Survive the Night

If you look at reviews of Survive the Night, by Riley Sager, people seem to fall into two camps: either they love it unconditionally, or they hate it with a vengeance. Me, I was pretty meh about it. It was entertaining, a good distraction, but didn’t make me blaze through much more than the last 10% of the novel (as I was reading it on my phone and could see what percentage I was on instead of what page). And even that last 10% was really only the last 7% because of ending acknowledgements and “About the Author” stuff. Then, even accounting for that, I only blazed through the end because I wanted to get through it (with a bit of “get it over with, already” thrown in), not because it made my pulse pound.

I guess that makes this sound like a bad book.

Lock Every Door

Jobless, drowning in student debt, and grieving after her parents’ deaths, Jules finds herself landing the perfect gig to get herself back on her feet: a three-month house sitting job at the high-end apartment complex The Bartholomew in New York City, across from Central Park. Sure, things are a bit shady, as she won’t have to pay taxes and will be paid in cash weekly. Yes, there are the strange rules like no visitors and no bugging the residents, or to call herself a tenant instead of a house sitter. But Jules needs the money.

As time goes by and another apartment sitter goes missing, Jules slowly realizes that there is a dark underbelly to The Bartholomew, one that no one—from the author she befriends to the doorman—will not acknowledge, though she can hear the lies in their voices.

The Nightwalker

The Nightwalker, by Sebastian Fitzek, is a masterpiece of a psychological thriller. It is so good that I made the mistake of wanting to read a few chapters before bed, read a third of the book instead, and then was unable to sleep for an hour after that.