Final Girls

It is very rare when a mystery/horror novel keeps me guessing right up until the end, but that is exactly what happened with Final Girls by Riley Sager. This is a psychological thriller rather than a horror novel, in much the same way Misery was.

Quincy, Sam, Coop, even Jeff are fully complete characters. Their actions are not unexpected considering their histories and there is no character I would consider a stereotype, even though this is a book about NOT being a stereotype in a most extreme way.

Because I was never sure what was going on and who I could trust, I got to feel a little of the anxiety of watching Quincy experienced throughout the book. I spent the entire story saying on page 23 "yeah, I trust Sam", by page 40 I was humming "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads every time Sam was on the page, and by page 62 swinging right back to feeling bad for Sam and convinced I was wrong. The anxiety levels were amped up by the fact that Quincy was an unreliable protagonist, because she blacked out the original killings and was clearly suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction, and a good dose of Pollyannaism brought about by a messed up family dynamic and good old fashioned case of PTSD when introduced in the beginning of the book.

This book definitely made an excellent summer read, but had enough "meat on the bone" to have made an excellent winter read also.