Final Girls by Riley Sager

Hello Beautiful People! Welcome back to another Baddie Book Review glad to have you here! For this review, I got into Final Girls by Riley Sager.

Final Girls by Riley Sager is exactly what you think it is and follows the classic horror theme of the Final Girl story. However, it has a twist in which it follows three separate final girls years after their ordeals and how they all connect to each other. So let’s get into it!

Main Character:

• Quincy Carpenter: The main character in the novel and the main final girl whose current story we follow in the book, Quincy is haunted by her past and can’t seem to outrun her sensational story when one of the other final girls is found dead
• Samantha Boyd: One of the other three final girls we follow in this story, when final girl Lisa is found dead Sam goes to find Quincy
• Lisa Milner: The first final girl, had reached out to Sam and Quincy when they went through their ordeals, seemed like a strong person who worked hard to overcome her past so her death comes as a shock to many.
• Frank Cooper: Had found Quincy on the night her friends were murdered, and became an instrumental role in Quincy’s life as she healed, as a support
• Jeff: Quincys boyfriend, knows about Quincy’s past and the two seem to have a strong relationship together

Some warnings for future readers:

• Has descriptions of murder
• Discusses suicide

My Review

I am a horror movie lover, so the final girl theme is a classic one that I know well. I loved the different take on the classic theme in which we focus more on the afterlives of the final girls than the mass murder event itself. I gave Final Girls by Riley Sager an 8.5/10 review. My favourite thing about this book was how much it kept me guessing, and the major twist at the end. I will say I had a totally different idea of how the book would end and when the ending was exposed I was floored. I was lowkey a little mad at myself for not guessing it but I mean hey then it must have been a good one for me to not have seen it coming.

There were parts to the book that were a bit slow and dragged on a bit, but as I finished the book I realized that a lot of those parts were integral in the book to opening up another part of the story. Another thing I found strange was that it starts to come to light that the calm, cool, and collected, person that Quincy tries to present herself as isn’t really there. I wish there was a bit more backstory into some of Quincy’s emotions and why she is the way she is. Quincy’s event was that as a college student, she and her friends spent a weekend out at a cabin. In Jason Vorhees’s style, their weekend getaway is ruined when a crazed man murders the group of friends. Quincy is the only one to survive. Even when we get a look into the past it’s clear that Quincy’s emotions are unstable and again I just wish there was more of an explanation for why that is. I guess as the reader we can maybe guess it has something to do with her mother (she’s kind of nutty) but we also get the impression that her mother wasn’t really like this before Quincy went to Pine Cottage and her father also passed away not long after. So in that sense, it doesn’t seem like her family life has anything to do with it so maybe it’s like a mental health thing, but again that’s why I am interested to know.

I liked that the book was split up into perspectives from the present and perspectives from the past when Quincy and her friends were at Pine Cottage. A part of me though did wish that we got more of a look at the past because I did really enjoy those parts. Even though Sam and Lisa were smaller characters in the book specifically Lisa being the smallest, I also wished we got a perspective of what they went through. This may have been strategic though by Riley because if we saw what went on with the other characters we as the reader may have noticed more early on that something was off with Quincy’s experience.

I enjoyed the idea that what brings the final girls together is the death of one of them. When Lisa passes Sam goes looking for Quincy and the two bond over their experiences. Ultimately though Sam brings out this part of Quincy that she hasn’t given light to in many years and in a way it kind of reverts her back to her young adult self trying to figure out the world. Things with both Quincy and Sam aren’t what they seem to be and when it’s brought to light that Lisa’s death wasn’t the initial suicide it’s present as Sam and Quincy get thrust back into the media spotlight. I’ll also add that while I defiantly didn’t guess the ending there were some parts to the book that were a bit predictable. I don’t think it has anything to do with the author’s writing it more has to do with the fact that the final girl troupe has been presented so many times that some things that happen within this theme just become a bit predictable.

I think all in all the strong characters, and their dynamics with one another are what really pulled this story together. It was honestly such a fun read and I felt like I was reading a movie in book form. I will say though that this book is very centered on female violence but it was nice to see how the reiliency, and strength of the chracters was the main focus in terms of their experience with the violence.

