Survive the Night by Riley Sager

 

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Survive the Night 
Author: Riley Sager
Release Date: 6.29.21
Publisher: Dutton


Publisher's Summary
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?

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.


My Review
Blaming herself for the death of her roommate by the Campus Killer, Charlie Jordan decides to abruptly leave her New Jersey university in the middle of a semester. Initially thankful to have found a ride home to Ohio through a ride board, Charlie begins to suspect that the stranger she is sharing the car with may not simply be a university janitor—he may be the Campus Killer. 

Here we go...I did not like this book. I have tried to read another Sager novel and I really want to like them but I just don't think they're for me. I understand that as readers we have to suspend belief, but I just couldn't get over the fact that immediately following the death of her roommate Charlie decides to hitch a ride cross country with a stranger. Add to this the unreliable female narrator trope and I'm out. I knew these things going in but somehow I thought the story would overpower me and I'd be hooked. Not the case. I won't be rating this book because I really think this is a case of it's not the book, it's me.