Book Review - Middle of the Night by Riley Sager

Title: Middle of the Night
Author: Riley Sager
Genre: Mystery/ Thriller
Published: 2024
 
Description: The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had slices the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.
 
Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagues by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playin a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?
 
The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.
 
The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place – be it quiet forest or suburban street – is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.
 
Review: I’m totally up-to-date with Riley Sager’s novels, so whenever a new book comes out, I’m ready for it. Last year, his new release “The Only One Left” had me stunned. It was the last book I read in 2023 and ended up being my number one book of that year. Telling you I was excited about “Middle of the Night” was an understatement. But this book will not end up on my favorites list at the end of the year.
 
The book starts of with a young Ethan and his friend Billy, camping out in Ethan’s backyard. In the morning, there is a slash in the tent and Billy is gone, never to be found. Thirty years later, Ethan returns to his family home, being confronted with this memory. When strange things start to happen, Ethan is determined to find out what really happened that night.
 
The start of the book is strong, I was sucked it. But that didn’t last long. The book, overall, is pretty dull. Not a lot happens. And then when something exciting does happen, it only lasts a moment. And there are often these fake scares, that we also know from horror movies. When the main character hears a strange noise, thinking someone’s in the house and it turns out to be cat. Similar situations happen a lot in “Middle of the Night”.
 
WARNING!!! THE FOLLOWING MIGHT HAVE SPOILERS!!!
 
There are these “Stranger Things” vibes in the book. The childhood friendships, the 90s nostalgia (80s in the TV-show) and a mysterious institute nobody is allowed to enter or talk about. I liked that. But when we finally get a glimpse of this institute, which made me excited and felt it finally gave me what I wanted, it goes nowhere. Sager could and should have done more with this. It felt like a diversion now and the institute really only functioned as this. I really wanted to dig into this more, I wanted this to be focus of the book.
 
As for the end, it felt uninspiring and lackluster. Riley Sager can do much better and I was really disappointed. We never got that crazy twist or reveal, that I often love from him. His only book I'd rated under a 3-star was “The Final Girls”, which was a 2,5, but “Middle of the Night” is now officially my least favorite book by him. It just felt to generic and not exciting at all. I’m so sad.
 
Rating: 2/ 5

Book Review - The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

Title: The House Across the Lake
Author: Riley Sager
Genre: Thriller/ Mystery
Published: 2022
 
Description: Casey Fletcher a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing: a tech innovator, Tom is rich, and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.
 
One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other – and the longer Casey watches – it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be deceiving.
 
Review: Casey has lost her husband, is constantly drinking and lost her acting job. She is now trying to escape reality by staying at her family’s lake house. Spying on the people that live in the house across the lake, Tom and Katherine, is her idea of passing time. When one day she saves Katherine from drowning, the two become friends. When Katherine all of a sudden goes missing, Casey is sure her husband Tom has something to do with her disappearance. But the truth is much more complicated.
 
Riley Sager is a favorite for me, I have liked all but one of his books. And I can now add this one as well. I have read all of them now. The setting for me is already a win. A lake house in autumn time, with only a few people around. Casey is a complex character: she is troubled because she lost her husband Len not that long ago. She drinks a lot, but says she is not an alcoholic. And her acting career is also not going well. Because Casey is almost always intoxicated, she is an unreliable narrator. One of my favorite things in thriller books.
 
The book only has a few characters aside from Casey, but you have no idea who you can trust or not. Because, besides her next door neighbor Eli, all the people that are staying at their lake houses, are strangers for Casey.
 
People had warned me for the crazy twist in this book. And they weren’t wrong. It’s really nuts and not something you can predict (if you did, you’re either a liar or a psychic). It is really original and surprising, but it was a bit too much for me. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. The book had five-star energy, up until that twist. That’s the reason I knocked of a full star.
 
“The House Across the Lake” is a really good thriller, solid atmosphere and great suspense building. And it’s well done by Sager to provide so many twists and reveals with the story being set at one location (the lake and its surroundings) and with just a few characters. I just couldn’t really get behind that crazy twist.
 
Rating: 4/ 5

Book Review - The Only One Left by Riley Sager

Title: The Only One Left
Series: -
Author: Riley Sager
 
Description: The murder of the Hope family shocked the Maine coast one bloody night ins 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old daughter Lenora was responsible, the police where never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, not has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.
 
Its not 1983, and caregiver Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her pervious nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes an can only communicate with Kit by tapping sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer – I want to tell you everything.
 
As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the fate than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth – and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.
 