Summary and Commentary

***Please be aware this section will have spoilers***

The book starts off with a perspective from Pine Cottage which is in the past in this book. At Pine Cottage we essentially get a look at the end of the massacre and Quincy being the only survivor. The first chapter starts off in the present with Quincy. We learn that she is a private baker, and her boyfriend Jeff is a lawyer. The two seem to have a sweet relationship, and my guess is Riley started it off in this way because this was the perfect picture of how normal Quincy tried to present herself to be despite all she had been through. Quincy gets a message from someone named Coop (what she called Frank Cooper) saying he needs to see her. Based on Quincy’s reaction to him reaching out we get the idea that she enjoys seeing him but it also induces a bit of anxiety.

Along with that, they don’t see each other super often so if he’s coming to talk with her it must be about something important. We then learn that the night that Quincy’s friends were murdered at Pine Cottage one of the main reasons she survived was because of Coop saving her before the murder could get to her. Coop is a police officer and was out in the woods that day looking for a patient who had escaped from a nearby mental hospital and found that the patient had already found the cabin full of young adults. It’s also clear that Coop played a large role in why Quincy was able to overcome that night. Quincy had been stabbed multiple times and was close to death when Coop found her. When everyone wanted her to relay the story of what happened at the cabin to them Quincy’s memory failed her. It’s assumed her memory’s regressed due to the trauma, but her lack of memory caused her a lot of scrutiny.

The reason Coop has come to talk with Quincy is because Lisa Milner has died, and he wanted to let her know before the press found out. Lisa had been in a mass murder situation in which she was the only one who survived when a madman killed everyone in her sorority house. This had happened when Quincy was a young child so she was aware of who Lisa was well before Pine Cottage. Coop informs her that she killed herself and this is a shock for Quincy as Lisa was instrumental in why Quincy was able to overcome her experience. Lisa had always seemed strong so suicide was odd considering all she had been through. The reason this is a big deal for Quincy is that herself, Lisa and another woman who has survived a mass murder were all pinned by the media as ‘The Final Girls’ and with Lisa’s death that means attention will be on Quincy. Quincy just brushes this off though and presents that she will just ignore it all. The other final girl in the group Sam Boyd is off the grid so that means even more attention will be on her to sort of be the representative of the group. The attention Quincy got after the experience was very negative and she received even a threatening letter, Coop worries that this will cause things like this to start again.

It’s clear that the relationship between Coop and Quincy is odd, and there is clearly some kind of sexual tension there. Coop has always kept things professional with Quincy and this seems to piss her off a little bit. We also find out that since Pine Cottage Quincy has had an affinity for low-risk thefts and so we get a first look that this perfect exterior that Quincy tries to show may not be as accurate as it seems. It’s clear that Quincy has never been great at handling media attention, and Lisa was the one who presented to her that she’s the only one who can control her own narrative. While Lisa and Quincy weren’t very close it’s clear that Lisa was the one who mentored Quincy when she finally was well enough to speak for herself. Quincy acknowledges to herself that she finds Lisa’s death suspicious. Odd she would kill herself by slitting her wrists considering her past. Further, it was just odd that she would kill herself in general.

We get another look at the past at Pine Cottage but it’s now much earlier than the look we got before. We find out that Quincy and her friends are all there for her best friend Janelle’s birthday. Janelle and Quincy have the classic BFF dynamic in which Quincy is the smaller quieter one, and Janelle is the out-there extrovert. The weekend is a big deal for Quincy because it seems like this will be the night she will lose her virginity to her boyfriend Craig. Classic. Quincy isn’t in any rush to do it but it’s clear Janelle is pushing her to do it. Back in the present, we get a look at Quincy and Jeff’s relationship. It’s clear that he walks on eggshells with her a bit but the two constantly try to press that everything is fine and nothing is wrong. That night when Quincy checks her emails she finds that Lisa had sent her an email not long before she died. The email was a desperate message asking for Quincy to contact her as she needed to speak with her about something. Quincy questions why she would have reached out to her before she committed suicide. I also wondered why Quincy kept this email to herself and didn’t send it to the police or anything, seemed weird to me considering how odd the email was.

