Review | Survive the Night

Title: Survive the Night by Riley Sagar

Date Published: June 29th, 2021

Dates Read: September 9th - 11th, 2021

Current Goodreads Rating: 3.55/5

Look, I'm just going to come right out and say it: I don't think I can read books written by men anymore. There's just something about female authors that is so authentic and something that just isn't with male authors. If you've ever read a Buzzfeed article that lists all of the heinous ways that men have written female characters you would understand why I'm making this statement. Men have no idea how to write women.

That being said, Riley Sagar is not the worst of the male authors I've read in my time. Thankfully he didn't put any needless verbage about Survive the Night's main character's breasts or something, but a large part as to why I didn't fully enjoy this book was because, as a woman, I did not believe that another woman would behave the way that Charlie Jordan behaves. But that's just me and maybe I'm being too harsh.

Let's get into it.

Ok, so what happens? There's a serial killer on the loose at Charlie's university and this time he has struck too close to home. Weeks after Charlie's best friend is murdered by the Campus Killer, Charlie has decided that she has had enough. She can't look at the empty bed across her dorm or relive memories on campus and so she is ready to go home.

After placing a wanted ad in the hallway of her dorm, Charlie meets Josh, a stranger who just so happens to be driving her way. Taking a chance she agrees to hitch a ride with him for a midnight drive across the country. Along the way Charlie slowly starts suspect that Josh isn't everything he says he is. Could he be the Campus Killer? Could she be his next victim?

Most likely a serial killer.

Ok, so what did I think? Maybe things were different in the 90s (where this book is set), but I don't think any woman would willingly get into a car in the middle of the night with a strange man they had only met like an hour ago for a cross country road trip. I ESPECIALLY don't think any woman would willingly do that while attending a college that currently has a serial killer called "The Campus Killer" on the loose. I am never and will never be one to victim blame, but like...come on. A strange man in the middle of the night, really?

Bypassing that mythical universe that Sagar seems to live in, I actually did somewhat enjoy the first third of this book. Charlie suffers from some kind of disassociation disorder where, in times of intense emotion, her brain renders what she calls "movies" and makes it incredibly difficult for her to process events as they're happening in real time. Was there a bunch of fog on the street or did the movie cameras in Charlie's mind just think that would look very cinematic and hallucinated it for her? That kind of unreliable narration gives readers like me unstable ground. Is Josh really actually that suspicious or is Charlie, understandably emotional after losing her best friend and roommate, just hallucinating all of this evidence just to give her life some extra *s p i c e*?

But then, once the stakes are really high and the reader is really invested in whether or not Josh is a bad guy, the point of view changes. Instead of seeing through Charlie's eyes we're now seeing through Josh's and, while Sagar does his best to keep the mystery a mystery there's only so much you can hide when your reader is in the mind of the character. It doesn't take long for the mystery to be solved (is he the killer?) and for me to just lose all interest. Did I finish it? Yes, but I wasn't super happy about it.

You might be asking, Emma, if you didn't like it that much, why did you still give it four stars? And that is a very good question. If I could give a more accurate rating I'd probably say it was more like a 3.5 or 3.75/5 stars, but Goodreads doesn't have that feature. However, what I found the most redeeming quality was the epilogue that wrapped it up all together. Obviously there are spoilers ahead. After surviving her harrowing experience with the Campus Killer, Charlie sells the rights to her story to a film studio and is now rolling in cash after a successful release. It's such a perfect tie in to Charlie's mental illness as well as the chapter headings that explained the setting of each scene. It also helped me forgive the more unbelievable parts of the book as some cocky film director being a little loose with the source material. It didn't forgive it completely and honestly, whoever directed this fictional film should have realized that changing the point of view so many times would ruin the suspense.

Long Story Short:

• Women don't do things alone at night with strange men except for VERY SPECIFIC REASONS. Definitely not midnight road trips across the country.

• Don't shatter the suspense unless it has a good pay off

• What if this movie in a book becomes a movie? Then it's a movie about a book which became a movie and then became a movie. *mindblown noises*

My Rating: 4/5