I really liked the premise of this book, and I actually really was looking forward to reading it, but I’m so sorry to say I… less than enjoyed it.

Reasons why this book bored me to death:

1. It was about 70% before we got to the first ‘twist’. Before that, I put the book down and read multiple other books between it. The storyline just wasn’t compelling, which for a thriller is a big fat no from me.

2. I guessed the 2nd big twist a mile off. It was SO OBVIOUS. I really hate predictable books, I like thrillers to be shocking; that’s the point of a twist, if I’ve guessed it ages ago then what’s the point? 😩

Reasons why this book annoyed me immensely:

1. Why didn’t Charlie just get a bus instead of risking a ride share with a stranger? Surely with a killer on the loose you would?! (I know then there would be no book but I hate plot holes😠)

2. The entire epilogue - just why

That being said, the last 30% was decent and much better paced, and the first twist I will admit I did not anticipate. If you can manage to slog your way through the first 70% for that tiny burst of action at the end, I applaud you. If not, I’m unfortunately going to have to tell you I wouldn’t bother. Sorry.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishers for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed reading 'Survive The Night' and I read the whole thing in about four hours because I could not put it down. This book was so addictive to read and so fast-paced that I flew through it so fast.

I didn't predict where the story was going to go which is what I enjoy in a thriller and this book allowed me to just read and enjoy the story/mystery instead of trying to predict what was going to happen next. The killer was actually really obvious as there was only about four characters in the book and so narrowing it down wasn't hard, but I was expecting some sort of more exciting twist that I never go in regards to the killer. The ending wasn't the most exciting thriller ending ever, my mind wasn't blown by the twists, but I did enjoy how the story concluded.

There really isn't much I can say about this book without spoiling it and I really don't want to spoil it for anyone else, but this is a quick and easy thriller set over the course of one day and definitely one you should pick up if you want something quick to read.

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an advance copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A good, solid thriller! I really liked the particular atmosphere Riley Sager used, it really gave a nineties vibe that was greatly appreciated.

OMG this book had me gripped right from the start. You can’t help but feel all the emotions that Charlie is going through, and the twist near the end,did not see that coming.

Its November 1991. George Bush Sr. is in the White House, Nirvana’s playing on the tape deck and film obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer. (I don’t want to give any spoilers and this sums it up nicely)

Thoughts: I love Sager. I will read his books no matter what regardless of reviews etc. With that being said-this one was not my favorite. I think it’s best to detail the things I liked and the things I didn’t. I will say I read this in one sitting so it is extremely binge able, eerie and atmospheric. It is a very small cast of characters since it takes place in one evening and a majority of it is in the interior of a car. It is written as a screenplay with each scene depicted by camera location which I thought was pretty neat. The pacing is extremely quick in true Sager fashion. He just keeps you pushing forward as things build and build and build. It’s extremely entertaining and transportive which is also wonderful. I love the time period-90s kid here so it was really fun! The movie references were great too! The major twist was also fun and well done.
 
With all of that being said (I cringe doing this, but I like to be honest) I felt like the whole story was a bit convoluted. The characters and their motives were extremely unrealistic and they seemed really flat. Apart for loving film Noir, living with her grandmother and grieving the death of her friend we don’t get any more with Charlie. She also has a condition which I am not sure how serious/ well depicted Sager was with his description and honestly felt it needed more development or to be left out.
 
All in all I have so much love for Sager. This isn’t my favorite out of his five, but it isn’t my least favorite either. I enjoyed its fast paced suspense. It was entertaining and one wild ride –see what I did there?


Thank you Netgalley for my advance copy in exchange for my review!

I’d heard great things about Riley Sager but not read any of his works yet, so I was thrilled to be approved on NetGalley to read his latest thriller.

Survive The Night is about Charlie, a College film student in the US who decides to accept a lift home across country from a fellow student after her roommate is murdered by the so called Campus Killer. During the road trip Charlie becomes convinced that her driver, Josh, may actually be the killer. And what’s worse, that he knows what she’s thinking. So the question is, will she survive the night?

It didn’t take me long to get into this story, as Charlie is a likeable character. Often on the sidelines and fairly introverted, she seemed to live through her vivacious and unique roommate Maddy. I did find the story a little slow until about the 100 page mark. There are limited number of characters so the story could have been a little more pacy.

