Final Girls
First edition
AuthorRiley Sager
Audio read byErin Bennett
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreThriller
PublisherDutton
Publication date
2017
Media typePrint (hardback, paperback)
ebook
audiobook
Followed byThe Last Time I Lied 

Final Girls is a 2017 thriller novel by Todd Ritter, writing under the penname Riley Sager.

Synopsis

Ten years ago, Quincy was a carefree college student who decided to join her friends in a camping vacation at Pinewood Cottage. The trip ended with a gruesome massacre, of which Quincy was the sole survivor. She was saved by Coop, the police officer who responded to the scene. Joe Hannen, an escaped mental patient who arrived at their camp, is blamed for the murders. The press dubs Quincy a "final girl,” comparing her to two other final girls; The first, Lisa, survived a sorority house massacre, and the second, Sam, was targeted by a serial killer known as the "Sack Man,” while working at a hotel. The media tried desperately to get the three women together for a television special, but Quincy refused. She is contacted by Lisa, and the two begin communicating with each other, albeit very infrequently. Lisa does not have a similar relationship with Sam. Years later, Quincy is barely holding herself together, as she finds it hard to trust anyone other than Coop and her boyfriend, Jeff. She is able to make a living of sorts via a cooking vlog but is unable to remember anything from the night of the massacre. Her fragile living situation is thrown into an upheaval when she learns that Lisa has killed herself, and Sam arrives at her home. Sam is determined to make Quincy remember what happened, as well as to come out of her shell, which puts Quincy on edge. She begins to question what actually happened that night, especially after Lisa's death is discovered to be a murder.

Quincy is attempting to live a normal life and move on from the murders that darkened her youth when she receives a visit from Coop, the officer that found her the night of the murders and has remained in touch since, who informs her that fellow Final Girl Lisa has died, purportedly from suicide. While Quincy struggles to handle the news, the other Final Girl of the trio Samantha Boyd shows up on her doorstep to discuss Lisa's demise. Though reluctant at first, and despite the disagreement from her boyfriend Jeff, Quincy eventually invites Sam to stay in her apartment. While visiting, Sam increasingly attempts to get Quincy to discuss the night at Pinewood Cottage, despite Quincy's assertation that she has no memory of most of the events that occurred. While during another visit by Coop, the three find out from an Indianapolis local cop that Lisa's death had been ruled a homicide instead of suicide, rattling both Quincy and Sam.

Though friendship forms between the two women first, eventually Sam's odd behavior begins to unsettle Quincy, who begins to question as to whether the other woman's motives are what she says. Quincy begins to look into Samantha Boyd, and the alias Tina Stone she claims to have used in order to stay off the radar. She makes contact with a sleezy journalist named Jonah who had requested comment from her previously, giving him Sam's alias in exchange for what information he had on her, only furthering Quincy's suspicions when she finds out Sam staged the paparazzi that caught their first meeting in order to rile Quincy. When Quincy finds out that Sam was likely in Indianapolis with Lisa before she died, she decides to take a trip to the deceased Final Girl's home to see if anything can be found to tie Sam to Lisa's death. While searching Lisa's closet, she finds three files with details on all three of the Final Girls; Lisa's own case, Sam's, and Quincy's. This, along with a phone conversation from her mother, leads Quincy to realize Sam had posed as Lisa in order to collect information on Quincy from different people involved with the case — Coop, her mother, and the original detectives that had investigated. Feeling certain now that Lisa had found out about Sam's duplicity, and Sam had killed her for it, Quincy returns home only to find Sam and Coop together in the guest room, seemingly about to sleep together.

Enraged, Quincy kicks Coop out and has a small confrontation with Sam, before leaving to talk to Coop at his motel. There, he confesses his longstanding love for Quincy, who gives in to his advances and the two make love. In the morning, riddled with guilt, Quincy reaches out to Jonah again when she receives word that he has new information. There, she discovers that Tina Stone is not in fact an alias, but Sam's true name, and that she had been impersonating Samantha Boyd the entire time in order to get close to Quincy. Tina was in the same mental hospital as Joe had been before his escape, at the same time. When she returns home to her apartment to confront Tina, she first takes a Xanax with her grape soda, a habit she's had since the massacre, only to realize the drink had been drugged. When she awakes, she's in a car with Tina, who's driven them to Pinewood Cottage. While Tina gets out of the car first, Quincy manages to shoot off a text to Coop claiming "Sam" had kidnapped her and taken her to Pinewood Cottage, before being pulled out of the car by Tina, who forces her inside the cabin despite her protests. Though originally refusing to confront the past, eventually Quincy's memories begin to return — her boyfriend Craig cheating on her with her best friend Janelle, sleeping with Joe Hannen in her rage and grief, stalking after Craig and Janelle with a knife only for Joe to stop her, leaving the knife in the forest and Janelle's later screams as she emerged from the woods, bloody and dying. Throughout the entire night, she never saw the face of the man wielding the knife. It's revealed that Joe was Tina's only friend in the asylum, where she had been abused and mistreated by the staff and other patients, and she was seeking the truth of what happened that night and justice for Joe's memory.

