In "Survive the Night" by Riley Sager, college student Charlie is grappling with guilt and grief after her best friend is murdered by a serial killer known as The Campus Killer. Desperate to escape, she hitches a ride with a stranger named Josh, suspecting that he might be more dangerous than he appears. As the tension mounts over the course of a dark and suspenseful night, Charlie's film obsession blurs the lines between reality and fiction, leading to a gripping cat-and-mouse game filled with twists and turns.
The narrative unfolds like a Hitchcockian thriller, with Charlie as an unreliable narrator navigating a claustrophobic and menacing journey. The author expertly weaves in references to old movies, adding layers of suspense and intrigue as Charlie's suspicions about Josh grow, culminating in a dramatic and satisfying reveal.
Genres:
Tropes/Plot Devices:
Topics:
Notes:
Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Triggers may include themes of grief, mental illness, murder, violence, and unreliable narratives.
From The Publisher:
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.
Ratings (54)
Incredible (3) | |
Loved It (19) | |
Liked It (14) | |
It Was OK (11) | |
Did Not Like (3) | |
Hated It (4) |
Reader Stats (96):
Read It (57) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (34) | |
Not Interested (4) |
4 comment(s)
Wow. Just wow.
This book was everything I needed at this time in my life. I just started a stressful job with horrible hours and I couldn't read anymore but it took me 1 night to finish this book (from page 80 something) and now I feel like me again.
The writing is absolutely stunning in every way possible and that you can expect from Riley Sager. I could read this book like watching a movie - movies in my head if you may wink wink. I thought this book was going to long at first but the page count doesn't match what a fast read this was because it was engaging from the beginning to the end.
It was predictable but because of the fantastic writing I predicted nothing - that's what makes it sweeter.
I loved the romance out of the blue - I normally strongly dislike romance but in Rileys books I love it.
"Insane" characters are something I will always look for. I adore mentally ill characters especially when they include hallucinations and the fear of trusting your own brain.
I loved the inside jokes and the callbacks to old scenes or dialogue. Every word was carefully chosen but it didn't take much brain power to read it at all.
I had many emotional reactions while reading but none made me want to stop. I screamed, squealed and kicked my feet.
10/10 perfect thriller as usual by this author.
SYNOPSIS
It is 1991. Charlie is a college student. Her friend, Maddy, was murdered, and Charlie is having a rough time processing her friend’s death. Charlie decides she needs to withdraw from school & return home.
Since Charlie doesn’t have a car, she posts her information on a “ride board” at school, indicating she is looking for a ride back to Ohio. A handsome man offers to give her a ride, and she decides it’s a great idea.
MY THOUGHTS
Ughhh, Riley! Please stop writing women protagonists.
Even women who haven’t recently had a friend murdered do not navigate the world like Charlie does. Oh, it wasn’t just having a friend recently murdered BTW – her campus has someone they’ve affectionately nicknamed “the Campus Killer”, as he preys on young women & murders them. So, obviously, the best place to find a ride is said campus from a stranger.
I didn’t like how Sager wrote about Charlie’s delusions. They were not relatable as well because it felt completely made up & not science=based. She “sees” movies in her mind, and she has a hard time differentiating between what a movie is in her mind versus real life.
None of the characters are very deep. They simply lack development.
Everything felt really artificial, and this is Sager’s weakest one yet.
Not a satisfying ending.
TL;DR: ⭐️⭐️yikes, unrealistically written woman protagonist.
3.5* I think I enjoyed this honestly I don’t really know
It wasn't a bad book, but I'm a bit disappointed. This is a rather mediocre story, something I won't remember in a while.
Reading the opening chapters, I thought I knew what the story was about. But then this short chapter, at about 45 percent of the book, came out and the whole game totally changed. Unfortunately, it changed for the worse, leaving me disappointed. What I expected from the first half of the book might have been a bit unoriginal and hackneyed, but if skillfully executed, it could have been quite interesting. I don't know if the author was too impatient to continue the game in which we try to determine whether Charlie is to be believed, or if that was the plan from the beginning, but in my opinion, this change definitely did not help. The story became even weaker and more clichéd.
At 60 percent, the story changed again, and this time it got a little more interesting. However, it was short-lived because immediately after that, it changed again and became even more ridiculous. Yet, it still wasn't something entirely new and surprising. Of course, I guessed who the murderer was long before the end of the book.
Charlie, the main character, did not surprise me with anything. She acted exactly like any other young woman in the thriller. She was neither smarter nor braver than them. Her behavior was frustrating. I was going to say she acted like a typical young woman, but that's not true; she acted like a stereotypical woman in the books of this genre, not in real life.
And that's part of the problem with this book. Even though there are twists and turns, we are actually swapping one well-known theme with another. It's as if the author couldn't decide which well-known trope to follow and tried each one in turn. And at the end, he decided to throw in a few more twists, but they were nothing we haven't seen before.
I guess I wish it were a mind game between Charlie and Josh. I wish we would keep asking ourselves whether he is a murderer or not. Are these all just Charlie’s delusions? In the end, that might have been a better story than what we got.
Isn't it funny that a few chapters before the end, I thought this book would make a nice movie? It has just enough plot and twists to fit in an average movie length. And the ending will be perfect for a big screen.
This is my first book by this author. It wasn't a bad story, but rather average. I expected something more. I've heard that other books by this author are better.
What can you read after
Survive the Night?
About the Author:
Riley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, most recently Home Before Dark and Survive the Night. A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
When you click the Amazon link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commision, at no cost to you.
