Out in August of this year, Getaway by Zoje Stage has been described as “cinematic”, “terrifying” and a “thrill-ride”. And guess what? They’re not wrong! Every superlative used to talk about this book is ON POINT. As someone who loves thrillers, reading this book was wonderful. I felt like my heart was in my throat. My body was twitchy and uncomfortable, as if it was me in the Grand Canyon, being stalked like a deer in the woods. That kind of visceral experience is rare, and a testament to how good Stage is at character development, interior voices, landscape, atmosphere and pacing.

In other words, a total master class.

In Getaway, two sisters, Imogen and Beck, and their old friend Tilda, are setting out for a hiking trip of the Grand Canyon. After repeated traumas, Imogen has retreated inside of herself and rarely leaves her apartment. Seeking to help her sister, Beck organizes the trip, which is reminiscent of backpacking excursions they’d go on as children with their parents. Tilda, an American Idol alum and Instagram star, is not Imogen’s favourite person – they grew apart after an incident in University – but she’s determined to make a fresh start.

As the women make their way out into the arid wilds, old tensions threaten to disrupt the fragile peace they’ve made. Imogen notices that their things begin to disappear and that odd items dot the red earth. She can feel that they are being watched. But by who? And what do they want?

When the answers to those questions become clear, the women descend into horror. A cat and mouse game of survival, that will seemingly only end in blood.

Stage surprised me with the ending. Truly feminist and brilliant, it filled my cup in every possible way. 5 enthusiastic stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’m surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reviews for The House Swap. While I loved the premise of this book, it wasn’t my favourite – disappointing, because it just sounds so darling and fun.

First things first, assuming you’ve read the blurb and are just hear for the dirt, I’m going to dive right in. The “hero” is a douche. A few chapters go by and we find out his entire job is buying distressed companies and making hoards of people redundant. A man comes to his flat and begs him to reconsider, since he’s worked for this company for twenty-eight years and in three months, he’ll have access to the pension he’s been paying into for all that time. If he’s made redundant now, he can’t ever access that money. Our hero James – the guy we’re supposed to root for – pauses in the foyer of his multi-million-dollar apartment and basically says “that’s too bad but that’s also life! I have to go! Please never bother me again with the fact that I just torpedoed your entire retirement!”

It’s awful. This is mentioned once and basically never again. James is also callous about pretty much everything. When he swaps homes with Cassie because of his psychotic ex-girlfriend (and REALLY he NEVER caught a glimpse of her behaviour before? This was hugely far-fetched), she leaves him lots of helpful notes, puts new sheets on the bed and food in the freezer and even waits around so she can give him a tour. He’s enormously rude to her, shocked that she would go to so much trouble (he stripped his own flat down to the basics and leaves her to buy everything she needs) and by and large, he’s irritated by everyone he meets. How does this dude have friends?

Again, a douche.

Throughout the story, the plot is revealed solely through dialogue, which left me unmoored at times. Cassie is supposed to be an author of a successful book series, but she never writes, researches or spends any time on WHAT BROUGHT HER TO LONDON IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE. James doesn’t seem to do much of anything besides complain about his surroundings. He plays around with the idea of destroying a wildlife habitat in order to put up a hotel for millenials who hate nature, but his dreams of ruining the landscape that Cassie loves are quashed.

There’s also a large plot around Cassie’s supposed infertility and her quest to undergo IVF. I admit her longing for a baby was alien to me (she never seemed to want an actual child, if that makes sense, just a squishy baby to cuddle – which, I get it, but that kid is going to grow up my dear) and I didn’t find that it entirely fit with the plot, even though I can see how the author thought it would, since James is determined to be child-free.

Onto the “love story”. Cassie and James apparently fall in love, though they sure didn’t in my copy of the book. This is largely due to the time jumps. All of a sudden, a month has passed and Cassie and James have apparently been “talking every day”!! Well that’s lovely! Would have been nice, as a reader, to be privy to that! It just felt lazy to me. We need to be shown the love, not just told about it. Not to mention, the dialogue between them doesn’t sound like the way human beings talk. It’s as if they’re aliens trying out English for the first time.

The drama between them seems manufactured at best. I won’t say any more, as to avoid spoilers.

I wanted to like this very much, because the premise seemed so escapist and lovely, but the abundance of dialogue, time jumps, asshole hero who makes people redundant for a living and everything happening behind the scenes (please show me the characters falling in love!!!) make this a two-star read for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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.

Now that’s a lede.

I gave Survive the Night 4 stars purely for the mindfuck twists. It’s a ride, to be sure, but it’s not quite the electrifying novel it could have, and should have been.

Sager is a must-read author for me – anything he puts out, I’ll snap up (or nab on NetGalley before my finger even knows I’m smashing the Request button) – I loved Final Girls and Lock Every Door so very much. The way that Sager turns tropes on their head is like a drug to a thriller addict like me – his writing is fresh and surprising, often funny and smart. There is a lot to like about Survive the Night, but there are a few key things that I think would have made this even better.

Like the blurb says, our heroine Charlie is a young woman living in the 1990s, taking a road trip with a man she suspects might be the serial killer who murdered her best friend. Unable to cope with the death of Maddy, Charlie is heading home, leaving her boyfriend behind on campus and hoping that she’ll heal with the help of her grandmother and their beloved movies. Charlie is a film buff and uses their familiarity to escape from the tragedies that have befallen her at such a young age.

Her ride, Josh, seems great at first. Handsome and self assured, he’s an easy conversationalist and good company on the emptiness of the midnight roads. But soon, Charlie starts to wonder – why is his story changing so often? Why won’t he let her see what’s in the trunk of his car? Why is he sticking so close, seemingly unwilling to let her leave his side?

Is he the Campus Killer?

And if so, can she kill him before he kills her?

What follows is pretty juicy, up till the end, when everything falls apart a bit. There are some excellent twists throughout this page turner – some I saw coming and others I very much didn’t.

The issue isn’t with the plot so much – it’s with the atmosphere. I wanted so much more of the 90s setting and vibes. The 1990s is the decade in which I became a teenager, and I remember it fondly. The mall, the lack of cellphones, not even a whisper of an Apple Watch or iPad, the clothes and trends, the celebrities (Leo DiCaprio heeeeey), movies, music… it’s such a rich decade because it really was the cusp of a new age in the way human beings interact. There was no social media or even messenger / DM – people had to use pay phones when they were out and at night, you talked endlessly on the phone to your friends until your parents shouted at you to stop taking up the line.

I felt that Sager could have utilized this more – although there are plenty of Nirvana mentions and pay phones abound, it just didn’t feel like the 90s as much, I’m not sure why.

There’s also a gimmick used throughout the novel that weakened it, in my humble opinion. Especially in the epilogue, when the gimmick reveals itself in an extremely meta way that affected how I looked at the novel in its entirety.

However, these really are small quibbles. Survive the Night is a banger of a thriller. It’s a testament to Sager’s talent that I expect so much from his books and that there were tons of twists I never in a million years saw coming. Like a 90s trend, Sager’s writing is just that irresistible.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.