Line #5 Literature/FinalGirls


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1528187037.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Surviving is not living.]]
3
4	->''“The first great thriller of 2017 is here: Final Girls, by Riley Sager. If you liked Literature/GoneGirl, you’ll like this.”''
5	-->--Creator/StephenKing
6
7	''Final Girls'' by Riley Sager is a 2017 {{Horror}} {{Thriller}} novel. It is a {{Deconstruction}} of slasher movies that follows up on the long-term effects of surviving a massacre like so many young women in horror movies do.
8
9	Ten years ago, Quincy Carpenter was a college student who survived a real life horror movie when an escaped mental patient murdered her best friends while she was on a camping trip. A nervous wreck who runs a baking vlog, she struggles to maintain a StepfordSmiler facade. Her only friends are boyfriend Jeff and police officer Coop. She is one of the three "Final Girls" that have survived similar experiences with psychotic killers -- beautiful, tragic, and newsworthy.
10
11	When Lisa, the only one Quincy had any contact with, suddenly commits suicide, Quincy finds herself contacted by the other Final Girl. Samantha attempts to force herself into Quincy's life and pressure her into unleashing her long repressed violent side. She also asks uncomfortable questions that force Quincy to confront her amnesia about the night that made her famous.
12
13	What ''did'' happen that night?
14
15	----
16	!This novel contains examples of:
17	* AbusiveParents:
18	** Quincy's mother is emotionally disinterested and far more interested in making a good impression on people than addressing Quincy's very real issues. [[spoiler: She does improve and finally gives her daughter the help she needs after the truth is revealed about the Pine Cottage murders.]]
19	** Tina Stone's stepfather abused her so badly that she ended up killing him in self defence, yet her mother still doesn't believe it happened. She later rejects Tina when she asks for a place to stay, coldly abandoning her once again.
20	* TheAlcoholic:
21	** Quincy herself admits that she's more dependent on wine than she should be [[spoiler: but takes steps to address it come the end of the novel.]]
22	** Sam always has a bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey on her person, a flashback reveals it's been her drink of choice for a long time.
23	* ActionGirl: Averted. While the women are labeled such, they were closer to ActionSurvivor types. Quincy is neither [[spoiler: as she was never in any danger due to the killer's crush.]]
24	* AffablyEvil: Joe Hannen seems an ordinary shy boy that can't possibly have been a serial killer. [[spoiler: He turns out not to have been.]]
25	* AnachronicOrder: First person chapters are set in the present while third person ones are set in the past, or more precisely, the event that saw Quincy being the sole survivor of the murder spree that killed the rest of her friends and the direct aftermath. [[spoiler: Third person is used again to show Tina Stone's past when her true motives are revealed.]]
26	* BeneathSuspicion: [[spoiler: The kind police officer that rescued Quincy after her friends were killed and has supported her since just happens to be the man behind the murders, all stemming from an obsession with her.]]
27	* BerserkButton: Quincy has a very well buried one: being threatened by men.
28	* BigBadDuumvirate: [[spoiler: Tina Brody and Coop turn out to be this, though Coop is far more dangerous.]]
29	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Quincy has killed Coop but the other two Final Girls are dead. Tina also faces up to two years of jail time for the various crimes she committed trying to prove Joe's innocence. Jeff breaks up with Quincy when he finds out she cheated on him with Coop. On the other hand, Quincy will carry on Lisa's role as a teacher of Final Girls.]]
30	* CellPhonesAreUseless:
31	** Played with; Janelle insists that everyone puts their cell phones into a box in Craig's car because she doesn't want her birthday to be shown on social media, the only device she allows is Quincy's camera. This is why no-one is able to call for help during the killing spree, and Craig's attempt to reach the phones sees him being killed for it.
32	** Averted when [[spoiler: Quincy happens to have the stolen iPhone hidden on her person when Tina takes away her actual one, allowing her to send a message to Coop that she's being kidnapped before the battery dies.]]
33	* CharacterTics: Quincy always takes her Xanax with a swig of grape soda, on the advice of her now deceased father who always suggested that having something sweet helped combat the bitterness. [[spoiler: Tina is able to use her knowledge of this to drug Quincy's soda so she can force her to return to Pine Cottage to potentially unlock more memories about what actually happened there.]]
34	* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler: The iPhone that Quincy steals early on in the novel ends up potentially saving her life and leads to the truth of who really committed the Pine Cottage murders.]]
35	* DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: Quincy has fond memories of her father who tragically died from cancer not long after the Pine Cottage murders.
36	* {{Deconstruction}}: The book shows that any woman who survives an encounter with a murderous psychopath who kills all your friends is going to be a nervous wreck for the rest of their life, not a badass ActionGirl.
