Book Review: Survive the Night: A Novel by Riley Sager-Mystery/Thriller/Horror

Hello dear Readers,

My book review of Survive The Night: A Novel by Riley Sager.

Title: Survive The Night: A Novel

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Genre: Mystery/Thriller/Horror

Author: Riley Sager

Publisher: Dutton

Publication Date: June 29, 2021

Language: English

Hardcover: 336 pages
Meet the Author: Riley Sager
Buy Me: Amazon

Book Description

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, 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.

My Thoughts

Enjoyable enough but unfortunately, this was not my favorite Riley’s book. 

I think the story was dragged way too much, and that took big part of the suspense and surprise out of it. Low-paced and at times, little boring. Enough to finish it but not to wow me.

Wendy