Survive the Night by Riley Sager
Publisher: Dutton (Penguin Random House) 
Pub Date: 6/29/2021

Disclaimer: I received a free advanced copy of this book from Dutton (Penguin Random House) in exchange for my honest opinion. This has no effect on my opinion, review, or rating.

GoodReads Synopsis: 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.

Review: I’m a huge Riley Sager fan so I was ecstatic to hear he releasing a new book this year, Survive the Night.  This thriller takes place in the ‘90s and dives into cat-and-mouse chase, grief, guilt, and instinct. I really loved the concept and plot of this book, but unfortunately, the execution fell a bit flat for me which is surprising because I loved Riley’s previous books. I noticed in the beginning I kept comparing this book to No Exit by Taylor Adams which is unfair since they are different type of books but they both involve abduction and takes place in the winter. The beginning of the book was a bit slow for me, but as we got 60% through, I found Riley Sager’s familiar adrenaline type writing which I love. I found Charlie’s character to be a bit dull, but I liked the complexity of the other characters. Overall, this was a 3.5 star read which I rounded to 4 stars. I’d recommend this book to fans who love Riley Sager’s work.