37	* DramaticIrony: [[spoiler: Sam/Tina believes that Quincy is the Pinewood Cottage murderer and not her best friend Joe, who she was a patient at an asylum with. She's wrong and almost pays for it with her life. She ''is' right that it wasn't Joe, however.]]
38	* EasyAmnesia: Quincy has no memories of the night that saw her being the sole survivor which initially raises suspicions that she might have played a stronger role in it than she realised. [[spoiler: True to some extent; Quincy clearly suffers from some kind of disorder that sees her losing control of her emotions but she notably stops herself before frightening her best friend, who was having sex with her crush, having intended to scare them with a knife. Unfortunately, that's when the real killer becomes obsessed with that image of her and takes up the dropped knife to kill them.]]
39	* FinalGirl: The central conceit is that the media tactlessly applies this appellation to three beautiful survivors of three separate in-universe massacres by serial killers. The attention only makes their lives worse and exacerbates their mental trauma. It turns out no one wants to treated like they survived a real life horror movie.
40	* FlashbackBPlot: The current story focuses on Lisa Milner's unexpected death and Samantha Boyd's sudden appearance in Quincy's life, while flashbacks cover the events that lead up to and after the Pine Cottage murders. [[spoiler: Eventually Quincy recalls exactly what happened that night.]]
41	* GoneHorriblyRight: Sam[[spoiler:/Tina]]'s attempt to go trolling for muggers [[spoiler: gets an addict beaten into a coma by Quincy.]]
42	* IfItBleedsItLeads: The reason Quincy is a celebrity is due to the fact her survival of a camp ground massacre makes national headlines.
43	* InsaneEqualsViolent: Played with in multiple ways. [[spoiler: Joe turns out to have been a harmless mental patient who did nothing wrong. Coop, however, is a murderous serial killer. Sam was wrongly sent to an asylum for the insane. Quincy is violent when her PTSD is triggered.]]
44	* JerkassHasAPoint: The detectives who interview Quincy in the aftermath of the Pine Cottage murders say that it's [[spoiler: suspicious that she can't remember anything and that she suffered far less fatal wounds than anyone else, subtly implying that she killed them and then stabbed herself in safe places to ensure she would look injured but wouldn't die. They're not exactly wrong, but it wasn't Quincy who gave those wounds to herself, it was an enamoured Coop who wanted to make sure she wouldn't be suspiciously uninjured but that she wouldn't be in any danger of dying.]]
45	* ManipulativeBastard: [[spoiler: Coop. He successfully seduces each of the "Final Girls", maintains the facade as Quincy's most trusted ally, even manufacturing fake death threat mail to her to drive her back to him when she starts pulling away. He does all of this while being a serial killer who's pattern hasn't been identified by law enforcement.]]
46	* MaskOfSanity: [[spoiler: Coop. He maintains the demeanor of a caring cop who will always be there for Quincy after saving her from the massacre at Pinewood Cottage. In reality he is a serial killer]]
47	* MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome: Part of the reason why Quincy and the other Final Girls are so famous. They looked like conventionally pretty horror movie protagonists. [[spoiler: It's implied Tina is irritated with them because of this due to the fact she survived a similar horrific experience but got no attention at all.]]
48	* MurderMystery:
49	** This arises when it's revealed that [[spoiler: Lisa Milner didn't kill herself, she was murdered.]]
50	** While the Pine Cottage murders are officially caused by Joe Hennan [[spoiler: flashbacks reveal that the detectives on the case were initially suspicious of Quincy herself, stating that it was strange she survived with non-fatal injuries while everyone else was slaughtered.]]
51	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Quincy suffers a minor breakdown [[spoiler: after beating a junkie into a coma.]]
52	* NeverFoundTheBody: [[spoiler: The real Samantha Boyd's body isn't found as Coop died shortly after admitting to her murder, and since she was killed in Florida, there are literally hundreds of swamps and lakes where she could be buried.]]
53	* NeverSuicide: [[spoiler: Lisa Milner didn't commit suicide, she was murdered by Coop who set it up to look as if she took her own life.]]
54	* ParentalNeglect:
55	** Quincy's mother was far more concerned about keeping up appearances than actually caring for her severely traumatised daughter [[spoiler: but does make amends.]]
56	** Tina's mother didn't listen to her daughter when she said her stepfather was abusing her, even when she ended up killing him. She then later rejects Tina when she tries to return home after her stint in a mental institution, claiming to her curious new husband that the young woman at the door was 'nobody'.