Review: I’m a big fan of Riley Sager and I have loved all but one book that I have rea by him. My favorites are “Lock Every Door” and “Home Before Dark”, with a more gothic vibe to them. If that’s your thing, and these are also your favorite by this author, “The Only One Left” is right up your alley. Sager most definitely does gothic thriller best.
 
From the first page I was hooked. The atmosphere is set immediately and the setting of Hope’s End is perfect for a thriller. It’s an old, decaying mansion, set on a coastal cliff, far away from everyone. If that doesn’t get peak your interest, this book is not for you. Because this book relies on atmosphere for a big portion of it. Just like Sager did in the aforementioned books with the same gothic vibes.
 
Kit is new in this big house, where she has to take care of Lenora, the woman everyone thinks has killed her entire family when she was seventeen. Kit stays professional, but is still curious and tries to figure out what really happened that night. Kit is not the only staff member, they are also keeping secrets of their own.
 
We follow the story through Kit’s perspective, but also have chapters dedicated to the story that Lenora is typing. The book wouldn’t be a really Riley Sager book if it didn’t have some twists and reveals that you wouldn’t see coming. And most of them are really good, unexpected and surprising. There were two things I kind of predicted, but they weren’t  obvious. And that finale is insane. It is absolutely crazy and I loved it.
 
When I’m excited for a new book by an author I love, I’m always scared to be disappointed. Sager did not let me down, loved every minute of reading this insane thriller. An new all-time favorite and my best book of 2023.
 
Rating: 5/ 5

Book Review - The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

Title: The Last Time I Lied
Series: -
Author: Riley Sager
 
Description: Fifteen years ago, summer camper Emma Davis watched sleepily as her three cabin mates snuck out of their cabin in the dead of night. The last she--and anyone--saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.

Now a rising star in the NYC art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings.. They catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of the very same Camp Nightingale--and when Francesca implores Emma to return to the camp as a painting counselor, Emma sees an opportunity to find closure and move on.

Yet, it is immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by surfacing memories, Emma is suddenly plagued by a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca, and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian apparently left behind about the camp's twisted origins. And as history begins to repeat itself and three girls go missing again, Emma must face threats from both man and nature in order to uncover all the buried secrets--including what really happened all those years ago.
Now a rising star in the NYC art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings.. They catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of the very same Camp Nightingale--and when Francesca implores Emma to return to the camp as a painting counselor, Emma sees an opportunity to find closure and move on.
Yet, it is immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by surfacing memories, Emma is suddenly plagued by a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca, and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian apparently left behind about the camp's twisted origins. And as history begins to repeat itself and three girls go missing again, Emma must face threats from both man and nature in order to uncover all the buried secrets--including what really happened all those years ago.
 
Review: “The last Time I Lied tells the story of Emma, show spends her summer vacation at an American summer camp. At Camp Nightingale, she made new friends. Friends who would late disappear to never be found. Now, fifteen years later, Emma is a celebrated artist, haunted by memories of that particular summer. She is asked to teach an art class at Camp Nightingale. Because Emma wants to deal with the past once and for all, she decides to go. Once she arrives, she finds out she has to spend her night once again in that same cottage that she stayed in fifteen years ago.
 
Summer camp have been a creepy setting for many stories, in books, series and movies. The woods, the lake and myths and legends create a creepy atmosphere in the book. We experience the story through the eyes of the somewhat unstable Emma, who, at the age of sixteen, witnessed three of her friends disappear and she still carries this with her. She tries to unravel the mystery of what happened all those years ago, as soon as she returns to Camp Nightingale.
 
Emma is an unreliable narrator, because she is unstable, and given the title, lying is something she doesn’t shy away from. Author Riley Sager definitely leaves you doubting the credibility of Emma and the people around her until the very end. The same goes for what finally happened to the three girls. Many possible culprits pass through and many theories are formed.
 
Even though “The Final Girls” sounded like a more original plot, “The Last Time I Lied” had more to offer and was more surprising. It had more suspense and this was largely due to the setting. Not all the plot twist come across as convincing, but Sager manages to answer final questions. Emma is also a very interesting character, although there weren’t a lot of likeable characters in the story. But I don’t mind that.

“The Last Time I Lied” is a bit slower paced then most of Riley Sager’s books, but it’s another win. I really enjoyed this thriller.
 
Rating: 3,5/ 5

Book Review - Survive the Night by Riley Sager

Title: Survive the Night
Series: -
Author: Riley Sager
 
Description: Charlie Jordan is being driven across the country by a serial killer. Maybe.