Once Charlie began to question Josh’s motives the story picked up and I didn’t want to put it down. There is a special aspect to Charlie’s character which I don’t want to give away in this review, but it started off as an interesting quirk which potentially allowed for a certain aspect of unreliability for Charlie as our main narrator. However at one point I felt it was just a little overdone. The phrasing choice was limited, so it became repetitive and tiresome.

Overall I enjoyed this book, and didn’t guess the outcome until juuuust before! The tension was built well, some unpredictable twists and a unique ending made for an enjoyable reading experience.

I cannot tell you how much I am enjoying this book. Riley Sager's writing is just so easy to get absorbed in. I am only a quarter of the way through this ARC, but I have already ordered copies of Lock Every Door, Final Girls, Last Time I Lied and Home Before Dark.

Charlie Jordon ,a film student decides she needs to leave campus after her best friend Maddy was murdered . Not only was she murdered but she is linked with a serial killer who is still out there. Their last meeting ended on bad terms and she needs to come to terms with how their last conversation ended badly . Charlie accepts a car ride from a total stranger she met on campus and as they begin their long journey through remote towns she begins to notice that some things are a bit off . Is this her imagination playing tricks with her ? How will she get out alive ? Will she survive the night ?

This is a pacy psychological thriller and would work great as a movie . I did find the ending a little disappointing and was a little confused by Charlie’s hallucinations . I loved all the old movie references .

Many thanks to # NetGalley for an Arc

Survive the Night has everything I look for in a thriller: edge-of-your-seat suspense, subtle clues and red herrings, complex characters who make choices you sometimes question, and a twisty ending you don't see coming. This was my first Riley Sager novel, and it certainly won't be my last.

The pace and scope of the story really surprised me, considering the fact that the majority of it takes place within the confines of a car. As the protagonist, Charlie, drives with a stranger down the highway, there's barely a quiet moment at all, with panicked thoughts, suspicious comments and desperate action happening almost constantly.

I've read a lot of reviews saying this would hit harder as a movie, but personally I think that a lot of the power and fear behind what's happening comes from the thoughts and traumas informing the main character's decisions. And that's something you can only grasp if you can see inside her head.

What really sets this book apart is how Charlie uses movies to cope with trauma. This bleeds into the unfolding events in a number of ways, from the dramatic intro and exit scenes leading into each chapter, to the added layer of doubt and confusion when she begins to have trouble differentiating between the fantastical 'movies in her mind' and reality.

If you're a movie buff, a fan of psychological thrillers, or a mystery fan looking for your next gripping read, Survive the Night will not disappoint.

I really liked the premise of the book: a young woman who is still trying to come to grips with the murder of her best friend suddenly finds herself alone in the car with a man she suspects to be the killer. Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it?

Charlie is so traumatised and riddled with guilt over the death of her best friend Maddy at the hands of the “campus killer” that she decides to leave her college mid-term to return home to Ohio to see her grandmother. Seeing she doesn’t drive since the death of her parents in a car crash, she posts an ad on the campus noticeboard looking for a lift. Despite being suspicious of strangers since her friend’s murder, she accepts a ride from a young man who states he is also heading interstate. But it’s not long until Charlie starts having terrible doubts – is she alone in the car with the killer? Is her life also in danger?

First of all, let me say that I really liked the setting in the 90’s. This type of thriller works better without cell phones and internet on tap, when making a phone call involves having to find a payphone and you need a map to find your way. The claustrophobic setting of being trapped in a car with a person who could be a killer also created the type of tension I am looking for to keep me engaged.

I also enjoyed the format of the story, which rolled out like the scenes in a screenplay. It managed to set the scene well and made the book more of a visual experience, the way movie-buff Charlie would have seen it. In fact, this book definitely works better if you read it as if you were watching the movie. Charlie makes some questionable decisions, but hey – it’s just a movie! That way, some scenes in the book even benefited from the use of well-worn thriller and horror tropes, such as the diner in the middle of nowhere or the old motel, which gave the story a darker, more sinister feel (but would have been slightly corny and over the top if you don’t ride with the movie theme).