As Quincy begins to unravel her memories, she comes to the conclusion that Joe hadn't been the killer, but blamed by her traumatized memories after finding him with the dead body of one of her friends. Just at that moment, Coop breaks in the room and shoots Tina, seemingly dead. Quincy realizes Coop had been the killer all along, who admits to having psychopathic tendencies and an urge to kill, having been responsible for three other deaths in the area before the cabin massacre, as well as the deaths of Lisa and the original Samantha Boyd. Quincy momentarily fools him into believing she loves him before stabbing him to death with a pocket knife while he attempts to strangle her, and Tina is revealed to be alive still.

Months later, Quincy and Jeff have broken up after Quincy confessed everything to him, and Tina is being sent to prison for impersonation and an earlier assault on a drug addict. Quincy gets a SURVIVOR tattoo to match the one Tina has, before news breaks of a new massacre in California — nine people slaughtered, with only one teenage girl surviving. With the media already dubbing her a new Final Girl, Quincy flies out to California in order to meet her, and help her work through her trauma of becoming a Final Girl like Lisa had once tried to do for her.

Development

Ritter came up with the book's premise while watching Halloween on Halloween. He began to wonder what life would be like for a Final Girl years after the initial event, questioning "Do they think about it every day? Do they try to forget it? Can they ever truly trust anyone?". He briefly debated making it a YA novel, but decided against it.[1][2]

Release

Final Girls was released under the penname of Riley Sager,[3] a gender neutral name.[4] In later press coverage of the novel and author, media outlets noted that the official author website lacked an author photo and did not use gender pronouns when discussing Sager.[5] Ritter and his agent chose to do this because "since we were looking for a new publisher, one could argue that editors would be willing to go with someone who had a clean slate, rather than a critically acclaimed author with a spotty sales record."[6]

Final Girls was first published in hardback and ebook format on July 11, 2017, through Dutton.[7] An audiobook adaptation narrated by Erin Bennett was released simultaneously through Penguin Audio. The novel was released in paperback on January 23, 2018, also through Dutton.[8]

Reception

Final Girls received praise from Stephen King, who called it “the first great thriller of 2017" and compared it favorably to Gone Girl.[9] USA Today reviewed the book, stating that "It’s a page-turner with an intriguing premise, hampered only by bad writing and a general lack of literary merit."[10]

Awards

Adaptation

Plans for a film adaptation were announced in November 2017. Universal Pictures won the option rights for Final Girls and Nicole Clemens, Ashley Zalta, and Michael Sugar were attached as producers.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Feature Interviews - Last Man Standing: Meet the Guy Behind 'Final Girls'". Dark Scribe Magazine. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
  2. ↑ Biese, Alex (July 30, 2017). "'Final Girls' asks how horror movie characters move on with their lives". Asbury Park Press (Newspapers.com).
  3. ↑ Yawn, Mike (2017-07-07). "Mystery 'Final Girls' inspired by horror movies". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
  4. ↑ Gamerman, Ellen (2017-07-17). "These Male Authors Don't Mind if You Think They're Women". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
  5. ↑ "Forget George Eliot: now it's male authors disguising their sex to sell more books". the Guardian. 2017-07-18. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
  6. ↑ Gilbert, Sophie (2017-08-03). "Why Men Pretend to Be Women to Sell Thrillers". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-09-09.
  7. ↑ Sager, Riley (2017). Final girls : a novel. New York, New York. ISBN 978-1-101-98536-6. OCLC 960043526.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ↑ Sager, Riley (2017). Final girls : a novel. New York, New York. ISBN 978-1-101-98538-0. OCLC 1020856414.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. ↑ Kreizman, Maris (2022-05-24). "The Legacy of 'Gone Girl'". Esquire. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
  10. ↑ Cha, Steph. "'Final Girls' offers cheap thrills in bloody tale of murder". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
  11. ↑ "International Thriller Writers Announce 2018 Award Winners". MysteryTribune. 2018-07-16. Retrieved 2022-06-09.
  12. ↑ "Awards: ITW Thriller Winners; Taste Canada Finalists". Shelf Awareness. 2018-07-16. Retrieved 2022-06-09.
  13. ↑ Hipes, Patrick (2017-11-16). "Universal Books Rights To Riley Sager Thriller Novel 'Final Girls' For Anonymous Content & Sugar23". Deadline. Retrieved 2022-07-11.
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