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I hated this book so much that I looked up Sager's other pen name to make sure I didn't accidentally read anything else by him.
The premise is that three women are the sole survivors of massacres, the media calls them "Final Girls," and then someone starts killing them...
The Final Girls were all the sole survivors of unrelated massacres. Considering how many massacres happen in the US, I'm not sure that would be enough to make them still famous ten years later (or that there wouldn't be a lot more Final Girls) but that wouldn't bother me if the book was generally satisfying. Be that as it may, the Final Girls are a media creation, not friends. Linda embraced the label and wrote a book about empowerment, Sam dropped off the grid, and Quincy, who hates being called a Final Girl, had one phone call with Linda and never met Sam.
Ten years ago, Quincy survived the massacre of a bunch of her friends on a camping trip in college, including her best friend. The story of the massacre (95% of it is lead-up) is intercut with her present-day life. Both timelines are boring and annoying. All we know about the massacre in the present day is that she ran screaming through the woods, was found by a cop who shot the pursuing slasher dead, and two other cops found it very very suspicious that Quincy was the lone survivor when everyone else was killed, she claims to have no memory of the massacre itself, and her wounds, though serious, were not life-threatening.
Right off the bat, this makes no sense. It's common for a massacre to involve many people killed and some or one not hurt at all; that shouldn't make them a suspect. Traumatic amnesia is also common. Quincy is a young white woman so there's an additional reason not to suspect her. Finally, if Quincy was the real slasher, then shouldn't the cops be trying to figure out who the dude who got shot was and why he was chasing Quincy with a knife?
Meanwhile, Quincy now has a baking blog and a fiance, compulsively shoplifts, and takes Xanax washed down with grape juice as is repeated a bazillion times. She's still in touch with Coop, the hot cop who rescued her. When Linda commits suicide, Quincy gets caught up in a media frenzy, and Sam shows up on Quincy's doorstep insisting that Linda was murdered.
Quincy makes absolutely no sense as a character because we're supposed to be in doubt as to whether she is the real murderer, so sometimes she acts like a violent psycho and sometimes she seems like a regular traumatized person, and she makes random, contradictory choices. Two-thirds of the book is her having repetitive conversations with the same three people while baking and/or popping Xanax, and then there's a flurry of utterly nonsensical twists.
There's tons of talk about what it means to be a Final Girl and whether Final Girls should stick together, but none of it is insightful or comes to more than "being a Final Girl means that you survived"/"actually us Final Girls have nothing in common."
I thought the book would be some kind of revisionist take on the Final Girl trope, and it's instead every misogynist stereotype from every bad slasher flick, only revised so it disappears up its own ass in a flurry of frantic handwaving and incoherence.
Also, THERE IS EXACTLY ONE SLASHING SCENE. It's like one percent of the novel's total verbiage. The heroine washing down Xanax with grape juice is probably four percent. I felt so cheated.
( Spoilers make zero sense and are also extremely skeevy. )
Final Girls: A Novel
The premise is that three women are the sole survivors of massacres, the media calls them "Final Girls," and then someone starts killing them...
The Final Girls were all the sole survivors of unrelated massacres. Considering how many massacres happen in the US, I'm not sure that would be enough to make them still famous ten years later (or that there wouldn't be a lot more Final Girls) but that wouldn't bother me if the book was generally satisfying. Be that as it may, the Final Girls are a media creation, not friends. Linda embraced the label and wrote a book about empowerment, Sam dropped off the grid, and Quincy, who hates being called a Final Girl, had one phone call with Linda and never met Sam.
Ten years ago, Quincy survived the massacre of a bunch of her friends on a camping trip in college, including her best friend. The story of the massacre (95% of it is lead-up) is intercut with her present-day life. Both timelines are boring and annoying. All we know about the massacre in the present day is that she ran screaming through the woods, was found by a cop who shot the pursuing slasher dead, and two other cops found it very very suspicious that Quincy was the lone survivor when everyone else was killed, she claims to have no memory of the massacre itself, and her wounds, though serious, were not life-threatening.
Right off the bat, this makes no sense. It's common for a massacre to involve many people killed and some or one not hurt at all; that shouldn't make them a suspect. Traumatic amnesia is also common. Quincy is a young white woman so there's an additional reason not to suspect her. Finally, if Quincy was the real slasher, then shouldn't the cops be trying to figure out who the dude who got shot was and why he was chasing Quincy with a knife?
Meanwhile, Quincy now has a baking blog and a fiance, compulsively shoplifts, and takes Xanax washed down with grape juice as is repeated a bazillion times. She's still in touch with Coop, the hot cop who rescued her. When Linda commits suicide, Quincy gets caught up in a media frenzy, and Sam shows up on Quincy's doorstep insisting that Linda was murdered.
Quincy makes absolutely no sense as a character because we're supposed to be in doubt as to whether she is the real murderer, so sometimes she acts like a violent psycho and sometimes she seems like a regular traumatized person, and she makes random, contradictory choices. Two-thirds of the book is her having repetitive conversations with the same three people while baking and/or popping Xanax, and then there's a flurry of utterly nonsensical twists.
There's tons of talk about what it means to be a Final Girl and whether Final Girls should stick together, but none of it is insightful or comes to more than "being a Final Girl means that you survived"/"actually us Final Girls have nothing in common."
I thought the book would be some kind of revisionist take on the Final Girl trope, and it's instead every misogynist stereotype from every bad slasher flick, only revised so it disappears up its own ass in a flurry of frantic handwaving and incoherence.
Also, THERE IS EXACTLY ONE SLASHING SCENE. It's like one percent of the novel's total verbiage. The heroine washing down Xanax with grape juice is probably four percent. I felt so cheated.
( Spoilers make zero sense and are also extremely skeevy. )
Final Girls: A Novel
