Final Girls is a Horror Slasher Masterpiece
I had been hunting down this book for a long time. I felt so dumb when I realized that it had been written by an author I already knew, and I couldn’t believe that this book was right under my nose the whole time when I went to Barnes & Noble on Saturday!
I heard so many great things about Final Girls by Riley Sager, and once I began reading this book, I became addicted to finish the book. We follow the story of a woman named Quincy Carpenter, who is considered to be a Final Girl. She was the only survivor from a serial killer who murdered all of her friends at Pine Cottage, when she was still in high school.
However, Quincy isn’t the only Final Girl that received this title. Two other girls named Samantha Boyd and Lisa Milner also survived brutal attacks and were deemed to be the only survivors. Much to the annoyance of Quincy, all three of them became famous for their horrible ordeals.
Quincy wanted to leave that part of her life behind, and move on with her new one. She erased that Final Girl image of herself, and started a baking business that made her a good income. She got with a public defender named Jeff, a good man who loves her for who she is, not the Final Girl image she was given.
She unfortunately has a terrible past with her mother, and they are no longer on good terms after the trauma their family experienced. Quincy’s struggle to survive all those years ago, including her father who lost his battle with cancer. Poor Quincy did not have it easy in life.
Then Quincy is thrown back into her Final Girl phase when she learns that Lisa Milner, the first Final Girl, had ended her own life.
Quincy is outraged by this discovery, when she meets up with Franklin Cooper, the cop who saved her all those years ago when she ran into him while the killer was chasing her. They had maintained their special bond, and ever since that day, Coop has looked after her.
While Quincy is hearing the unfortunate news of what happened with Lisa, she can’t help but feel a sort of attraction to Coop, since he was considered to be a ‘hot dude.’ Quincy shakes off this feeling during the conversation, because she knows that she is with a good guy, and she must face the fact that Lisa is now gone.
Quincy also blames herself for her death, because Lisa had sent her an email to her, right before she died.
This breaks Quincy upon hearing the news, since she truly believed that Lisa was stronger than her. Unfortunately, her traumatic past is what defeated Lisa in the end.
Just when Quincy doesn’t think that her life can’t get any worse, she stumbles upon a mystery woman who arrives at her apartment.
This stranger is Samantha Boyd, the second Final Girl.
Even though Quincy is hesitant to invite Sam to her apartment, she knows that they need to talk about Lisa. While Quincy and Sam are starting to bond, Quincy slowly realizes that Sam is bad news.
- Sam discovers that Quincy likes to steal things, making Quincy realize that she has a major problem with this sudden impulse. Sam urges her to continue stealing, and they have fun shoplifting.
- Quincy is convinced by Sam to go outside during the night in the park, knowing how dangerous it is for them to be out there. This leads to Quincy trying to save a woman from getting attacked, and she also beats a man to a pulp in a fit of rage from out of nowhere.
- Sam and Quincy are now caught in a dark secret kind of game, where they both know if either of them confesses about what happened to that man, they are both screwed.
- Quincy shows a dark side of herself to Sam, and at some point, she even pulls a knife on her during a fight.
Then when you think things for Quincy won’t get worse, she learns that Lisa was actually murdered.
This realization leads Quincy down a different path, and she decides to begin her own investigation to Sam’s real character. She learns that Sam had also crashed with Lisa before she was murdered, and that an investigation into Quincy’s past was done by Lisa.
Quincy visits Lisa’s home, where she meets a cop named Nancy, the person who saved Lisa on the night she became a Final Girl. While she offers to help Nancy clean out her house, since her family is getting ready for the funeral, she finds Lisa’s file on Quincy’s past.
When she digs through the file, she goes into a rage when she finds out that Lisa contacted her mother about her experience that night. She calls her mother to confront her about this, and she confesses to Quincy that Lisa was asking questions about what happened that night.
Quincy cannot remember a single thing about what happened, due to how traumatic it was for her. Then she asks her mother what did Lisa sound like. Once her mother tells her, Quincy realizes that it wasn’t Lisa who called her…it was Sam.
She decides to go back home and confront Sam, but when she arrives, she finds something unexpected.
Coop and Sam are about to make out when she arrives back home. She loses it with Coop, and confronts Sam, asking her if she killed Lisa. Sam leaves Quincy’s place, and Quincy goes crazy.
She decides to confront Coop about what happened, and he confesses to her that he is actually in love with her. Quincy freaks out, but her attraction to him is what leads to them having their ‘special night.’
Quincy wakes up the next day, and instantly regrets what she did. She officially lost her bond with Coop, and cheated on Jeff. She decides to go back home, and while she is drinking grape soda with a Xanax (this was Quincy’s way to make her stress go away) she finds out that the soda was drugged by Sam.
She wakes up back at Pine Cottage, and Sam makes her confront her past.
During the novel, we were given glimpses of what Quincy experienced that night with her high school friends. She was celebrating her best friend’s birthday, and she had gone with four of her friends, including Craig, the guy that had feelings for her.
