Review:
Ten years ago, Quincy and several of her college friends took a trip to Pine Cottage. Only Quincy made it out alive. Although she has very few memories of what happened there, she remembers her first meeting with the stranger who killed all of her friends and almost got her too. She also remembers running for her life until she was saved by Coop, a young cop. She considers her lack of memories about everything else to be a blessing.
Now Quincy has an almost-fiance named Jeff and a popular baking blog. Things aren't perfect, but she's doing okay...until she learns that Lisa Milner has committed suicide. Lisa, Sam, and Quincy are part of a group the press has dubbed the "Final Girls," young women who each survived horror movie-like massacres. Lisa was the first and reached out to Quincy after Pine Cottage with offers of advice and support. Quincy only ever spoke to Lisa on the phone, and that was a while ago, but it seems unthinkable that she'd have killed herself. While Quincy is still trying to process the news, she's approached by a familiar-looking woman: Samantha Boyd, the "Final Girl" who dealt with her gruesome experience by disappearing.
I went into this expecting it to be a blend of horror and thriller, similar to the other two works by Sager that I'd read. Instead, I got something more like the "horrible people" thrillers that cropped up everywhere after Gone Girl became popular. I don't necessarily dislike those kinds of books, but I really wanted the horror-thriller blend I initially thought it was.
Chapters set in the present alternated with chapters set just before and during the Pine Cottage Massacre. It was obvious that something from Quincy's missing memories would be an important part of the book's ending, and as the story progressed I had several guesses, none of which turned out to be correct. Kudos to Sager for managing to surprise me despite my efforts to figure out the book's twist in advance.
That said, I wasn't in the mood for reading a book about people I disliked, damaged or otherwise, and I didn't really like most of the characters in this. Quincy was messed up but only started to admit it to herself after Sam forced her to come face-to-face with her own jagged edges. Jeff and Quincy's mother both wanted her to be a normal person who'd managed to overcome her horrible past - with them, there was no room for Quincy to still be processing the horror of Pine Cottage. Add drink and drugs (Xanax) to the mix, and massive mistakes were made.
Considering what happened, the ending was surprisingly rosy, and I wasn't really on board with the way one detail was wrapped up. Overall, this was my least favorite of the three works by Sager that I've read - I definitely prefer it when this author leans on the horror side of things more, and despite the title, occasional flashbacks to Pine Cottage, and cover blurb calling it "delicious scary," this was a "horrible person" thriller that only really used a slasher movie moment as its starting point.
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