57	* OurSlashersAreDifferent: Slashers are (apparently) just normal human serial killers. It's just that the media has sensationalized a specific group of them in order to promote the concept of three female [[SoleSurvivor Final Girls.]] Played with as the killers largely acted like movie villains during their murders rather than real life serial killers.
58	* ProperlyParanoid: Jeff doesn't like Sam from the beginning and believes she's here to shake Quincy down for money. [[spoiler: He's wrong as she's here to kidnap Quincy in order to get her to confess to the Pinewood Cottage murders.]]
59	* RapeAsDrama: [[spoiler: Tina used to be raped by her stepfather until she killed him in self-defense, only to be disowned by her mother.]]
60	* TheReveal:
61	** [[spoiler: Samantha Boyd is actually Tina Stone, a fellow inmate of Joe Hennan at the Blackthorn Mental Institute who knew he wasn't the one behind the Pine Cottage murders. The real Samantha Boyd hid away from the public eye and they shared enough of a resemblance for Tina to pass as a thinner version of her as the only public photograph of Samantha was from high school.]]
62	** [[spoiler: Joe Hennan is completely innocent and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He even pleaded for Quincy to not do anything she would regret when it looked as if she were stalking her friends with a knife.]]
63	** [[spoiler: Coop is not only behind the deaths of Lisa Hilner and Samantha Boyd, he is responsible for the Pine Cottage murders and Quincy's status as Final Girl, all stemming from a sudden infatuation with her.]]
64	* TheScapegoat: [[spoiler: Joe Hennan didn't hurt anyone the night of the Pine Cottage murders, he even comforted a distraught Quincy when she was rejected by her crush Craig and pleaded with her not to do anything she would regret when he found her striding towards Craig and Janelle with a knife in hand. It was just unfortunate timing that saw him escaping the mental institution the same night Coop went on a killing spree, becoming the perfect scapegoat when he's shot and killed so he can't even begin to defend himself.]]
65	* SerialKiller: Joe and the other serial killers who made the Final Girls famous. [[spoiler: Joe is innocent. It was Coop all along.]]
66	* SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny:
67	** Quincy is uncertain about having sex with her boyfriend on the camping trip. Their one attempt goes badly. [[spoiler: So she ends up sleeping with mental patient Joe instead.]]
68	** Turns out to actually be a thing that Quincy suffers from in life as she's irritated with caring, sensitive partners and prefers to have a dominating sleazy one.
69	** [[spoiler: Coop]] has this view of women. [[spoiler: He kills, or tries to kill, each of the Final Girls after sex.]]
70	* ShellShockedVeteran: Quincy suffers PTSD that she keeps under control with Xanax and avoiding triggers.
71	* SlasherMovie: A literary version of one, or at least their aftermath. The Final Girls are a media sensation created by cynical publishers because their victims are pretty and their stories have a similarity to horror movie leads.
72	* TheSociopath: [[spoiler: Coop and his obsession with murdering people, from innocent teenage couples in the woods to Quincy's friends, to the other Final Girls Lisa Milner and Samantha Boyd as they either knew too much or couldn't live up to his image of Quincy respectively. He admits that he only joined the military to try and get the urge to kill out of his system but that what he saw just made his bloodlust worse. The only remorse he shows is for having killed Lisa, if only because she reminded him of Quincy.]]
73	* SoleSurvivor: Each and every one of the Final Girls;
74	** Quincy is the only survivor of the Pine Cottage murders, a birthday trip that went horribly wrong when a killer strikes in the middle of the forest.
75	** Lisa Milner is the only sorority girl to survive when a college dropout enters their sorority house and kills her sisters. She's able to wrestle the knife from him and strikes a killing blow before he can cause her further harm.
76	** Samantha Boyd worked at a motel that drew the attention of a religious fanatic who wanted to smite sinners and decided to kill the staff and guests with various tools.
77	* StepfordSmiler: Quincy does her best to put on a facade of a happy, sweet, and bland young woman. It has done little to help her PTSD.
78	* StickyFingers:
79	** Quincy doesn't steal items for their value, she takes items that show her reflection, from spoons to an iPhone with a shiny case. It's so she can remind herself that she's still there whenever she looks at them.
80	** Tina, on the other hand, takes items just because she can, from expensive blouses and earrings to pens and personal belongings. Likely because she's had a rough life and doesn't have much in the way of money.
81	* VillainousCrush: [[spoiler: Coop is revealed to have had one on Quincy the entire time, which is why he spared her life.]]
82	* WickedStepfather: Tina's stepfather abused and raped her so severely that she ended up killing him.
83	* WorstAid: Sam[[spoiler:/Tina]] deliberately tries to provoke Quincy's PTSD.

Context Literature / FinalGirls