 It’s also exposed early on in the book that Quincy has an addiction and dependency on Xanax and whenever she gets stressed or upset she pops one. I think this is further a representation of how she tries to present herself as perfect but interiorly she’s struggling majorly. Soon after Lisa’s passing Quincy’s is swarmed with reporters wanting her comment. Desperate to escape the chaos she leaves her apartment for the evening. When she returns someone is watching her oddly from the other side of her building, but it’s not a reporter. It’s Samantha Boyd. Samantha is the ‘middle’ final girl. After a mass murder at a motel she worked at where she was the only one to survive, Sam eventually went off the grid and no one could find her, and since she never did interviews with her face in them she was able to successfully do this for a while. Now here she was at Quincy’s place wanting to talk with her about Lisa. It seemed odd to me for sure. Sam comes up to Quincy’s place and the two talk. Sam questions Quincy and the way she denies her past. Sam seems to be pushing her to accept what happened to her and I wondered why that would be. Maybe she just wanted Quincy to feel as bad as she does. Sam keeps bringing up Pine Cottage despite Quincy’s dodges to answer any questions about it. It turns out that both women though feel a lot of guilt for Lisa’s death since she often tried to talk and connect with the two of them, and they wouldn’t ever respond back to her. This seems to be Sam’s main reason for wanting to connect with Quincy.

When Quincy’s boyfriend Jeff gets home and sees Sam with Quincy in their apartment he’s initially kind of standoffish and weird with Sam. I wondered why he was being like this but I quickly realised why. He wants Quincy to forget her past and move on, and Sam damages that. I can’t see any other reason for him to be so weirdly rude to her from the jump. He also seems to think Sam has some kind of motive like money, but I instantly thought that was stupid. I mean, to be honest, that is a very manly thing to think, that a traumatized woman would seek out another traumatized woman for financial gain, and not emotional or mental gain. Quincy is ticked with Jeff because Sam’s arrival has made her notice how lonely she has been hiding from what has happened to her. It’s made her isolate herself to avoid the past, but in turn, it’s just hurt her further. She feels like Jeff is trying to run out of her opportunity to have someone to relate to, which I mean I also think so. As Quincy and Jeff are fighting Sam slips out. Later that night Quincy gets a call from Sam and she’s in the cells, and needs Quincy’s help to get out. Sam tried to step in the middle of a domestic violence situation, hit a police officer in the process, and in turn got arrested. Quincy and Jeff go down to get her out. Jeff helps get Sam out by using her past as an explanation for her response to the situation. Quincy is pissed at him for doing this, but a part of me gets why he did. I mean don’t get me wrong her past isn’t an excuse to hit a cop but her trauma does explain her response to her fight or flight situations. I do get why Quincy was pissed though. They bring Sam back to their apartment and Quincy offers to let her stay, Jeff isn’t happy but goes along with what Quincy wants.

At the police station, Quincy finds out that Sam changed her name after her ordeal to Tina Stone and that’s why she was so hard to find. This did make me a bit suspicious. I started to wonder if this really was Sam since a lot of people didn’t know what she looked like, but she also knew things about Lisa and Quincy that only the real Sam would so I didn’t think too much of it. That night Sam convinces Quincy to get drunk with her. Sam keeps trying to get Quincy to talk about Pine Cottage and I wondered why she was pushing it so much. Sam really wants Quincy to say the name of the guy who killed all her friends and tried to kill her. Quincy hasn’t said his name since it happened but Sam keeps pushing her to say it. I just kept wondering why this was. Quincy seems to question this also.

