Published: June 29, 2021

Dutton Books

This book was an add-on through Book of the Month.

Riley Sager is the pen name of a former journalist from Princeton, New Jersey. His first novel, Final Girls, was a national and international bestseller that has been published in more than two dozen countries and won the ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel. Sager’s subsequent novels The Last Time I Lied, Lock Every Door, Home Before Dark, which received the Crimson Scribe Award by Suspense Magazine, and, most recently, Survive the Night, were New York Times bestsellers. His sixth novel, The House Across the Lake, is forthcoming in Summer 2022.

“None of it might have happened. Or all of it might have happened.”

Charlie has a deep passion for movies. She knows and sees them all. She can quote the classics, and films became her solace during a profoundly emotional time in her life; after experiencing another tragedy while at college, Charlie just wants to go home. So she signs up for a ride-share on a bulletin board at school. The guy who offers her a lift seems normal enough… but then again, so did Norman Bates.

Whoa. This was quite the ride. The first half of the book is fairly slow, laying the storyline deep in your mind. And just when you aren’t sure things are going to happen- things happen.

A lot of chaos happens at once, and suddenly the last half of the novel flies by because you literally cannot stop and have to know what happens.

I did not expect this ending. Part of me had a small idea that I had figured it out, but boy was I wrong.

This was a grab you by the throat and squeeze until you’re about to pass out read. Riley Sager has, once again, given us an utterly twisted, terrifying book that will leave you absolutely stunned.