Even though I enjoyed the overall experience, I did have a few problems with the story:
*) Charlie’s “movies” in her head – what exactly was this? Hallucinations? Psychosis? PTSD? It made her an unreliable narrator, but in a slightly cheap way that made me feel tricked. I prefer the more subtle doubts whether a character is telling the truth than the “but the previous chapter was just one of her hallucinations” kind.
*) Most of the book is written from Charlie’s POV, but for a few pages here and there we get someone else’s perspective, which was strange. It also didn’t end up fitting in well with the roles those characters played in the end.
*) I would have liked to feel more of a sense of danger from Josh/Jake and the scenes in the car than mild curiosity about his character. I couldn’t stop comparing this book to Paullina Simons’ novel 11 Hours, where the sense of danger and claustrophobia increased dramatically as the journey went on and I feared for the life of the main character at the hands of her abductor.
*) My main gripe with Sager’s portrayal of young women characters is that they all fit into the stereotype of being “not like other girls” and yet somehow lack personality. I didn’t find Charlie all that well developed as a character, i.e. I never really understood her motivations or decision making processes, or her over-the-top guilt for leaving a party early she didn’t want to go to in the first place. But maybe I am a couple of generations too old for this type of story (even though I was in my wee youth in the 90’s and related to other aspects of the era just fine).

The ending was fairly predictable for me, but luckily there was a clever little twist at the end that created a more unique and unusual spin to an otherwise run-of-the-mill type of story.

All in all, SURVIVE THE NIGHT is the kind of easy popcorn read you can devour in a single sitting on a plane or on the beach. It is definitely more rewarding if you go with the movie theme and see it roll out in your head like the screenplay it is formatted as – that way Charlie’s “movies in her head” may also make more sense. Even though I think that Sager’s books are written to a different audience than me, I still find myself weirdly drawn to them. So if you, too, suffer from FOMO then you best give in to the hype and judge for yourself.

This book was such a wild ride (pun intended)! It was not as good as his previous two books, and more similar in tone to Final Girls, but it still lived up to my expectations.

Set in the course of a single night, this is the perfect book to read all in one-sitting. It kept my interest the whole time and I couldn't put it down, I just had to know what would happen. The story took a lot of unexpected turns and the twists, while on retrospect not so groundbreaking, were a surprise for me, which made the experience even more fun.

Another thing which made the book very enjoyable was the unreliability of Charlie, the main character, who sometimes zones out and "sees movies in her head", to cope with her different traumas. I know the unreliable narrator is overdone lately, but I still enjoy it very much.

I must say there were things which didn't entirely make sense, and you'd definitely need to suspend your disbelief to enjoy the story, but as a fast-paced, thrilling read it worked really well for me.

This is the latest Riley Sager psychological thriller set in the 1990s featuring an interesting unreliable narrator, the traumatised Charlie Jordan, a film obsessed New Jersey student, whose mind is exhibiting cracks when her room mate Maddy becomes the victim of the terrifying Campus Killer. Laden down with grief and guilt, she is struggling to cope and wants to go back home to Ohio and decides to go with Josh Baxter returning to look after his sick father. They are going to be travelling for the many hours it takes, sharing a car, with Charlie knowing nothing about Josh, I can only assume her current state of mind is so skewered that she is unable think rationally. As the journey continues, Charlie begins to become suspicious of Josh, who exactly is he, is he even a student?

Obviously the central troubling question is could he be the Campus Killer? Charlie's is not helped by her constructing movies in her mind, making it hard to differentiate between realities and dangers she faces and the mental fiction painted in her head as a cat and mouse game develops. Will Charlie survive the night? This is an entertaining read, although it requires a suspension of disbelief to really enjoy it. Being set in the 1990s, we trawl through 90s culture and movies, and, of course, the technology of the time, there are no mobile phones for the troubled Charlie to help her. I found this to be an engaging read, but it is not my favourite Riley Sager novel. Many fans of the crime and mystery genre are likely to appreciate this dark, tense, twisted and suspenseful thriller. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC..