We get a perspective from Pine Cottage in the past. Quincy is very different from her friends. They are all very crass and extroverted, whereas she seems more shy and reserved than the rest of the bunch. Quincy’s friend Janelle continues to push Quincy about losing her virginity to her boyfriend Craig, but it’s clear she still isn’t all into the idea and feels like she has to do it more so than anything. As the group gets settled at the cabin a lone stranger shows up out of the blue obviously freaking the group out. The stranger is Joe Hannen and tells the group that his car broke down and this was the first place he noticed that had life. Instead of offering him help, Janelle tells him to come in and party with them. I already was assuming that Joe would be the one to murder the group, but it was such an eye roll when Janelle invited him in. Classic horror trope to make dumb decisions while in the woods like inviting random strangers in.

Back in the present with Quincy the next morning, Sam is apologetic for trying to push her. The two make up, but then Quincy notices that Sam has broken into her secret drawer. In the drawer is where she hides her sticky finger findings. It’s essentially the representation that Quincy isn’t as normal as she presents to be. Now that Sam’s exposed it Quincy’s vulnerabilities are more conscious. Sam’s all pumped about it though because she finally is seeing Quincy get angry, showing some grit. I am not sure what the point of this would be but to maybe show Quincy that she’s stronger than she thinks. Sam convinces Quincy to come to the mall with her to steal stuff, and I thought that Quincy was maybe starting to lose it. Or her mask was just starting to crumble. While out taking a five-finger discount Quincy sees that she and Sam are on the front page of the paper. Someone had taken a photo of them outside of her apartment. My instant thing was that it wasn’t great that Quincy’s place was exposed, and as it turns out Quincy was very angry about that too. Enough to go and challenge the reporter who put the story up. Jonah Thompson the reporter is well known to Quincy as he constantly asks her for a story. When Quincy goes to talk to him jacked up on Xanax’s she ends up throwing up all over him. I thought this was pretty decent payback for him doxing her.

When Jeff comes to pick her up as she’s too sick to drive she shares that he and Sam had a good talk. He’s starting to see how Sam may be good for her, and he wouldn’t mind if she stayed around a bit longer. I thought this was an odd switch-up, but I was excited to see more from Sam. Coop reaches out to Quincy to question why she didn’t let him know that Sam had resurfaced. Quincy doesn’t know why she didn’t either since he’s usually her confidant. Coop wants to meet Sam so he can make sure she’s safe to be around. I started to think it was weird how protective Coop was of Quincy. I mean I know he was the one who found her but it seemed like the protectiveness was more than something a good friend would do. Quincy arranges for the three to have lunch together the next day once Coop has travelled their way. That night Quincy talks to Sam about meeting Coop and she’s down. Sam convinces Quincy to come to Central Park with her. I instantly knew they were going to get into some type of trouble. Look I’m a Canadian but even I know you don’t walk through Central Park late at night unless you want to find issues.

It quickly becomes clear though why Sam has brought her there, and it’s to look for trouble. Sam sees a young woman walking alone being followed by a man, and goes after the man. Some type of vigilantly type thing. I mean a part of me got how this would be a trauma response to what she went through, the desire to have the control back in her hands. This did make me worry though because the two walked away from the altercation with a few scratches. The adrenaline rush and confidence that would come with doing something like this and then getting away with it made me worry they would do this again. The next day the two go to meet Coop for lunch. Coop acts differently around Sam than he does Quincy. With Quincy he’s protective and hard, with Sam he’s flirty and soft. Quincy notices this as well and gets quite jealous. I knew that she had feelings for Coop, so I was glad to finally get some confirmation on that. This makes things a bit weird between Sam and Quincy, as Quincy seems to judge her for Coop being more affectionate towards her. When the three go back to Quincy’s place her apartment is swarmed with reporters. Quincy refuses to let them take her safe space and instead of running away goes inside. It turns out though that they aren’t there because of the new friendship of Sam and Quincy, but they are there because of the broken news that Lisa did not kill herself but was murdered.

