Survive the Night: A Novel

4 4 out of 5 stars | 10,118 ratings

Price: 15.75

Last update: 01-02-2025


About this item

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

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.


Top reviews from the United States

  • K. Apgar
    5.0 out of 5 stars This book flew!
    Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2024
    Charlie loves movies. She loves them so much that they can invade her real life in the form of visions that embellish the reality surrounding her. But to everyone else, it looks like she's spacing out. But that's her escape from reality. A reality that includes the death of her parents in a car accident a few years earlier and the murder of her college roommate and best friend a mere month prior to the start of this book. Just when she thought she might be able to navigate thus new normal, she realizes she can't and decides to leave school and go home to Ohio. But to do that, she needs a ride since she gave up driving after her parents' accident. While posting to a ride board on her campus, she meets Josh, a good-looking guy she's never seen before who just so happens to be going the same direction. But who is Josh and, in light if all that has happened and that her roommate's killer is still at large, should Charlie trust him.

    I prepress several reviews of this book to get an idea what the book might be like. No spoilers, just about style and whatnot. I do agree with those who call Charlie an unreliable narrator. Given her visions, she is and I think that lends a lot of suspense to the story. We are also being gaslighted almost every step of the way through this book, but I liked it. It was a great read that flew by for me in under a week (a recent record for me for a novel) and I'm definitely going to check out more of Sager's books.
  • Gabrielle Grosbety
    4.0 out of 5 stars Brimming with neon-tinted, 90s nostalgia and a good old-fashioned unreliable narrator
    Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2022
    3.5 stars rounded up ☆

    “Charlie’s tempted to tell him everything. The darkness, the close quarters, the warmth—all of it sustains her confessional mood.”

    The lights go down to reveal a night plunged in darkness and nervous, charged expectancy for what is to come. Perhaps a cinematic night is about to unfold with the potent color, music, and nostalgia of the 90s, which Riley Sager captures moodily and richly in all its overwhelmingly neon-tinted, climactic glory. Once the scene is set, Charlie, our protagonist and certified movie aficionado, is looking for a ride back to Ohio where she can escape the suffocation of the past and her guilt that haunts her like a persistent ghost always waiting in the wings to attack. Her best friend, Maddy, has recently been killed by the Campus Killer, and she shoulders a majority of the blame for throwing out words she doesn’t mean in a heated moment of no-return and leaving her in a time of need.

    So, not being able to wait a second more, she ventures to the ride-share board in hopes of finding someone to take her home to where Nana Norma waits and they can get lost in a movie-induced haze to forget their troubles. Enter in Josh Baxter, with his mega-watt, killer (could this be literal or figurative?!) smile and Olyphant Sweatshirt, which must promise safety if he’s associated with Charlie’s university, right? As luck would have it, he’s headed in the same direction and is willing to drive her to her destination, but, you guessed it, their trip predictably gets madly side-tracked along the way as we’re led to question if Josh is truly who he says he is or in fact the infamous killer on the loose? Will either he or Charlie see the light of day? The darkness holds you captive as spectator, as it houses secrets and encourages confessional outpourings.

    “That’s the best way to describe daily existence, with its endless parade of drudgeries and disappointments. In real life, people don’t break into song. They don’t battle space monsters. And they certainly don’t unwittingly get into the car with serial killers.”

    And throw in the fact that Charlie becomes an unreliable narrator who can’t tell the fiction of the movie scenes she creates in her mind, blacking out à la Norman Bates, and reality apart. This part for me got muddled because it felt maddening rather than an added interesting layer to the story because of how wildly it swung in many different directions that felt too self-referential and frustrating to decode as reality completely folded in on itself. I lost truth where I needed it, which perhaps was part of the point, but, at moments, it went a smidge too far. There were also unbelievable tonal shifts in certain scenes that made it hard to understand why certain characters acted in certain ways or made certain decisions in specific moments, specifically Josh and Charlie. However, I didn’t find Charlie nearly as gullible and insufferable as Lora, the narrator of Cover Story, the last novel I read, even if she naively still stumbles into a stranger’s car when the Campus Killer is in their midst. She does question and second guess for longer periods of time, unlike Lora, who just accepted and trusted pretty mindlessly.

    “And if Charlie’s learned anything from the movies, it’s that few things are more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose.”

    All in all, it was still a thrilling ride of cat-and-mouse, menacing predator and challenged prey, gaslighter and gaslightee, even if the latter half of the story lost some of the momentum that the exciting beginning had promised. I just wonder who you’ll wind up trusting. When trust can be few and far between in these loaded moments and ongoing swells of emotions that have the ammunition of Josh’s car speeding recklessly through the night, threatening, in reverse fashion of the usual expression, that the devil you do know, contrarily, may be worse than the devil you don’t.
  • Ann M Schreiber
    3.0 out of 5 stars Could that girl have made any more bad decisions?
    Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2024
    This was my first Riley Sager book, and while I was not disappointed in the story, I really disliked the main character. It was almost like if there was any bad decision she could make, she would make it. I prefer books with strong women. That said, the story did keep me engaged, and I didn't expect what would play out in the end. I'll definitely try more of Riley's books in the future.
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    Ann M Schreiber
    3.0 out of 5 stars Could that girl have made any more bad decisions?
    Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2024
    This was my first Riley Sager book, and while I was not disappointed in the story, I really disliked the main character. It was almost like if there was any bad decision she could make, she would make it. I prefer books with strong women. That said, the story did keep me engaged, and I didn't expect what would play out in the end. I'll definitely try more of Riley's books in the future.
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  • Mommy NYC
    5.0 out of 5 stars Addictive Read! Loved it!
    Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2024
    Love this author. I loved the twists and turns along with how this book wrapped up at the end! I kept flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen next. I would definitely recommend.
  • Emma
    4.0 out of 5 stars Different cover and slightly damaged
    Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2024
    I have not read the book, but I loved Riley sager, so I surmise the book will be amazing. I had to rate this a four star, as the cover of the book was different from the picture. I do like the cover I received better, but it is not what I ordered. Also, the book had white marks and scratches all over it. I do not mind these things, but you might, so I felt the need to share. The book arrived quickly, and there is nothing wrong with any of the pages, so I believe this deserved a 4 out of 5 stars.
  • T. Carter
    5.0 out of 5 stars Twisty! Loved it.
    Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2024
    I absolutely loved "Survive the Night" by Riley Sager! Already a big fan, I found this book to be an amazing story that I just couldn't put down.
    The protagonist, Charlie, is a college student grappling with the trauma of her roommate's murder by a serial killer, all while dealing with severe mental health issues. Charlie has a unique quirk: she often sees movies in her head and struggles to distinguish between reality and her imagination. As she decides to leave college for good, Charlie finds a ride share to get home.
    However, it doesn't take long for her to suspect that the driver might not be who he claims to be—and even worse, he might be the very serial killer she's been running from. The book's twists and turns will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page. It was a wild ride that I absolutely loved!

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