What can I say…..in fitting with the plot, this book needs to be made into a film!
Absolutely loved it from start to finish. I always see the twist coming in thrillers but not this time which was an excellent surprise.
My first Riley Sager book but certainly not the last.
#SurviveTheNight
#NetGalley

What an absolute rush. This book was phenomenal start to finish. I adore this author and this book did not disappoint. Fast paced and full of terror. Crazy plot twists and turns. My heart was pounding like crazy through the last half of this book. It is so well written you feel like you know the characters and you feel their terror. Once you start this book you will not be able to put it down. This is one of my favourite books this year! Absolutely jaw droppingly amazing!

CONTAINS SPOILERS AHEAD


Riley darling what is this?!!!


Firstly I want to say I've enjoyed all the other Riley Sager books I've read so far, the only one I'm yet to read is Lock Every door and I've heard great things about that one so I'm a fan of his work.
This novel however I'm not even sure it's worth the two stars I'm giving it and that may sound harsh but I have valid reasons why this book did not work for me at all.

1) our main girl is one of the stupidest main characters I've ever read from before and yes I understand she's been through traumatic events which affect her mental state but getting into a car with a strange man when there is a killer on the loose is not something anyone with sense does.

2) ``she's not like other girls`` this just makes me want to roll my eyes how her love for movies made her seem like she not like other girls, news flash lots of women like movies!!!

3)gaslighting and creepyness of the main guy who just because he doesn't turn out to be who she thought he was she marries later in the book.... Like no

4) a elderly sick lady being able to lift and tie up a fully grown woman? This just doesn't seem realistic

5) twists that everyone saw a mile of along with the unreliable narrator, this has been done way to many times and was just boring.

The only reason I give this book two stars is because I read it pretty quickly, Rileys writing is fast past and I did enjoy some of the movie talk throughout but this just wasn't the book for me

I've never read a Riley Sager before so I was really excited to get started on this. The concept of the book was so cool I really liked that it was 2 people trapped in a car trying to figure each other out, I also really liked the reveal at the end and felt it actually made alot of sense due to the writting style and plot. There was alot I didn't enjoy about this book though, the main character Charlie was a very annoying character to me she came off as trying so hard to be diffirent and being a bit of a manic pixi dream girl which I don't like at all. I was also disappointed with the mental health representation in the novel and I hate when media uses coming off meds unsafely as a device to move the plot along. This really put me off the book and I felt like it wasnt a great choice to have Charlie make at all. I didn't like the constant name dropping of films and songs throughout the book either, it would be diffirent if it was a nod to it but it wasn't it was just a list of stuff I think the author thought people would find so cool.

Wow, what a journey!

This was the first Riley Sager book I’ve ever read and it most certainly won’t be my last. What a great author and story teller!
I was completely gripped, particularly during the second half and I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen.

This is a fantastic page turner full of wonderful characters and unexpected twists. I raced through it as I couldn’t put it down, my anxiety levels were through the roof.
I’ll be recommending this book to everyone who likes a tense and dark read as much as me.

I read this book in one night! I couldn't put it down. The journey of Charlie wanting to get home and her spiralling mental health making her question what is real and what isn't was gripping, however the end for me felt rushed. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this great book 😀

This book takes you on a journey, following Charlie as she shares a ride home with a stranger. Survive the Night is cinematic in many ways, it’s theme, it’s scale, it’s twists and turns and it’s style.
It really works, however was not quite what I expected when I started to read.
The story itself is interesting and it does create suspense and intrigue, however I found parts of the narrative slightly jarring and on rare occasions I found it to take away from my enjoyment. I think this is personal preference however as other readers might embrace the style. On the whole it is very well thought out and a solid thriller.

This book is calling out to be made into a movie! I was gripped - there are so many twists and turns! The setting is very immediate, I felt like I was in the backseat of the car peeping between the seats as Charlie and Josh exchanged awkward small talk, and I wanted to yell at her for some of her decision making. All is not what is seems though…

I read this book in two days, and then re-read the last few pages, pondering whether to go for 3 or 4 stars…. I think 3.5 stars is my true rating, but I rounded up to 4.

If you’re looking for a rip-racing thriller and are happy to suspend your disbelief in parts and just enjoy the ride, Survive The Night is the book for you.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Reviewed on Goodreads - 4 stars. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55628983-survive-the-night