this intense thriller down on the beach blanket—though that blanket may come in handy for hiding under during some of the book’s scarier moments.” —The Deseret News
“The Final Girls need you. You must sit down with this book, you must read. You must start flipping pages, faster, faster, faster. The Final Girls are tough, everything survivors should be. But the new threat is clever, ominous, even closer than you suspect. You are about to gasp. You might drop the book. You may have to look over your shoulder. But you must keep reading. This is the best book of 2017, the Final Girls need you.”—Lisa Gardner, New York Times bestselling author of Find Her
“Final Girls is a compulsive read, with characters who are at once unreliable and sympathetic. Just when you think you've figured out the plot, the story pivots in a startling new direction....A taut and original mystery that will keep you up late trying to figure out a final twist that you won't see coming.”—Carla Norton, bestselling author of The Edge of Normal and What Doesn't Kill Her
“Part psychological thriller, part homage to slasher flicks and film noir, Final Girls has a little bit of everything: a suspicious death, a damaged heroine, an unwelcome guest who trades in secrets, and not a single character you can trust. Plenty of nail-biting fun!”—Hester Young, author of The Gates of Evangeline
“There are uncommon books and films that crack the ‘safe place,’ that have us forgetting it’s only a story. Nobody knows exactly how this is done, but when it’s done, we know it. Final Girls is operating on that plane; you will check your own arm for a wound a character suffers, you will look across the room when a character hears someone coming, and you will wonder if you yourself have the mettle to endure being a Final Girl.”—Josh Malerman, author of Bird Box
“Smart and provocative, with plenty of twists and turns, Final Girls will have the reader racing breathlessly toward its shocking conclusion.”—Sophie Littlefield, award-winning author of The Guilty One and The Missing Place
“Phenomenally drawn characters and an intriguing premise make this one of my favorite books I've read this year. An outstanding novel.”—Hollie Overton, bestselling author of Baby Doll
“Captivating and compelling, with a refreshingly brilliant premise, Riley Sager is one to watch.”—Lisa Hall, bestselling author of Between You and Me and Tell Me No Lies
“An intriguing, original idea. We’ve all shuddered at bloodbath stories—but how does the survivor cope? It made me think outside the psychological box. Fresh voice, great characterization, and unexpected surprises. This stayed in my mind because it was different.”—Jane Corry, Sunday Times bestselling author of My Husband's Wife
Library Journal
★ 06/15/2017
As a teenager, Quincy Carpenter endured a terrible event at a cabin in the Pennsylvania woods. As the lone survivor of a massacre (one she does not remember), she was labeled by the press a "Final Girl," making her one of three such survivors. Ten years later, Quincy has rebuilt her life in New York City, with a lawyer boyfriend and a popular baking blog. The policeman who saved Quincy that fateful night still checks up on her regularly. Lisa and Samantha, the other two Final Girls whose stories are told as the book unfolds, play important roles, especially when Samantha gets in touch with Quincy to help her realize her internal anger. Soon, the suspense ratchets up with a mysterious murder, violent late-night escapades in Central Park, and the appearance of multiple suspects in past and present crimes. The tale builds to a fantastic conclusion that will have readers thinking of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train. VERDICT Sager (a pseudonym for a published author) is a "new" star in the making. This brilliant horror/psychological thriller will fly off the shelves. [See Prepub Alert, 2/1/17.]—Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI
JULY 2017 - AudioFile
Narrators Erin Bennett and Hillary Huber partner beautifully in this gripping psychological thriller about a group of young women who survived attempts on their lives—whom the press calls “Final Girls.” Both narrators add intensity and drama to the mystery and to the personality of each survivor. Bennett is passionate in her delivery, intriguing in her tone, and edgy in her dialogue. Huber helps define the key points in the mystery. Each of the three Final Girls, Lisa, Quincy, and Sam, has a story, but the real story begins when Lisa is found dead and Quincy must revisit her past with Sam. Quincy's past and present are perfectly intertwined and remain a mystery until the very end. D.Z. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-04-18
An original take on a familiar pop-culture motif.The "final girl" is a trope familiar to film scholars and horror-movie fans. She's the young woman who makes it out of the slasher flick alive, the one who lives to tell the tale. After she survives a mass murder, the media tries to make Quincy into a final girl, but she refuses to play that part. Instead, she finishes college, finds a great boyfriend, and builds a comfortable life for herself on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She's managed to bury her trauma under a mountain of Pinterest-ready sweets—she runs a successful baking blog—and psychological repression. Then another final girl, a woman who's tried to be a mentor to Quincy, dies of an apparent suicide, and the cracks in her carefully constructed world begin to show. Reporters come looking for her. So does Samantha Boyd, another survivor. It's clear that Sam is trouble, but precisely what kind of trouble is one of the mysteries of this inventive, well-crafted thriller. Quincy might look like a model survivor, but that's only because she's managed to conceal both her reliance on Xanax and her penchant for petty theft. Quincy is convinced that she and Sam can help each other, but Sam's bad habits mesh a little too neatly with Quincy's own. As she begins to lose control, Quincy starts to doubt Sam as she gets ever closer to truths she's managed to suppress. While most of the book is written from the heroine's point of view, Sager weaves scenes from the night Quincy's friends were slaughtered into the narrative. This is a clever device in that it gives readers information that Quincy can't access even as it invites readers to question her claims of memory loss. Also, knowing the outcome of this horrible event makes watching it unfold nerve-wracking. This is not to say that readers can feel secure about knowing what they think they know. Sager does an excellent job throughout of keeping the audience guessing until the final twist. A fresh voice in psychological suspense.