Behind the wheel is Josh Baxter, a stranger Charlie met by the college ride share board, who also has a good reason for leaving university in the middle of term. On the road they share their stories, carefully avoiding the subject dominating the news - the Campus Killer, who's tied up and stabbed three students in the span of a year, has just struck again.

Travelling the lengthy journey between university and their final destination, Charlie begins to notice discrepancies in Josh's story.

As she begins to plan her escape from the man she is becoming certain is the killer, she starts to suspect that Josh knows exactly what she's thinking.
Behind the wheel is Josh Baxter, a stranger Charlie met by the college ride share board, who also has a good reason for leaving university in the middle of term. On the road they share their stories, carefully avoiding the subject dominating the news - the Campus Killer, who's tied up and stabbed three students in the span of a year, has just struck again.
Travelling the lengthy journey between university and their final destination, Charlie begins to notice discrepancies in Josh's story.
As she begins to plan her escape from the man she is becoming certain is the killer, she starts to suspect that Josh knows exactly what she's thinking.
 
Review: Student Charlie Jordan gets into the car with a complete stranger, Josh Baxter. She met him at the campus bulletin board. Charlie was looking for a ride to Ohio and Josh was looking for someone to share a ride with.
 
Charlie is still mourning her best friend, Maddie, who became the third victim of the so-called campus killer. Charlie is therefor anxious to go home to her grandmother and decides to share a ride with Josh, who is going to visit his sick father. Is Josh really who he says he is?
 
I have enjoyed two Riley Sager book before, one not so much. “Survive the Night” is somewhere in between those.
 
Charlie is an unstable person and someone you can’t really trust as a narrator. Because she suffers from blackouts, due to movies that play out in her head, it’s often not clear whether what she is seeing is real or another movie in her head. That makes it very suspenseful. Josh is also someone we don’t know whether we can trust him or not. There are often reasons to believe he is up to no good, but then again, maybe Charlie is imagining it.
 
Because Charlie is a major movie buff, there are a lot of movie references. Especially in the beginning of the book and I can understand it might be annoying at times. And me, as a movie buff myself, found it a bit too much at times. Sager was overdoing the movie references a bit. I used them too, but not to this extend.
 
Because the events take place over one night and a large chunk of the story is set in the car, the tension is very present and unpredictable. There are some twists in the book, one I never saw coming. Another I did predict, but wasn’t obvious.  
 
The book is set in the 90s and I liked that part as well. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the twists. But again, the constant references eventually started to bug me. I enjoyed the book, especially the second half of it, but it’s not one of my favorites by Riley Sager.
 
Rating: 3,5/ 5

Book Review - Final Girls by Riley Sager

Title: Final Girls
Series: -
Author: Riley Sager
 
Description: Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.

Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.

 That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.
 
Review: The term final girl comes from the horror genre. The last woman to survive a massacre. Quincy, Sam and Lisa are all final girls, they all survived their own worst nightmares, as the last girl standing. Because of their past, they are forever linked to each other.
 
Quincy is the main character in our story, we follow it mainly through her eyes. She has picked up her life, lives together with Jeff and has her own baking blog. Quincy is seemingly living a happy life. When she hears that Lisa, one of the other final girls, dies under suspicious circumstances, third final girl Sam is suddenly on Quincy’s doorstep. She has to admit that she actually barely knows Sam and Lisa. Should she trust Sam? Or can there be only one final girl?
 
“Final Girls” is Riley Sager’s debut thriller. I loved the two other books I read written by him, so I was very excited about this book and had high expectations as well.
 
Chapters in the book take place alternately in the present and past. The first 2/3 of the book is really slow, nothing really happens and it’s very repetitive. And I predicted the ‘big twist’ early on in the book. Even though Sager juggled around a handful of red herrings throughout, the actual reveal was disappointing.
 
Out of the three Riley Sager books I read, I only disliked one, so I will continue on reading his books. Because he is such a skillful thriller writer and I like his style. I just didn’t enjoy “Final Girls” that much, because it wasn’t as interesting and captivating as the other books I read by him.
 
Rating: 2,5/ 5

Book Review - Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Title: Home Before Dark
Series: -
Author: Riley Sager
 
Description: What was it like? Living in that house. Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spend three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called “House of Horrors”. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon.
Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghost, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but war, .
 
