Member Reviews
A perfect thriller and a perfect game of cat and mouse which keeps you guessing! Really enjoyed the book itself and the storyline another fab novel from Riley Sager, would recommend!!
Such a fun romp that you will devour in one sitting. Deliciously plotty, it will keep you guessing until the end. Loved it.
I so enjoyed this romp of a read. It's a fabulous foray into cinema and particularly film noir and the lead character of Charlie (named after a film character) has experienced a number of horrific events in her young life and as such she now experiences blackouts where she sees and hears things that may or may not be true.
I really don't want to say anymore about the plot line as it's so good to just read it. But, for those film buffs amongst the readers, it's wonderfully peppered with film references and you never quite know what's real and what's in Charlie's imagination.
It's a small group of characters so the 'wow / twist' comes in a different way, but, it's non the worse for it. Unique, exciting, fast paced and with a character you're really rooting for - what's not to love?
4* I loved it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for the opportunity to preview.
Excellent thriller, very original in style, it is written as a movie. Charlie, the main character is movie obsessed and narrates her life as a movie, the book is written the same way.
I found the writing very gripping and absorbing, and the twists were amazing! No spoilers, Read this excellent twisty thriller for yourself!
I absolutely loved the first half of this novel which is a pitch perfect tribute to the horror movie genre. I felt the pacing and plotting slowed in the second half but it remained a page turning read.
I really enjoyed this book, it was one of those books you just can’t stop reading. It truly felt like going on this journey with Charlie, I loved all the twists and turns and the ‘movies’ added bits of confusion that I really liked!
I liked this book but not as much I wanted to ( Riley Sager is a great author).
The major twist near the end was unexpected but some of the book was predictable. Not to say it was not worth it, the build up definitely kept me awake at night to read on further.
Charlie was portrayed as a little dumb for my liking but I was able to ignore it.
all in all, a great book for a night read to creep you out.
Is he a serial killer, maybe or maybe not.... I could not put this book down once I got into it. It took me awhile to get into it. Certainly a hold your breath type of book. Great read for everyone!
It’s really hard to write a review for this book without giving anything away but here goes…
A while ago I read Riley Sager’s “Final Girls” after being leant it by my sister who said and I quote “You won’t be able to put the thing down”. Turns out she was right. So when I saw Survive The Night on Netgalley I knew I had to request it and I got so lucky by being accepted to read it.
Quite simply this book is great! It was the tensest 3 hours of my life and I am all for it. I loved the way it was written. Like a movie playing out. I loved the mystery, the intrigue, the suspicion. And I didn’t guess it not until the last moment when I thought “Damn I know who The Campus Killer is!!!”
Let’s just say the only reason this gets a 4 and not a five is because I wanted a little more of why the Campus Killer did what they did. I wanted a bit more grit from Charlie when she tries to escape. I also wanted a little more from that epilogue. Because damn I think I could easily fall in love with a certain someone!! And I wanted more of him!!
Riley Sager’s books are a bit of a hit-or-miss for me. This one falls in the middle. I wanted to like it more than I did.
This follows Charlie, who after the murder of her bff, decides to quit college and head home. She struggles with guilt over the role she played in her friend’s death, and has these movie-like hallucinations where she can’t distinguish between real life and her hallucinations. She puts up a poster for a ride on the board and ends up taking a lift from Josh, a post-grad. But on the way she discovers that Josh is not telling the truth about who he is. Is it possible she has taken a ride from the man who be the college serial killer??
This started strong, but then I found the hallucinations confusing and a bit of a gimmick. I found Charlie irritating, too, and the way she can’t changing her mind on whether or not to trust Josh. The second was good though, once all these silly daydreams stopped, and there was much more pace, suspense and thrills. There were plenty of reveals even if the motivations for the antagonist seemed far-fetched.
This a fun, and breezy read. A thrilling popcorn read 🍿📚
Survive the Night is the latest page turning thriller from master of the genre Riley Sager.
