Finished Survive the Night by Riley Sager. I received a copy for review.
Summary (from Goodreads):
“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.”
I’ve been a fan of Riley Sager’s for years, ever since I read his first book. I’ve enjoyed all of them; this one is my favorite.
A big part of it is the fact that Charlie loves old movies (like I do) and I enjoyed all the references she made. (I haven’t seen Shadow of a Doubt yet, but I hope to fix that soon, ideally this very weekend.) Like Charlie, I also tend to process things with movie references and I definitely over-related.
But a lot of it is also the situation she’s in. She may or may not be in the car with a serial killer. And it’s the early 1990s, so her options aren’t great. She can’t send a pin with her address to anyone or sneakily call 911 or even make sure anyone knows where she is and who she’s with. All she has to rely on is herself.
As you would expect, there are a ton of twists, turns and red herrings. I didn’t expect any of them and it was the best ride I could possibly imagine. Highly recommended.
