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  • Survive the Night

  • A Novel
  • Written by: Riley Sager
  • Narrated by: Savannah Gilmore
  • Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (111 ratings)

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Survive the Night cover art

Survive the Night

Written by: Riley Sager
Narrated by: Savannah Gilmore
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Publisher's Summary

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

One of New York Times Book Review's "summer reads guaranteed to make your heart thump and your skin crawl"; An Amazon Best of the Month Pick; Named a must-read summer book by The Washington Post, USA Today, Vulture, BuzzFeed, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, CNN, New York Post, Good Housekeeping, E!, PopSugar, CrimeReads, Thrillist, and BookRiot

It’s November 1991. Nirvana's in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, 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 shocking 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. 

The longer she sits in the passenger seat, the more Charlie notices there’s something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn’t want her to see inside the trunk. As they travel an empty, twisty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly anxious Charlie begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie’s jittery mistrust merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?

One thing is certain - Charlie has nowhere to run and no way to call for help. Trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse played out on pitch-black roads and in neon-lit parking lots, Charlie knows the only way to win is to survive the night.

©2021 Riley Sager (P)2021 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

"This tale almost reads as an allegory for the lofty demands set upon women, particularly during the young adult years, albeit with an R.L. Stine ‘Fear Street’ feel, mixed with Hitchcockian noir and all the top music numbers of the nineties.... And it wouldn’t be a Sager novel without an ode to films woven throughout, plus multiple twists along the way....The novel satisfies like a summer blockbuster, nearly demands you stay until the final scenes and the lights come up.” (USA Today)

“A fast-paced, twisty thriller.... A first-rate read.... But then, with four final pages, Sager reveals a final surprise that is stunning yet somehow feels exactly right.” (Associated Press)

“With every mile, the tension rises toward a deliciously unbearable pitch.” (Good Housekeeping)

What listeners say about Survive the Night

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Dumb heroine, stupid plot

Wow this was a total waste of time. This is nothing like Riley Sager's two previous novels, and absolutely terrible, playing into shitty tropes and not even tryinf to subvert them.

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3 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

ok

movies in my mind repeated 2000 times makes me go mad try synonyms next time

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Welp, It's Not Unlistenable...

I hate to be negative, but this audiobook kinda sucks. The characters aren't especially likeable or believable, and the author spends an awful lot of time and effort trying to justify their questionable choices.

The narrator, meanwhile, does nothing to salvage the barely-credible plot. She has an annoying habit of overannunciation (e.g., hitting the 't' sound real hard in a word like 'exacTLy' or 'geTTing').

Having said that, I finished it, so it's not like it was unlistenable, but that's about as much praise as I'm willing to give this audiobook.

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2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Impressed

It kept me listening day after day. The parts in the story I was getting tired of were there to drive important points later on. The narration was well done but half the book I put on x1.2 - because she’s a slow talker and cause that’s when the story gets really good.

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1 person found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Meh

Frustratingly predictable and an eye roll of a book.
"Movie in her mind" 🙄

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent listen

Loved this book !
This book was full of twists and turns, couldn’t wait to finish it!

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

what a wild ride

This book was a wild ride. I honestly don't know if I love it or am just so bemused that I can't help appreciating it for just how bizarre it was. This is the first book I have read/ listened to by this author. Half way through the book I found myself saying aloud, "yeah, so we won't be reading anything else by this guy." I've now changed my mind. I will be checking out more of this author's books. This was ultimately a fun listen.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great twist and turns

I loved the how I didn’t know where the story was going. Not predictable at all. Had me at the edge of my seat every page. Highly recommend to thriller lovers.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

"iNsAnE narrator" is an excuse for poor motivation

Uses the "All Just A Dream" trope. The unreliable narrator really makes this whole story pointless; what's the point of listening to a series of events that might not be happening and only serves to make the narrator seem crazy and unreliable? Additionally, it all starts with "I stopped taking my cRaZy PiLLs", really reinforcing that she has a mental illness and nothing she experiences can be trusted. She also does the opposite of everything someone who wanted live would do which is frustrating to no end. When people with mental illness do something illogical to us, they usually have an internal motivation that fits the reality they're experiencing but hers were so weak it was frustrating. I wish the narrator had more solid motivations and logic, even if they weren't grounded in reality. I liked some of this author's other books but I wish I had skipped this one.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Hard to believe

This is my first review I have ever written and it is unfortunate that it is to say how much I disliked this book. I found the main character annoying and without any qualities I could like or admire. I found every single character unlikeable actually, and so many of the events unbelievable. I forced myself to finish it in the hoped it would get better—it didn’t.

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