Charlie Jordan needs a ride home from college. Unable to cope following the murder of her best friend by the Campus Killer, she has decided to drop out and is using the college ride share board to try to find a ride heading in the same direction. When she gets in the car with Josh Baxter, a college employee heading home to his ill father , she is determined to be careful, making plans to check in with her boyfriend from the road and ensuring he has a record of who is driving her and the licence plate number of the car. As the hours and the miles pass by Charlie starts to notice some discrepancies in Josh's story and before long she is sure that she is not going to make it home, she has trapped herself in a car with a serial killer. Her only objective is to survive the night and try to make him pay for killing her best friend, but that is going to be quite the challenge.
The author is a master when it comes to building tension in the book, it is the definition of a page turner and I struggled to put it down when real life got in the way of my reading. This is the ultimate game of cat and mouse being played out on the page for the reader, and the author has skilfully woven the story in such a way as to make it unclear whose version of events we can really believe. That being said I did find myself frustrated by Charlie's decisions and actions at several points in the book, I thought it stretched credibility a little too thin at times., but overall it was an absolute thriller and one of my favourites from this author to date.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher ,all opinions are my own.
Meet Charlie. Charlie decides to drop out of college and head back home after failing to come to terms with the death of her best friend, Maddy, who was killed by a serial killer. Despite Charlie knowing the killer is at large, she decides to hitch a ride home with a stranger even when there are red flags everywhere and Josh is practically waving them in her face. Charlie is stupid.
Charlie's stupidity intensifies throughout the trip. She is given several 'outs' but decides to take none of them. Someone even outright asks if she is in danger and she says no even though she thinks she is.
Well, it turns out that not all is as it seems, so the last 1/3 of the book was stellar and so brought it up from a 3 star to a 4 star because seriously, Charlie was just infuriating.
I also didn't find some of this stuff believable. If we just had Charlie's perspective throughout the book then this wouldn't be an issue, but some of the chapters from other character's perspectives just don't make sense when we learn more about them later one.
Still, a very enjoyable thriller and one I would recommend to some of my sixth formers who like a good thriller!
2.75 stars
"Survive the Night" certainly wasn't the best book I've read this year, it didn't even make it into my top ten. So far, the only book by Sager that I really enjoyed was "Final Girl" and I'm starting to think that was a fluke.
The plot of "Survive the Night" was rather predictable, even though there was one major twist toward the end, but overall there weren't any surprises. I think the suspense could have been built up a lot better if there hadn't been any shifts in perspective.
The main character's actions and decisions were, as is typical for a horror movie, completely non-sensical and wouldn't have allowed her to stay alive in a real-life situation.
Overall, I expected more from this novel.
I am always looking for the latest Riley Sager novel and am so thankful to the publisher and NetGalley for approving an eARC. Wow. I had seen some mixed reviews but this was a fun read for me. I adore Sager’s writing and for me, this did not disappoint at all.
The concept is centered around a female college student who had an argument with her best friend and roommate who then was murdered by a serial killer the same night. Charlie, the surviving roommate, blamed herself to the point that she cannot function and decided to leave school for awhile. She is leaving her boyfriend of the past year as well. In order to leave school at the time she does, she places a flyer on the ride board to see if any other students are going her direction so that they can share the ride. She immediately found someone and jumped at the chance. Things quickly spiral downhill as she realized that this guy is a stranger to her and then she began to suspect that he was lying to her the entire time. Her radar was activated and she tried to figure out what to do. Many twists and turns later the story unfolds in an intriguing way. This is a page turner of a book and I read it in a day. I loved all the classic movie and music references as well. That was a terrific addition.
Highly recommend!