After an autopsy was done on Lisa it was found that she had a large amount of tranquilizing drugs in her system. Along with that with further investigation of her apartment, it was clear she was not alone in her home that night. The drugs in her system couldn’t be found in her apartment, so it was clear someone else brought them there. It was also found in the traces of her wine glass that that’s how the drug got into her system. It starts to dawn on Quincy that Lisa must have reached out to her not long before she was killed, she must have known that something was going to happen to her. Coop calls Nancy who was a police officer that helped Lisa the night of her mass murder, the two had been close since that time. Nancy was instrumental in exposing the murder as she never thought Lisa killed herself. She shares with Coop, Quincy and Sam, that she doesn’t have much to run on as to who would have done this to Lisa. Quincy worries about her own safety thinking it may be someone coming after the final girls. That’s when Quincy drops the info about the email. Of course, it’s a shock to everyone and why she didn’t say anything comes into question. Coop doesn’t think that she should worry though and that the email probably wasn’t a warning.

The news about Lisa has Quincy all worked up, and she’s still pissed about Coop. What I worried would happen is exactly what did. Quincy wants to get her anger out, so what does she do? Goes to grab Sam late at night to go to Central Park. Ugh with Quincy being as mad as she is this isn’t going to go well. Quincy and Sam make a plan, Quincy is going to walk by herself as bait while Sam waits in the shadows as a backup. A homeless man comes up to her and asks for money. To me, he seemed harmless, but Quincy instantly sees him as a bad guy with bad intentions. When he calls Quincy a bitch for not giving him money for food she attacks him. She then proceeds to beat the crap out of this man. And where the hell is Sam? I was so mad when she didn’t step in to stop this. Quincy is covered in the man’s blood, and it’s clear he’s dead or close to it. Just as Quincy almost takes his life Sam swoops in to stop her and to get her away from the scene. The way that Sam covered their tracks made it seem like this wasn’t her first time cleaning up after a scene like this. However what they did forget? The bag they left in the park that they were using for further bait. Big rookie move. I’ll be honest I kinda hated this part. I understood it would probably be important at some point in the story but I just hated that Quincy was now a murderer or almost one. Once Quincy notices they left the purse she panics, and decides to go back to the park to get it. However, when she goes back the police have already beaten her there. She won’t be getting the purse back. In her moment of panic, Quincy does what she’s good at and plans to join Jeff on a work trip in the hopes of escaping what she’s done. However, before she jets off she gets a call from a detective. I knew she and Sam were going to get caught, there was no way they don’t. Of course, they panic but set a plan in place as to what to say to the detectives.

Back in the past, it was two days after the Pine Cottage murders. Quincy is being interviewed by detectives. They feel like Quincy played a role in the murders since she was the only one to survive. They also question why she seems to not be able to remember anything once the murders started, which seems convenient. Essentially it’s just clear that Quincy was always suspected of having something to do with it all. After seeing what she did in the park I started to wonder about it to honestly. Back in the present Quincy and Sam are at the station. Their lie is honestly terrible and it’s clear they are under suspicion. It’s also exposed to Quincy that Sam has been in more trouble than just the night she and Jeff got her out. She doesn’t get much for details though as to what she did but based on how Sam was in the park I was sure she definitely has been up to more. Due to lack of evidence other than the purse pinning them to the death they are let go but it’s clear the police suspect that they played a role. Now knowing that Sam has a more colourful record than she knew, Quincy questions if she may have played a role in what happened to Lisa. Personally, I felt like this was far-fetched but with the way she helped Quincy clean up her mess, it begs the question if she’s been used to cleaning up her own. Quincy tries to talk with Sam about what she was doing before she came to her, and Sam becomes pretty defensive. She essentially says that she has dirt over Quincy so it’s in her best interest to not ask too many questions. I wondered if that was why she pushed Quincy to do this all along, so she would have something to hold over her, but why?

When Quincy talked with Jonah (when she threw up on him) he mentioned to her that Sam was lying to her. She initially just passed it off because she thought he was maybe trying to get a story from her, but now she questions why he thinks that. She reaches out to him telling him to meet her. When they meet Jonah exposes that Sam had reached out to him and told him about the photo op in infront of Quincy’s home. I wondered why the hell she would do that. In exchange for that info, Quincy gives Jonah Sam’s real but fake name and he says he will look into it and let her know. Of course, Quincy is pissed as Sam and heads off to question her. Sam tries to explain to her why she does it but Quincy becomes too angry to handle and she starts to throw and break things. Sam tells her that she did it because she wants Quincy to wake up and remember the past, to stop hiding. I am not sure why she thought that would do it through… or why she cared? It escalates to the point where Quincy threatens Sam with a knife. She calms down and drops the knife, but this makes me start to question what kind of person Quincy actually is.