Review: In “Home Before Dark”, we follow Maggie. She lives alone and renovates houses with a friend. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie live in Baneberry Hall with her parents, Ewan and Jess. A house which is no know as a haunted house. At the time, Maggie was a little girl and she doesn’t remember anything from living there. Maggie has lots of fantasy as a child, where she claimed to see people in the house, that here parents didn’t. The family lived in Baneberry Hall for 20 days and left the house, to never return. Ewan wrote a book about it, claiming that it had ghosts in it.
 
He describes the strange evens that accumulated during their stay at baneberry Hall. Sounds they couldn’t explain, items inexplicably in other places, and of course the strange images Maggie seemed to see.
 
Now, twenty-five years later, Maggie decides to return to Baneberry Hall, after her dad’s passing and inheriting the house. She didn’t even know that he still owned it. This gives Maggie the chance to fix it up and sell the house. But also to see if the house is indeed haunted. After all, she can’t remember anything about the evens and firmly believes that the events in the book were made up by her father.
 
“Home Before Dark” is very well written for several reasons. First of all, we actually follow two stories in the book. We follow adult Maggie, in the present, who returns to Baneberry Hall. And twenty-five years in the past, when Maggie was young and living in Baneberry Hall with her parents. Telling the story of what Ewan wrote about in his best-selling novel. This makes the story exciting and frightening at times. It had some real scary moments and I was really hooked to the story.  
 
I thought it was a thriller when I picked it up, but when I got into it, it felt more like a horror story. In the end, it still is a thriller, more than a horror, but I loved the horror elements Sager incorporated in his book.
 
This is the second novel by Riley Sager that I have read, the other one being “Lock Every Door”. I loved that book. I do prefer that one over “Home Before Dark”, but I’m very curious about more of his work. I’m really liking his books so far and I will definitely be reading more of his work.
 
Rating: 4 / 5

Book Review - Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

Title: Lock Every Door
Series: -
Author: Riley Sager
 
Description: No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind. As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comforting, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming façade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story. Until the next day, when Ingrid disappears. Searching for the truth about Ingrid’s disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew’s dark past and into the secrets within its walls.  
 
Review: Jules Larsen is a young woman for whom life has not been particularly kind, to say the least. Currently, she is at rock bottom. Fired, dumped by her boyfriend who cheated and as a result she is homeless and broke. Her best friend Chloe offers her shelter, but it can’t go on like this for long. desperate for new work, Jules responds to a small vague ad seeking a house sitter. Her sense of unreality rises when it turns out that the apartment is in the Bartholomew Building, an old iconic building from 1919, in the Gothic style, even lavishly outfitted with stone gargoyles. Only the rich and famous live in the Bartholomew, and they are very fond of their privacy. The striking thins is that Jules, in her youth, read the book “Heart of a Dreamer” by the mysterious writer Greta Manville, which was about a girl starting a new life in New York who ended up in the luxurious world of the Bartholomew and found her happiness there… just as Jules seems to be doing now. The offer is almost too good to be true. A fantastic luxury apartment for three months and $4,000.00 a month in salary. For Jules, the solution to all her problems. She ignores the vague feelings that something isn’t right and all Chloe’s objections, because Chloe doesn’t trust it at all. Jules, however, seizes the opportunity to reset her life with both hands.  

 
This is Riley Sager’s third book and my first of his to read. His writing style is so evocative that you are immediately in the middle of the story. It makes “Lock Every Door” definitely count as a literary thriller. The description of the building, of the rooms in the apartment, you just imagine yourself inside. It evokes a vague idea of the boardgame Clue, but only in the beginning. Soon it gets a lot more exciting and dark and you start to thing of a haunted house.
 
The atmosphere in “Lock Every Door” becomes increasingly mysterious and Sager manages to subtly introduce twists in the story and leave clues in a subcutaneous way. You begin to notice odd inconsistencies in the pieces set in the present, and Jules’ flashbacks to the recent past begin to become increasingly strange and menacing. The rules she has to abide by in the house, the other apartment sitters and residents who act separately, the people who have disappeared over the years.
“Lock Every Door” is writing from the first person perspective, from the perspective of Jules. The story flows smoothly with two timelines: the present and several days in the past. The evens in the present put the reader on edge right away, where the events in the past don’t really start exciting, but that contrast is very intriguing. You do get a vague idea right away, knowing something is off.
 
Once you start reading the book, you can’t put it down. And the climax is surprising and disturbing at the same time. I will definitely read more of Riley Sager’s work, because I really enjoyed “Lock Every Door”. Highly recommend it.
 
Rating: 5 / 5