#SurviveTheNight #Netgalley #HodderandStoughton #HodderPaperbacks
Riley Sager gets to me. Every. Single. Time. This book started a tiny bit slower than others but the build was worth the wait. Charlie the heroine, makes you love her and hate her at times in the book. The two major twists are more than a little surprising and made me grin with glee about where the story might go next. All the movie parts threaded throughout the story, and throwback songs added to the enjoyment. Can’t wait for his next!
* 2/2.5 stars. Slight spoilers ahead.
The most positive thing I can say for this book was that I was entertained. As a horror movie fan, I was intrigued by the concept, but unfortunately this fell flat for me. The main problem is that the protagonist was awful, the epitome of the 'I'm not like other girls' and 'manic pixie dream girl' trope, full of weird mannerisms and flexing her knowledge of movies in place of having a personality. She also switches from grieving and afraid to, quote, 'a fucking femme fatale' in the space of a few pages. And if this wasn't enough, she frequently 'sees movies in her mind' which is confirmed to be a sort mental illness that she takes medication for, but instead these hallucinations are treated as:
a) something that makes her special and ties more into her (insufferable) love of film
b) a tool for the antagonists to gaslight her with
c) a way of seeing potential (often more interesting) scenarios unfold before what actually happens
I don't mind an unreliable narrator, but the switches from her 'movies' to reality, combined with POVs of the antagonists proving that she was in fact not imagining things, gave me whiplash, and also removed any tension of actually considering that she was hallucinating. Finally, there were just so many twists in the last third of the book, it began to feel like a parody of itself, which I enjoyed but probably for all the wrong reasons. And the fact that she marries her kidnapper in the end? Yikes.
(Many thanks to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.)
Rating: 3.5
A book that split me in two.
On one side I couldn't stop reading it, I rushed through the pages because I needed to know. On the other side I spent the majority of this run screaming at Charlie, the FMC, wanting to jump in the book and shake her.
The plot is gripping. It's the 90s. Charlie is leaving campus and she needs a ride home, Josh is looking for someone to drive with. They are strangers but they get together for this cross-states road trip. Nothing out of the ordinary. Too bad once in the car, Charlie realises that maybe Josh is not really who he said he is. Maybe he is a serial killer and now she is stuck with him with no chance to escape.
I loved the story and the 90s setting. I squealed at all the songs and movies references and I started listening to Nirvana half way through the book, because you just have to.
What I didn't really like was Charlie, I guess. I can't pinpoint it. I understand her feelings, her survivor guilt, where she is coming from. But I just can't get behind a lot of the decisions she made. Some of the expedients to keep her in the car felt a little cheap. The final plot twist was also not that great, but I loved the ending.
Overall a good summer read and I'm definitely checking out Sager's other books.
Charlie, a film enthusiast that see's her own mini-films in her mind, struggles to tell the difference between reality and fiction when she accepts a lift home from a virtual stranger. Desperate to make it the six hours back to Ohio, but becoming increasingly paranoid over the drivers true intentions, who will survive the night?
This book was wild. I only predicted one plot twist out of them all. The ending made me forgive some aspects of the plot that seemed a little too convoluted. At times I didn't understand Charlies decision making process but when things came to light about her struggles they were put into a more understandable context.
Riley Sager has a style of writing that's really easy to breeze through. Even when the subject matter is mad.
This was a twisted and gripping read.
3.5 stars.
OMG what a book. So many twists and turns. This book made me question everything I thought I knew. Fantastic reading. Riley Sager never disappoints.
Tense, nailbiting, edge-of-seat stuff. I was immediately drawn in by the blurb: "It's November 1991. George H. W. Bush is in the White House, Nirvana's in the tape deck, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer." It did not disappoint. Sure - the premise was questionable, as were a number of Charlie's actions, and fairly unusually for me I saw a major plot twist coming - but there was plenty of tension and enough surprises to maintain suspense and keep me up until the early hours to get to the end. I'm also a bit of a sucker for an unreliable narrator.
Easily the best thriller I've read in 2021 so far.
Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the e-ARC via NetGalley.