Review: Survive the Night by Riley Sager

Author: Riley Sager
Publisher: Dutton Books
Publication Date: June 2021

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.

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 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. Like the Hitchcock heroine she's named after, Charlie has her doubts. There's something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn't seem to want Charlie to see inside the car's trunk. As they travel an empty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly worried Charlie begins to think she's sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie's suspicion merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?

Survive the Night is the latest offering from Riley Sager.  He is definitely one of my go to thriller authors now.  Charlie is still traumatized over the death of her college roommate.  Unable to cope, she decides to leave college and her boyfriend early and head home before the Thanksgiving break.  Her ride share partner, Josh, seems a bit fishy. But is it her imagination or he just a nice guy giving her a ride?

I really enjoyed this one.  One of my favorite things about thrillers is when there is an unreliable narrator.  Charlie has a wild imagination and often slips into seeing movies in her mind.  For most of the book, I never knew if she was imagining things or seeing reality.  It kept me on my toes.  I won't talk plot too much.  This is a book you are better off going in not knowing much.  There are a few twists.  One of them I did call very early on.  But the rest took me by surprise. and I loved the ending.   My only complaint was the amount of time that was put into reminding me it was the early 90s.  You all know I'm not a fan of pop culture references. But that is a "me" problem.   Despite that, I highly recommend this one.  I can't wait to see what this author comes up with next.