You’re in the car. It’s 1991. Nirvana is blasting through the speakers, and you’re fairly certain the guy in the driver’s seat is a serial killer.
That is the high-wire act Riley Sager attempts in Survive the Night.
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Honestly, it's a polarizing book. If you've spent any time on BookTok or scrolled through the "thriller" tags on Goodreads, you know this one divides the room like nothing else. People either love the 90s nostalgia and the cinematic atmosphere, or they absolutely lose their minds over the protagonist's choices.
I’ve read every Sager book. I’ve seen the patterns. But this one? It’s different. It's a claustrophobic, hallucinatory road trip that functions more like a slasher flick than a traditional mystery.
The Setup: A Ride-Share From Hell
Charlie Jordan is a film student at Olyphant University. She’s also a mess. Her best friend, Maddy, was recently murdered by the "Campus Killer," a serial killer who has a grisly habit of taking a tooth from each victim.
Charlie feels responsible. Why? Because she saw it happen and thought it was a hallucination.
See, Charlie has this specific psychological condition she calls "going to the movies." When she’s stressed, her brain projects film-noir scenes over reality. She thinks she’s watching a movie; in reality, she’s watching her friend die.
So, she decides to drop out. She needs to get home to Ohio. She doesn't drive—trauma from a past accident involving her parents—so she hits the campus ride board. That’s where she meets Josh Baxter.
He’s a stranger. He’s charming. He’s also incredibly suspicious.
As they drive through the pitch-black night, Josh’s story starts to leak. Details don’t match. He has multiple IDs. He’s weirdly obsessed with the Campus Killer. The tension in the car becomes so thick you could cut it with a knife, or in this case, a pair of scissors Charlie finds in the glove box.
Why People Get Mad at Charlie Jordan
Let’s address the elephant in the car. Charlie makes some objectively terrible decisions.
I’ve seen reviewers call her the "stupidest protagonist in history." They point to the moment at the diner where she has a clear chance to escape and instead decides to get back into the car with a man she’s 90% sure is a murderer.
But here’s what most people get wrong: Charlie isn't meant to be a logical, "final girl" archetype in the first half of the book. She’s an unreliable narrator who doesn’t even trust her own eyes.
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Imagine you can't tell the difference between a real person and a projection of a 1940s film star. Would you trust your gut? Charlie stays in the car because she’s convinced she’s "seeing things" again. She is gaslighting herself before Josh even gets the chance.
Sager is leaning into a very specific trope here. He’s writing a 90s slasher. Think Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer. In those movies, characters do dumb things to keep the plot moving. If Charlie just called the cops at the first gas station, we wouldn't have a 300-page book. We’d have a pamphlet.
The 1991 Aesthetic and Why it Matters
The setting isn't just window dressing. It's the only way this plot survives.
- No Cell Phones: You can't just text a friend your location. You need a payphone and a handful of quarters.
- The Soundtrack: The constant references to Nirvana and the Pixies ground the story in a pre-digital gloom.
- The Vibe: There's a specific kind of isolation you could only find on a highway in 1991. No GPS. Just a paper map and the "Caution: Serial Killer" signs on the road.
If this story happened in 2026, Charlie would have shared Josh's license plate on her Instagram story and shared her "Live Location" with her boyfriend. The mystery would be over in twenty minutes. Sager uses the 90s to strip away the safety net.
The Big Twist: What Really Happened?
If you’ve read Sager before, you know the first twist is never the real twist.
Throughout Survive the Night, we’re led to believe Josh is the Campus Killer. Then we’re led to believe he’s a bounty hunter hired by Maddy’s grieving grandmother, Marge. Marge is desperate for the truth, and she thinks Charlie is hiding what she saw the night Maddy died.
It gets wild. A fire, a mountain lodge, and a lot of dental imagery.
The "holy crap" moment comes when the person you least expect—the person who has been "helping" Charlie the whole time—turns out to be the real killer. It’s Robbie. Charlie’s boyfriend.
The reveal involves a ring box full of human teeth found in a glove compartment. It’s gruesome. It’s over-the-top. It’s classic Sager.
Robbie’s motive? He thought the girls he killed were "unoriginal." He wanted to find someone "special" like Charlie. It’s that creepy, incel-adjacent logic that makes real-life killers so terrifying.
Is It Actually Worth Reading?
Look, if you need your thrillers to be 100% realistic and logically sound, you’re going to hate this book. You'll be yelling at the pages.
But if you like "popcorn thrillers"—the kind of book you read in one sitting while eating a bag of chips—it’s a blast. It’s fast. The prose is punchy. Sager knows how to end a chapter on a cliffhanger that practically forces you to keep going.
Key Takeaways for Thriller Fans:
- Trust the Genre, Not the Character: Don't expect Charlie to act like a detective. She's a trauma victim in a slasher movie.
- Watch the Teeth: Sager uses teeth as a recurring motif for a reason. Pay attention to every mention of them.
- The Meta Ending: The epilogue reveals the whole book was basically a "Hollywood-ized" version of the true events. This is Sager's way of winking at the audience, acknowledging that the story was a bit too "neat" or "dramatic."
Actionable Insights: How to Enjoy the Ride
If you’re planning to pick up Survive the Night, or if you’ve already read it and are still processing that ending, here is how to get the most out of it.
- Listen to a 90s Playlist: Put on some Nevermind or Automatic for the People. The atmosphere is half the fun.
- Look for the "Film" Cues: Every time Charlie describes a scene as if it’s a movie (black and white, dramatic lighting, etc.), assume she is missing a vital piece of real-world information.
- Compare to Sager’s Other Work: If you liked the "locked room" feel of Lock Every Door or the "final girl" tropes of his debut, you'll see how he’s evolving those themes here by putting them on wheels.
Ultimately, the book is about overcoming the "movie in your head" and facing the messy, terrifying reality of the world. Charlie starts the book as a spectator in her own life and ends it by literally driving the car into a ravine to save herself.
That’s growth. Even if it involves a few human teeth along the way.
Next Step: Pick up a copy of The Only One Left if you want to see Sager lean even harder into the Gothic atmosphere, or check out a 90s slasher movie like The Vanishing to see where he got his inspiration for the highway horror vibe.