Enjoy For Free Survive The Night Scripted By Riley Sager Presented In Multimedia Book

this was a shitshow full of mad people, And I don't mean it in a good way,

Let me start this review on a positive note,
As Riley Sager is a best selling author, I expected to like his writing style, and although I wasn't a fan of all the things he has written in this particular novel, I do admit that his words are easy to follow and the book reads easy and fast.

To give you and example how fast it reads, I will just say that it was our August pick for our book club and instead of planned, it took us onlydays to finish.


The premise was promising, but with all the negative reviews appearing I didn't have too high expectations.

However, I did expect to be fascinated with Josh's character because of one BookTube review but that didn't happen.

Also, in one of my Goodreads friend's review I read that Charlie is one of the stupidest characters ever written, and after I finished Survive the Night, Iunderstand why my friend feels that way.
I also agree with her, to some point,
It is hard to root for someone who acts so against their well being,
If I am being honest, one part of me even wanted for her not to survive the night.


As for the big relevation I wasn't surprised at all, as the author gave us only few characters in the whole story, there weren't much choices to chose our suspect from.


Last thing I want to mention is how I am not happy with the way mental illness was handled.

We never got the answer what Charlie's diagnosis were, the author almost approached it as some kind of superpower, at some parts it felt like it was used just to mess with our mind and one chapter closer to the end reminded me of the way mental illness was handled in the history, when ppl in mental hospitals were put under electricity hamlets to be cured.

That chapter left bad taste in my mouth,

In the end I will just say that I am still eager to read Riley's book called Lock Every Door, and this one I will just pretend it wasn't written by him.
One of my most anticipated books of the year!! I love Riley Sager!! I hated this book



Mel It's the's.
Charlie is looking for a ride to her hometown in Ohio when she meets Josh at the ride board going in the same direction.
When Charlie hops in the car, she starts to think that Josh might just be The Campus Killer who has recently claimed the lives of some women at her university.
Will Charlie survive this car ride

Ugh, this review is extremely difficult for me to write, because I am seriously Riley Sager'sfan.
I preordered this months in advance, I even ended up with a signed copy, and the author sent me a faceplate in the mail.
He is pretty active on Twitter, and he has acknowledged my support on several occasions, We are also friends of friends so this is a total awkward turtle moment,

One of the hallmarks of Riley Sager books is that they are incredibly page turning.
Also, I felt like The Last Time I Lied had a twist that I didn't see coming but made total sense.
Also, The Last Time I Lied and Home Before Dark really were so interesting because the characters were trying to remember things from the past, almost with a bit of nostalgia.
I distinctly remember being in my car listening to my audiobook, transfixed, arriving at my destination but refusing to budge.


Now, enter Survive the Night, I kept waiting for the page turning part, but I just couldn't get into it, There was too much internal dialogue with Charlie, This book didn't capture the nostalgia of the past, This book had a twist, but I figured it out fairly early on when I was thinking of who could it be.


Overall, this book just wasn't as entertaining as it should have been, The author is clearly talented, I do wonder if the editor has afraid of giving tough review notes, This book really minded me of The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman in a way that this book also did not fit into the Riley Sager brand.
It was off brand and just off, I requested this as an ARC awhile back but was rejected, I really wish that I had the opportunity to provide those review notes, because this author deserved better.


Reading Schedule
Jan Alice in Wonderland
Feb Notes from a Small Island
Mar Cloud Atlas
Apr On the Road
May The Color Purple
Jun Bleak House
Jul Bridget Joness Diary
Aug Anna Karenina
Sep The Secret History
Oct Brave New World
Nov A Confederacy of Dunces
Dec The Count of Monte Cristo

Connect With Me!
sitelinkBlog sitelinkTwitter sitelinkBookTube sitelinkFacebook sitelinkInsta im a fan of RSs books.
what i enjoy most about them is that, even if i dont care about the content, i sure do love the execution of the story.


so imagine my surprise when, for the first time, its the opposite, i absolutely love the premise/concept, but some of the execution is just okay, especially toward the end.

i will say that for a story only taking place within a timeframe ofhours, there is a lot to unpack with this.
i was never bored and i felt like i was flying through the pages, it has just enough edge to make you second guess everything you think you know,

however, the ending is a bit much, the lastfeels a little disconnected from the rest of the book and, while i understand it all, i think i would have preferred the ending playing out a bit differently.


however, this is one car ride that will for sure take you on a wild journey.


thanks so much to penguin/dutton books for the ARC!!