The group runs into a stranger named Joe, and his car had broken down. Janelle, Quincy’s best friend, invites Joe to her birthday party, making the group a little uncomfortable. Quincy ends up having a good time that night, and she meets up with Craig for her ‘first time.’
It goes wrong, and Quincy cries when Craig rejects her. She runs into the woods later on, and finds Janelle and Craig together. Quincy has a break down, feeling betrayed. She runs back to Pine Cottage, and finds Joe alone. She decides to sleep with Joe instead, but her rage toward Janelle and Craig never went away.
She picks up a knife, and decides to go after her friends in the woods, where they are sleeping. She is convinced by Joe to not give in to her dark thoughts, and Quincy cries again, letting the knife slip from her fingers. Then her whole life changes for the worst when Quincy hears Janelle screaming in the woods.
Janelle runs outside, exposing her slit throat. She dies in Quincy’s arms, and then all hell breaks loose when the killer attacks Quincy next, stabbing her a few times before going after her friends. Quincy passes out from the pain, and when she comes to, she witnesses her other friends die, including Craig who attempted to leave his friends behind.
Quincy then runs into the woods to escape from the killer, that is actually Joe…but Quincy was wrong about who the real killer was.
We then learn that Sam is not Samantha Boyd.
Sam’s real name is Tina Stone. She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital when she murdered her stepdad for hurting her when she was young. Her family rejects her, because they never believed her. Despite this horrible outcome, Tina finds happiness with Joe, the same guy who was there that night during Quincy’s descent into a Final Girl.
They were in the hospital together, and they had become good friends before Joe was released from the hospital. Once Tina learned that Joe was blamed for the murders, she set out to clear his name. She disguises herself as Samantha Boyd, and visits Lisa and Quincy, to figure out why Quincy told the world that Joe was the killer.
She is able to finally get through to Quincy, when she tells Tina that she was starting to remember about what happened night.
Joe wasn’t the real killer…it was someone she formed a bond with.
When Tina had kidnapped Quincy, she had contacted Coop to come and save her. While Quincy is starting to remember, she realizes that she had run into the wrong person’s arms when she was being chased.
She had run into the killer’s arms, and he had killed Joe with his gun. At that moment, Tina is shot.
By Coop.
He greets Quincy, and she realizes that Coop is the killer.
What a plot twist, huh?
Coop confesses to Quincy that he knew that something was ‘wrong with him.’ He had killed other people out in those woods, and the murders remained unsolved for a long time…until now. He tells Quincy that he had murdered her friends, because his urge to kill came back.
He was a cop that was working for the same psychiatric hospital where Joe and Tina were admitted. Before he began his murder spree, he saw Quincy holding the knife, going after her friends before Joe stopped her. He fell in love with her at that moment, and he decides to spare only her.
He had felt special, when Quincy chose him over Joe. Since Coop was in his cop uniform, she had assumed he was there to save her, but she failed to notice the blood on his outfit. And when she hugged him, it was easy for Coop to get away with the murders, because she was covered in the blood of her friends.
And then he admits to Quincy that he had slept with all three final girls.
This part bothered me, because he felt proud of doing this. He had grown curious about the other Final Girls, and decided to meet up with them. He tells Quincy that the real Samantha Boyd is dead, he had killed her, because he had grown annoyed with her. He had to kill Lisa too, to protect Quincy.
While Quincy is freaking out, she feels Tina pass her a knife, that Coop does not see. He leans over to kiss Quincy, while grabbing onto her neck. He murmured I love you to her over and over, and it makes me wonder if he was going to kill her here.
Coop was one sick bastard, so I couldn’t figure that part out. And let’s not forget that Quincy was in high school when he fell in love with her…that is just…messed up.
Quincy uses the knife that Tina gave her to kill Coop, ending the bastard that destroyed her life. After she kills Coop, she now considers herself a Final Girl.
Quincy starts over with her life after she defeats the real killer.
She forgives her mother, and they fix their relationship. She ends her relationship with Jeff, confessing that she cheated on him with the killer. She knows that she wasn’t perfect for him, and decides to move on.
Quincy continues her friendship with Tina, and she was shocked when Tina decided to confess for the crime of beating up the man. She told Quincy that she didn’t care, because she got to clear Joe’s name.
It is hinted that Quincy and Tina will most likely remain friends or fall apart, but their respect for each other will never go away.
The novel ends with Quincy hearing about a new Final Girl. She finds the girl in the hospital when she sneaks in, and she offers to help the girl learn how to become a Final Girl. Quincy will now take the mantel that Lisa once had, to mentor the next Final Girl.
This is quite a horror story, huh?
I loved how original this tale was. Having final girls getting hunted down by some asshole, all because he got obsessed with one of them. It really felt like your typical horror trope when it comes to slasher movies. The killer always gets obsessed with the Final Girl in the sequels, all because she was the one that got away.
I thought this novel was perfect, and the twist was beyond unexpected. There was never a single hint that Coop is the killer, and when I go back to read this book again, (yes, I love to re — read my books) I’m going to find his interactions with Quincy ten times creepier.
Coop was one of the scariest villains in slasher history. Dude was terrifying and creepy as hell!
Comments
Post a Comment