Final Girls by Riley Sager

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


It’s been a struggle to put into words how I feel about this novel. I’m typically bursting at the seams with commentary as soon as I finish a new book, especially when said book falls well below my expectations (I do love a good opportunity to voice my disappointment in things!). But oddly enough, I seem to be plagued with writers block on this one. Could be because immediately following I jumped into a different novel, a much better one I may add, so now the little intrigue that previously existed for this review has since dissolved.

So instead of investing any more time trying to craft a thorough and worthwhile review, I will simply spew some thoughts I have regarding this narrative, in no particular order, and hope that it works (spoiler alert : it probably won’t).

It bothered me that this author is a man, yet obviously tried to stray the reader away from this by using a pseudonym that clearly favors the female gender. The main character behaved in ways that made zero sense and required the reader to literally suspend all belief. All of it. All. Of. It. It was slooooooow and had far too many scenes detailing the (not at all) interesting world of baking apple tarte. Honestly – who the actual hell enjoys multiple scenes of some chick baking pies? Only a man pretending to be a woman would think this makes for an enticing read. The ending was bad. I originally typed awful, but even I can appreciate that there are worse endings out there, so I scaled back. The big reveal of the killer was lame, as was the reasoning for his killing, as was this whole book. Lame is probably the word I was searching for in the beginning of this review because as soon as I typed it, something clicked in my brain and all was right with the world.

The idea for this bland dust pan of a novel could have been something unique, and it could have been suspenseful and it could have had an ending that didn’t make me utterly irritated that I drank a RedBull at 10pm on a Tuesday just to stay up and finish this LAME “thriller”. But alas, it was none of those things and thus goes back on the bookshelf as nothing more than a pretty looking spine (shout out to the bright red cover art).



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