Survive the Night - Riley Sager

Survive the Night

By Riley Sager

  • Release Date: 2021-06-29
  • Genre: Mysteries & Thrillers
Score: 4
4
From 568 Ratings

Description

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

One of New York Times Book Review's "summer reads guaranteed to make your heart thump and your skin crawl"; An Amazon Best of the Month Pick; Named a must-read summer book by The Washington Post, USA Today, Vulture, BuzzFeed, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, CNN, New York Post, Good Housekeeping, E!, PopSugar, CrimeReads, Thrillist, and BookRiot

It’s November 1991. Nirvana's in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.


Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father—or so he says.
 
The longer she sits in the passenger seat, the more Charlie notices there’s something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn’t want her to see inside the trunk. As they travel an empty, twisty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly anxious Charlie begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie’s jittery mistrust merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?
 
One thing is certain—Charlie has nowhere to run and no way to call for help. Trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse played out on pitch-black roads and in neon-lit parking lots, Charlie knows the only way to win is to survive the night.

Reviews

  • Unrealistic

    2
    By oechsle1
    Almost too animated and unrealistic to enjoy
  • Predictable

    4
    By doxiemomofGretchen
    Like a bad horror movie, but kinda fun. Stop, don’t get in that car, get out…you know
  • Very fun read

    5
    By Gabe37282824
    This book will keep you on your toes from start to finish.
  • Intriguing

    4
    By areyoufinkiddingme
    I liked the story. It, at times, gave me chills and made my hair stand up. Other times, I rolled my eyes. But all in all, it’s worth the read.
  • Not Riley's best.

    3
    By Laney524
    Not one of Riley's best. But not really horrible either. It had potential at the beginning but then started to feel like it was being pasted together without direction near the end. Dragged a bit as well. Normally love Riley's books, but this one kind of missed the mark for me.
  • Not House Across the Lake, but….

    4
    By Ricardo Ole
    Tense, intriguing, far fetched at times, but fraught with drama. Great read!
  • Read in one sitting!

    5
    By cassbuggg
    Incredible!
  • Still good book…

    3
    By jaira jai
    Nice twist , however some of the attitude of the characters throughout cannot really be explain for it to work or motives told too early but still quite enjoyable
  • Great until it wasn’t

    3
    By tangerineIPA
    First 70% is brilliant but then, like a deer jumping in front of a car, the fundamental choices that make this book a claustrophobic and atmospheric cerebral game of cat and mouse are thrown out the window, leaving a confusing, rushed, and uncharacteristic ending. A great read for people who like to study what choices make a book great and not so great.
  • Highly improbable

    3
    By Apryla
    I really like Sager’s books. I’ve read all of them except the one that is coming out this year. I’ve read all of them in mostly one sitting. I just can’t put them down. Now that I’ve read them all I can predict his endings before I read them. Most of the books are huge redirects or red herrings and he spends a large amount of the book focusing on those. Then we get the real story which isn’t that hard to figure out in the last couple of chapters. When an author tries way too hard to get the reader to focus on one character right away you know that isn’t the killer. The writer wants the ending to be this huge shocker of a reveal that no one saw coming but the problem is that most of us did. I think that most books and movies don’t know how to write a story any other way so they all fall prey to focusing all their efforts at trying to get your attention away from who the real killer is. Once they’ve put all that effort into that redirect they don’t quite know how to end the story and so that is usually where it falls apart. In this book Sager took the easy way out and made most of the book hallucinations and parts of an actual movie that was made based on the main character’s brush with death. I really love Sager‘s writing style and how he just keeps you so engrossed and on the edge of your seat throughout his books. They are unputdownable but although he tells a great story I think he’s just trying way too hard to direct attention away from the killer; and I think it ends up blowing up in his face in the last couple of chapters. This storyline is so highly improbable. A grandmother who has cancer and is in her last days has the strength to drag two people far distances? No that just wouldn’t be possible. Sager brought attention to the fact that she was very thin and frail way too many times for us to suspend us believe that she would’ve been able to drag a huge man way out of a building all the way up into a car. I do recommend Sager’s books but you really have to suspend disbelief with this one.