"Riley Sager" is a pseudonym for an author who has published other works under their actual name, and while I'm not sure what sort of success the author has enjoyed under that other name, the first Riley Sager novel has turned out quite well for them.
Published by Dutton in July, that first Sager novel was titled FINAL GIRLS and received praise from the likes of Stephen King, who compared it to GONE GIRL. The plot description:
Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.
That is until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit; and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.
Universal Pictures has now come out the victor in a bidding war for the film rights to FINAL GIRLS, with Nicole Clemens of Anonymous Content and Ashley Zalta and Michael Sugar of Sugar23 attached to produce the adaptation.
Chloe Yellin, director of development at Universal, will be overseeing the production.
FINAL GIRLS sounds quite interesting to me, although I'm wondering if it will receive a title change on its way to the big screen. In the last couple years we've already had movies titled FINAL GIRL and THE FINAL GIRLS (pictured above).
If you'd like to pick up a copy of Sager's novel, you can do so at this link.