In other instances, they are as inevitable as the denouement of a Greek tragedy. When these dramatic turns are genuinely surprising, it’s because they are absurdly baroque. The back end, though, is filled with twists. This feels like a lot of time to spend establishing something that every reader is going to assume. It doesn’t seem reasonable at all, but this is what has to happen if Sager is going to write the story he wants to write, so….The whole first half of the novel is Charlie discovering that her driver may not be who he says he is, that he may plan to do her harm. In the opening pages, she spends a lot of time wondering if it seems reasonable for a young woman who just lost her friend to a serial killer to travel across two states with a man she’s never met.

She’s a heroine who doesn’t seem much interested in self-preservation another way to put that is that she behaves in ways that are astonishingly stupid-again and again and again. Sager’s fans may also recognize that Charlie fits a type. Here, the whole narrative unfolds over one long, eventful night in 1991. This is Sager’s fifth novel, and readers familiar with his brand of psychological horror know that he favors high-concept plots. She’s posting a flyer looking for someone to give her a ride home when she meets a stranger who just happens to be going her way. A hellish road trip from the author of Home Before Dark (2020) and Lock Every Door (2019).Īfter her roommate and best friend is murdered, Charlie Jordan decides that she has to get away from Olyphant University.

Survive the night a novel riley sager