Here’s a tip: If your summer plans include any sort of road trip, especially if you’re going to be driving by yourself, and especially if you’re going to be driving at night, and especially if you’re going to be driving through the Poconos (but even if you’re not), do yourself a favor and pick up the audiobook of Riley Sager’s latest novel, SURVIVE THE NIGHT. You’re pretty much guaranteed not to feel drowsy behind the wheel because you’ll be much too busy scanning the roadway for hidden killers.

The book starts out with a relatively straightforward premise. Undergrad student Charlie, wracked with grief after the murder of her roommate and best friend, Maddy, decides to jump ship on the rest of her semester and bum a ride back home to Ohio, where she lives with her beloved grandma. They share a love of old movies, a connection that was strongly forged after the death of Charlie’s parents in a car accident years earlier.

"Like Charlie, readers will find themselves distrusting their own perceptions as the book navigates an ever-windier route through a dark and dangerous landscape."

Charlie has seen a lot of tragedy in a short amount of time, and one way her psyche deals with the trauma is to create “movies” in her mind. Her psychologist might call them hallucinations, but Charlie knows better. When faced with moments of acute stress, her mind switches into movie mode, and she starts to see things that help her make sense of her surroundings…even if those things aren’t really there.

So when Charlie posts a flyer on the ride board at the campus student center (the year is 1991 after all, when actual bulletin boards took the place of social media) and is offered a ride by a handsome man named Josh, she takes it. At first she’s only mildly concerned when her mind starts switching to movie mode and convincing her that Josh is the so-called “Campus Killer” who murdered Maddy and two other young women at their school.

The premise is straightforward, as I said, but as the novel progresses, Sager cleverly disrupts the narrative with surreal moments of disconnection and confusion that start to mirror what Charlie is experiencing. As a result, the lines between reality and fantasy begin to blur. Like Charlie, readers will find themselves distrusting their own perceptions as the book navigates an ever-windier route through a dark and dangerous landscape.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Charlie’s story includes references to dozens of classic movies, from Singin’ in the Rain to Gaslight. Film buffs will enjoy the numerous Easter eggs that Sager has hidden in the novel. But even those unfamiliar with these references will be drawn in first by Charlie’s compelling story and then by the dizzying twists and turns of her journey through despair and guilt to revenge and redemption.