The police come to Quincy’s place to talk with her and it’s exposed that witnesses saw them in the park that night. No one saw them during the altercation but the witnesses were helping to place them in the park around the time it happened. It’s also exposed that the man Quincy attacked isn’t dead yet, just in a coma close to death. The detective exposes that if he dies they are coming after them hard. I appreciated that the police were putting this effort in for a homeless man, sometimes they slip through the cracks but I was happy he was getting the attention he deserved. With all of this going on Quincy leaves for Jeff’s business trip with him, leaving Sam alone in their place. Quincy seems to be afraid of Sam but if I am being honest it felt like to me that people should be scared of her. It becomes clear though that Quincy has alternative motives for going with Jeff, it’s that Lisa’s home is closer to where they are traveling than her home, and she plans to go there. I wasn’t sure what being at Lisa’s home would tell her about Sam but maybe she could get some good info. When Quincy goes to her home it turns out that Nancy has been going there to pack up her things, and Quincy runs into her. Quincy offers to help her pack to snoop in Lisa’s home. She finds in Lisa’s room different files dedicated to her and Sam. Sam’s, it references some connection to a mental health facility, one that is located by the cabin Quincy and her friends were in. I wondered if she maybe spent time there and that was why she was off the grid. In Quincy’s file, she finds the threatening letter she received after Pine Cottage and questions how Lisa got access to it. She thinks as well that Sam probably saw Quincy’s file and that’s how she knew where to find her. Quincy steals the file dedicated to her as she hears Nancy coming in hopes that it will have more info that she needs.

As Quincy looks in the file it turns out Lisa was speaking with the lead detectives on the case, Coop, and her mother for info as to how Quincy was doing. Due to her tough relationship with her mother Quincy is instantly angry that her mom talked with Lisa and never told her so calls to ask her for details. Turns out that through Quincy’s question to her mother, it was Sam she was speaking to on the phone and not Lisa. This means that Sam was with Lisa for much longer than even Quincy could have assumed. This also meant that Sam wanted info on Pine Cottage for some reason. Quincy’s head is swimming with whys and she decides she has to go back home to question Sam. I instantly thought this was a bad idea for her to go back without Jeff something was for sure going to happen. Back in the past at Pine Cottage, we started to see how things escalated that night. Quincy is with her boyfriend Craig who is quite intoxicated. He becomes increasingly aggressive with Quincy trying to get her to sleep with him, but the intenseness freaks her out so she stops it. Craig becomes frustrated with her for not sleeping with him and eventually leaves the room they are in. Quincy is a mess over it. Brokenhearted over Craig Quincy goes looking for Janelle. What she didn’t expect to find was Janelle and Craig doing the dirty. What a terrible friend. Of course, this is a shock to Quincy her best friend and her boyfriend, but she doesn’t let them know she’s seeing them. I mean look if it was me I would have started screaming and freaking out, she stays calmer than one would expect. I started to wonder if this was maybe what set Quincy off to hurt her friends if she really did do it?

Back in the present when Quincy arrives back at the apartment she finds Sam and Coop in Sam’s room. It’s clear the two are getting freaky but Quincy just walks in on them kissing, nothing crazy. Knowing how much a hug between Sam and Coop upset her I knew this wouldn’t be pretty. Sam explains that she thought she could get Coop to help them. Apparently, while Quincy was away the detectives came back and weren’t happy that she had left, she thought if she got Coop on their side he might be able to help when shit hits the fam. But why would sleeping with him do that? I mean he would go to bat for Quincy no matter what so I questioned that this was Sam’s real motive. Quincy questions Sam on Lisa’s and she admits that she was there. However, it doesn’t seem like Quincy gets the real story. Sam tells her that she didn’t kill Lisa but Quincy clearly doesn’t believe her. Coop leaves the apartment quickly after Quincy catches him and Sam so she goes to his hotel to talk with him. Coop ends up confessing his love for Quincy and I was pumped because I knew it! I questioned why though if he loved her would he have been fine sleeping with Sam? I mean maybe he knew him and Quincy had no chance so he just never entertained it. Then they do what we all suspected and they sleep together. I just felt bad for Jeff honestly, and I knew this would ruin Quincy and Coop’s relationship. Quincy wakes up and feels a lot of guilt for what’s happened. It’s clear Coop does too as he leaves her a note saying they probably shouldn’t speak for a while, but if they loved each other why were they so unwilling to peruse it? Seemed odd to me.