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stars I had fun buddyreading this with a friend, poking fun at the characters/situations, and making theories for the plot twists! Its a simple and quick read, nothing deep, but can be a fun palate cleanser inbetween dense books.


As for the quality of the book itself, my main gripe is that the author tends to overexplain everything, almost as if to fill up the book.
Every single thought or gesture is described when it doesnt need to bethis makes the writing redundant and not very creative.
There were also lots of poor decisionmaking and unbelievable motivations from various characters for the sake of having this story.
honestly pretty bad. the car scenes were kind of eerie i guess but otherwise not very well crafted, starting to think lock every door was an anomaly, need to revisit my home before dark rating Charlie Jordan is being driven across the country by a serial killer.
Maybe.

Behind the wheel is Josh Baxter, a stranger Charlie met by the college ride share board, who also has a good reason for leaving university in the middle of term.
On the road they share their stories, carefully avoiding the subject dominating the news the Campus Killer, who's tied up and stabbed three students in the span of a year, has just struck again.


Travelling the lengthy journey between university and their final destination, Charlie begins to notice discrepancies in Josh's story.


As she begins to plan her escape from the man she is becoming certain is the killer, she starts to suspect that Josh knows exactly what she's thinking.


Meaning that she could very well end up as his next victim, This is the latest Riley Sager psychological thriller set in thes 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 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 thes, we trawl throughs 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, . Tell me your book is written by a man without telling me your book was written by a man.


Survive the Night was infuriating in its complete lack of realism or common sense.
The premise is relatively simple: after the death of her friend, a college student decides to return home to grieve and process the trauma.
What astounds me is the complete lack of any common sense that follows: Charlie willingly decides to get into a crosscountry car trip with a frightening stranger who, upon their first meeting in his car, immediately demonstrates he can't be trusted.
. . while the college campus is actively being plagued by a serial killer who preys on young women.


The fact that Charlie only considers that this menacing and untrustworthy stranger who almost instantly reveals he's lied to her to get her into his car could be a murderer or rapist half way into the novel was the most jarring, hamfisted "revelation" I've seen in a long time.
There is no woman on earth with half a working braincell for whom this shit isn't immediately obvious.
The irony here is that I'm sure a large measure of Charlie's painful obliviousness would have actually made more sense if she were a young man: because men are conditioned to seldom see themselves as victims of potential sexual or gendered violence, they're encouraged and even expected to make riskier choices.
When you don't see yourself as someone who can be assaulted, you don't navigate the world thinking it's a possibility for you.
I don't think we need more horror or suspense stories that necessitate a woman feeling threatened by the possibility of rape or gender violence, but there are infinitely better ways to go about this tired concept.
I sorely wish that this book had been, in some demonstrative way, informed by the experiences and insights of women who have, y'know, some basic grasp of reality.


There's a moment in Survive the Night in which Charlie realizes she can safely escape the predator and get help.
She instead decides against her own safety and gets back into a car with him because she suddenly decides to become a "femme fatale" this is, unfortunately, a quote who extracts revenge on him for his menacing behaviors and misdeeds.
At this point, I just about chucked my eReader across the room with a ferocity that would've given Tom Brady a run for his money.
It's a baffling choice in characterization, almost as bizarre as Charlie's obnoxious and incredibly unrealistic way of jamming film trivia into just about every moment of casual conversation.
At this point, I thought to myself: maybe some people deserve to get axed actually.


As others have remarked, the last quarter of the novel really jumps the shark which, considering the absurdity of the previous threequarters of the book, is a real feat in aerobatics.
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