Survive the Night By: Riley Sager

“They’ve reached Interstate 80.

The road that will take them out of New Jersey, all the way across Pennsylvania, and into Ohio.

And Charlie has no idea who the man driving her there really is.”

Riley Sager, Survive the Night

*This review contains spoilers

I usually refrain from spoilers in reviews but this book would be very difficult to go through without them so I’m going to break my own rule for this one.

Do you ever daydream about something that happened in the past or something you are hoping will happen in the future? Supposedly you can change your memories by running a different scenario in your head over and over again. I have an ex that will swear to you things occurred very differently from what I remember to be true.

The tension created in this novel is because of that unreliable memory. Are things really what they appear to be or did you trick yourself into believing a lie?

Overview: Charlie desperately needs to get out of town following the brutal murder of her best friend Maddy by a local serial killer. While posting a notice on her schools ride share board, she runs into another student Josh, who just so happens to be leaving the next day.

During their ride, Charlie can’t help but feel that Josh isn’t being completely honest with her about his background and intentions. But after the all the trauma she has been through in the last few months, is Charlie imaging the warning signs or is she really in danger?

My thoughts: This is the tensest book I’ve read in a very long time. You have no idea what’s real and what is in Charlie’s imagination for the first two-thirds of the book.

The early nineties setting adds to the tension because their is no internet to look someone up on or a cell phone to immediately call for help. It is so easy for us in 2021 to say that we would not have gotten in the car but I’ve been told that this was a different time. I was barely born when this book takes place so I can’t really comment on whether that is true or not.

Charlie has so many opportunities to escape but can’t bring herself to do it. As women we are taught to be polite and are so afraid of upsetting someone or hurting their feelings that we allow ourselves to stay in uncomfortable situations without saying anything. Being in Charlie’s head, the reader is alerted to the red flags in real time and the unsettledness builds through you as it does Charlie. But if she were to listen to her own warning sirens going off in her head, we wouldn’t have a book now would we?

I did have a problem with some of the plot points towards the end. I mean seriously, she couldn’t take on a grandmother? Let’s do some math. Charlie is 20 meaning that Maddy’s mother would be conservatively around 40 give or take a few years and Maddy’s grandmother would then be about 60. You can’t overpower a 60 year old woman who has terminal cancer? Really?

I also have a hard time believing that she didn’t recognize her own boyfriend the night Maddy died. The look on Maddy’s face when she saw him should have given it away. She should have been able to tell that the look on her face was that of recognization and not admiration. After all Charlie watches so many movies and claims to recognize all the nuances, she really couldn’t pick up on that?

I’ve read a lot of reviews that tear this book apart because of how unrealistic this situation is or how campy it feels and I think that’s the whole point. Sager wrote a book that is supposed to be a movie that the main character is watching after the events actually took place. Of course it’s campy because some director has changed parts of the story to be more appealing to audiences. If the author had wrote the book as if it were Charlie telling the story, it would be very different and that is the whole point of the book. How many times do you say, “well, the book was better than the movie”? Survive the Night makes fun of the trope by making the book the movie and not giving that power to someone to change it for them. It is a mockery of people taking books and turning them into movies that are so dramatically different from that actual story and that is something that I have never seen before.

Overall, I really enjoyed the read. I think the realization that this is a movie the whole time allows for you to forgive some of the messier plot points but I understand some of the criticism.

Rating: 4/5