Back in the past at Pine Cottage Quincy is boiling mad about Janelle and Craig. When Quincy goes back to her and Craig’s room she finds Joe the stranger in there. He claims he didn’t know where to sleep and would leave. Quincy ends up spilling to him about Janelle and Craig. Then unexpectedly Joe and Quincy have sex. I knew that she was doing this out of anger and would regret it, but I wondered if the thing Quincy had been hiding was that she slept with the person who killed her friends. After Joe falls asleep Quincy gets up, still thinking about Craig and Janelle. Quincy’s anger is so great that she ends up grabbing a knife, and plans to go find the two. So clearly when she pulled a knife on Sam that wasn’t her first time doing that either. A part of me questioned if Quincy really did do it through. I mean it was seeming that way but the idea that a young woman could kill three women and three men by herself is odd. I still wasn’t 100% convinced she did it. As Quincy wielding the knife goes to look for Craig and Janelle Joe stops her. This surprised me because he told her that it wouldn’t help anything, and that revenge that way only hurts her more. This surprised me because… isn’t he supposed to be the killer? I mean maybe he just wanted to do it for himself but if you’re a murder and you just sleep with someone who then also turns out to have murder tendencies, wouldn’t that be like a match made in heaven? If anything if he was the killer I would have thought he would have encouraged her. Yet he gets her to drop the knife and come back to the cabin with him… very odd.

Back in the present after Quincy has left Coops Hotel, she gets a call from Jonah. He has some info regarding Sam and wants to meet with her, so she goes to meet him. Turns out that Tina Stone was not in the mental health facility to get over the trauma of the murder, but she was in there because she had committed her own. Tina had been sexually assaulted by her stepfather for years. In an attempt to get it to stop she killed him and was placed in the facility. The reason Quincy didn’t find it when she searched for the name was that Tina’s name had been protected due to her age when the assaults happened. Quincy asked Jonah why Sam would change her name to this girl, and I was like girl come on!! Tina and Sam are not the same, Tina is Tina, pretending to be Sam. Jonah explains that theory to her and of course this blows Quincy’s mind. This reminded me to always trust my gut because I had questioned early on if Sam was really Sam. Quincy goes back to the apartment to question Sam or Tina or whoever the hell she is. I mean this is another classic horror movie movie, walking straight into danger. When Quincy gets back Sam isn’t there. Quincy looks up an older interview of Sam’s after her experience. While Sam’s face isn’t shown, you can hear her voice, and it’s clear this is not the voice of the Sam Quincy knows. Quincy starts to feel funny and realizes that Tina has drugged her drink, and now she’s behind Quincy. I still was struggling to believe though that Tina/Sam committed the Pine Cottage murders, but it definitely seemed like an option.

Back in the past at Pine Cottage as Quincy and Joe walk back to the cabin they hear screaming. Okay so woah… Joe clearly isn’t the killer, Quincy isn’t the killer, so who the hell is? ( If I can be honest I was kicking myself when it got exposed at the end for not figuring it out sooner). Now in the more recent past its a year after Pine Cottage and we get a perspective from Tina. She’s still living in the mental facility, although it’s closing down. Joe the stranger from the cabin was a patient who broke out of the facility, and a friend of Tinas. After the blame was put on him for the murders the facility couldn’t survive and had to close its doors. Tina doesn’t believe that Joe committed the murders, and with her new freedom decides to find out the truth. The idea of turning into Sam was a spark of inspiration. While out one night a person confuses her for Sam, and she starts to realize that she may be able to pass herself off as her. Knowing about the conversation around the final girls she knew she needed to reach out to Lisa and Quincy to find out the truth.

