Finally a Book I Could Attach Myself To…

Quincy Carpenter is a Final Girl.

If you watch horror or slasher movies, you know that the Final Girl is the one who manages to survive against the odds while all of her friends die horrific deaths.  Quincy became one after all of her friends were slaughtered on what should’ve been a fun break from college at a mountain house in the Poconos.  Ten years later, Quincy has stayed out of the public eye, fallen in love and achieved success as a baker.  The almost anonymity disappears when one of the other two final girls from the past 15 years dies in an apparent suicide.  Quincy is thrust back into the spotlight unwillingly and begins to lose her equilibrium.  When the other final girl  Samantha shows up on her doorstep, Quincy is made to face even more feelings and memories that she has repressed.

Why has Samantha reemerged from the shadows after disappearing for almost ten years?  Why would Lisa kill herself in the bathtub after being so strong and such an advocate to these other two?  Quincy needs to answer these questions as she justifies who Samantha is and what she brings out in Quincy.  Blocking out her boyfriend Jeff, she reaches out to the police officer who saved her life those many years ago Coop is one who admires her strength and courage but can see that simmering underneath the serene exterior, something dark is bubbling up to the surface.  When it’s determined that Lisa’s death is not suicide, Quincy and Samantha no longer feel safe.

I had fun reading the book. I’ve been struggling so hard to find something that would interest me and each book that I’ve purchased or borrowed from the library I was really struggling to finish (or even start). Not so with this book, it hooked me pretty quickly. There are red herrings galore and while I figured that I had figured it out, I wasn’t 100% sure.  I thought the flashbacks to the event that made Quincy a final girl was really, really compelling and I kept finding myself wanting to read more from that period.  The author, Riley Sager creates a sympathetic and unstable character that threw me off a bit to the point where I wasn’t sure who to point the finger at?  Erratic Samantha, gone for so long?  Quincy? Was she a Final Girl because she hated her best friend? Jeff, her boyfriend?  He was in Indiana during the time frame of Lisa’s death.  Could it be someone else?