Final Girls by Riley Sager

They call them Final Girls.  There's Lisa, the only survivor of ten sorority girls who died when a man broke into the house.  Samantha who survived a horrific attack at a hotel where she was on her first shift as a maid.  Quincy Carpenter who went with her friends on a weekend getaway to a cabin in the woods only to have it become a slaughter house when a man broke out of a nearby mental hospital.  The world and media was fascinated with their stories and wanted to know why, why, why were they the only ones to survive?

Years later, there are still consequences to surviving such horror.  Lisa, who is the oldest, finished her education and became a psychologist helping others.  Samantha went off the grid and no one has heard from her in years.  Quincy seems to be doing the best.  She has a lovely apartment in New York, a fiance who is supportive and loving and a baking blog which allows her to turn her therapeutic baking into a career. 

Then it happens.  Quincy gets a call from the policeman who saved her all those years ago and who has remained a constant force in her life.  Coop is the man who has always been there for her, always available by phone or text and coming for visits to make sure Quincy is okay.  He calls to give her the news.  Lisa is dead, a suicide.  As Quincy is struggling to deal with the news, she gets an even bigger shock.  Someone stops her outside her apartment and it is Samantha or Sam as she likes to be called.

Quincy invites her in.  Sam as she likes to be called, is rough around the edges.  She dresses to shock and it's clear she has been living off the radar.  She has heard the news and as the only person alive who really understands what Quincy's life is, she has come to join forces.  Quincy's fiance is skeptical and dismayed, sure Sam is there to try to get money from them or some other sketchy plan.  But when Quincy and Sam find out that Lisa's suicide is instead murder, nothing can make them separate.

As the days go by, Quincy finds that the roughness she sees in Sam is deeply ingrained.  Sam is defiant and reckless, tempting men to see her as a victim so that she can turn around and work out her anger on them.  Quincy is appalled and intrigued in equal measure.  But none of Sam's stories seem to check out and soon Quincy is scared of her and not sure how to disentangle herself or what Sam might do next.  Has she traded one nightmare for another?

This was a debut novel for Riley Sager, a former journalist and editor.  It burst onto the scene in 2017 and in 2018 was the winner of the International Thriller Award for Best Novel.  The story is written at a pace that moves the reader along with it, never quite sure what the next page will bring.  The truth is slowly revealed as the reader discovers it along with Quincy.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.