In the present Quincy wakes up in a car and Tina is driving her somewhere. So it’s clear that Tina also didn’t commit the murders because if she knew who did she wouldn’t be doing all of this to clear Joe’s name. Tina tells her that she had to pretend to be Sam so that Lisa and Quincy would open up to her. It was frustrating that for all the work she did Quincy still couldn’t remember. It turns out that Tina has a plan in mind to spark Quincy’s memory and then the two pull up to Pine Cottage. Tina forces her into the cabin and of course, Quincy is having a major anxiety attack from being back at the spot. When Quincy is alone for a minute she quickly sends Coop a text saying that Sam took her to Pine Cottage and she needs help. Now knowing the friendship that Tina and Joe had Quincy worries that if she admits that she slept with him things will get uglier. Then Quincy remembers, she remembers seeing Joe almost dead in the hallway of the home. Yet when Coop found her she was running through the woods, so who stabbed Joe? It wasn’t Quincy or her friends. She then remembers the look on his face, it was fear. He had thought Quincy had killed everyone, meaning he killed no one, he was only a victim. Then Quincy finally says out loud to Tina, that Joe didn’t do it, he wasn’t the killer.

Of course, Tina is pumped, but this all only matters if Quincy can remember who the real killer is. Then Quincy finally remembers. She remembers what Coop looked like that night when he found her in the woods. He was covered in blood, but it wasn’t his own. It was the blood of Quincy and her friends. When I tell you I was so mad at myself for not guessing Coop before I mean it. I had questioned why he was so weird over Quincy so many times, and this was it. He never wanted her to remember, because if she did he would be exposed. He kept close tabs on her, and became her close confidant, to protect himself. He probably really did love Quincy and that’s why she survived that night, because she wasn’t afraid of him, only sought comfort from him. Coop arrives at the cabin and takes Tina down, and he knows that Quincy now remembers. Coop explains to Quincy that he has a sickness he can’t control, such as an eye roll, but that Quincy helped him. She showed him that he can love and he doesn’t just want to kill. When he saw her running towards him for help he noticed that he could do good, and so he decided that he would protect her… from himself. Turns out he had also killed Lisa, and the real Sam, because he worried that they could help Quincy remember, and he only wanted her to remember him as her saviour. This also meant that he always knew that Tina was a fake Sam, but couldn’t say anything because then it would expose that he had killed the real Sam. As Coop tries to choke the life from her Quincy grabs the knife that Sam dropped and stabs Coop with it, finally ending this nightmare.

We get a four-month look after the real Pine Cottage killer had been exposed. Tina takes the blame for the attack in the park in an attempt to let Quincy get her life back. I mean I got this but I also felt like Quincy should have had to take the blame for what she had done.  Quincy and Jeff broke up after she told him about what she and Coop did, but it seemed like it was honestly for the best. Coop is exposed to the Pine Cottage killer, but also the final girl killer. Quincy and Tina actually seem to have a really sweet relationship once the truth is exposed. I mean I guess it’s good that Quincy could move on from what Tina did to her because she seems to just need people in her life who understand her. When at home Quincy sees on the news that there has been a new sensationalized mass murder, and another final girl has been added to the group. Quincy decides to do for this girl what Lisa did for her, and the book ends with Quincy sitting in the hospital with the survivor telling her how to survive as a final girl.

I really enjoyed the ending to the book because it was kind of that classic conclusion of Quincy no longer hiding from her past, but accepting the way it’s shaped her. She originally found Lisa to be annoying in the way she tried to help but now she sees how that was exactly what she needed, and she’s the only one to carry on the legacy. Overall, I really enjoyed this book, the dynamic characters, and the constant twists and turns. If you’re a lover of classic horror movies this book gives a really similar feel.

I hope you enjoyed this review! Feel free to check out my social @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I drop a new review.