I remember reading Sagers first book – Final Girls knowing it was a book I had to tell everyone about. I have enjoyed every book since, but I think this one is easily competing to be my favourite.
I just couldn’t stop reading, when I started the book It didn’t feel like something new, it felt easy. Sometimes the first few chapters in a book can pass really slowly because you’re learning about the world, the characters and the storyline begins to grow. This felt like I’d dived into a cool pool on a hot day, welcoming and morish.
This story is all about Charlie. She lost her parents years ago and now shes living alone on campus because her roommates been killed but the local serial killer. Charlie has a great boyfriend in Robbie who is supportive and loyal but Charlie just cant cope anymore.
She has an over active imagination which leads her to play movie style scenarios in her head, sometime the line for reality blurs a little with the imagination fairies. Charlie just wants to go home, to forget about her dead best friend, to get away from the room that they shared and the memory that they made so when she looks for a car pool home shes both relieved and cautious when a stranger offers her a ride.
Straight away we don’t want to trust him, who is he really, why cant she see in the trunk, and could he be the campus killer. The ride home is going to be longer, tense and awkward! Charlie uses her movie knowledge, and trivia to help navigate the journey that she needs to make.
Before I tell you about how much I love this book there s a few bits that didn’t sit well with me. The first is the name Robbie, I know there are other Robbies out there but for me rather than Robbie Williams or someone equally capable of being a ladies man I could only picture Robbie Fowler from Eastenders. Not Sagers fault, but it annoyed me! Secondly, and this frustrates me with so many books now, for 20 years we ve all had pones of some kind that are mobile. So its hard to imagine a world without them, or at the very least a pager. I know the book was set in the early 90’s and they weren’t something people had until later in the decade, but when it’s a real world story its just harder to imagine why you wouldn’t have a phone. So both bits are completely me and my brain. I know that, but it does make me think how inconvenient modern technology can be for authors – phones make things easier. You can follow and iPhone, or track on Google. You can send updates, for us older generation it might be by Text or Whatapp but some may choose to do this through social media. anyway – enough of my tangent.
Back to Survive the night. The story is fast paced, its clever and despite the easy potential for confusion due to Charlies movie episodes the story is easy to follow, I couldn’t read quick enough and it picks up a really good point. We often se eheadlines about women not being safe on their own, whether is dog walking, getting home from a pub or friends house or even just meeting someone new. This world feels like its becoming a scarier place all the time and what the story covers so well is the cross between neverending suspicion and fear mixed with the It’ll never happen to me. It show just that sometimes you just done know a person as well as you think you do – and having people you trust is important.
Survive the night is pencilled for release in December which makes it a brilliant stocking filler for the bookworm in your life, or something to treat yourself to..
One More Chapter 