Title: Survive the Night
Author: Riley Sager
Genre: thriller
I’ve read all of Riley Sager’s books. Lock Every Door was my favorite. It was just so bonkers. But the rest have been really good and compelling. This book, though. Ugh. From the get-go, it was preposterous. I was so disappointed. The plot was fine, a girl trying to get through the night with this “mystery” guy, but the details were so ridiculous and unbelievable. Bummer because I was really looking forward to this.
From Goodreads: 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?
What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse played out on night-shrouded roads and in neon-lit parking lots, during an age when the only call for help can be made on a pay phone and in a place where there’s nowhere to run. In order to win, Charlie must do one thing–survive the night.
First of all, there is NO WAY Charlie would have gotten a ride from a stranger after what she’s been through. It was wholly unbelievable. The reason she couldn’t have waited two days for her boyfriend to give her a ride was absurd. Charlie also sees movies in her mind. Like she blacks out to the real world and goes into a sort of hallucination and sees a movie, based on real events, playing out. W. T. F. Just ridiculous and unbelievable. It’s like Sager said, how can I make this movie-loving girl more vulnerable… oh I know, let’s give her some mental instability that will play right in to my plot. If you want to read a good road trip thriller, check out No Exit or I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Both do this fabulously and have their own interesting take on the situation. I gave this one three stars because I did finish it and want to see what became of Charlie, but it was just too stupid to give it anything more.
Pleasant Nights 