Publisher: Dutton Books
Published: June 29, 2021
Source: Publisher
Summary:
It’s November 1991. George H. W. Bush is in the White House, Nirvana’s in the tape deck, 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 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. Like the Hitchcock heroine she’s named after, Charlie has her doubts. There’s something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn’t seem to want Charlie to see inside the car’s trunk. As they travel an empty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly worried Charlie begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie’s suspicion merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?
What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse played out on night-shrouded roads and in neon-lit parking lots, during an age when the only call for help can be made on a pay phone and in a place where there’s nowhere to run. In order to win, Charlie must do one thing–survive the night.
My thoughts:
Each time I pick up a new Riley Sager book, I wonder how it is going to compare to the last one because inevitably each new one becomes my new favorite. And once again, he continues to prove his track record because this one is yet again a winner and my now new favorite!
I don’t know what it is about his books that immediately grab me and keep me glued to the pages, but this latest one was sure a fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled read that I ended up reading in 2 sittings. I absolutely loved the 90’s nostalgia and while I am not a huge music fan, I appreciated the Nirvana songs and all the horror movie references. Incidentally – I can read all the scary and crazy books but watching them is a completely different story!
This book kept me on my toes the entire time. I thought I had things worked out, and yet the twists that kept coming in that second half just blew me away. My jaw just kept dropping and I’m pretty sure I gasped out loud a few times! This is the perfect summer read – it keeps you flipping those pages and has just the perfect amount of creepiness to unsettle you without completely scaring the crap out of you. I loved it!!!
