What follows in Survive The Night is a series of mind games, as we read Charlie trying to connect the dots between a fake I.D. card, pliers with bloody tips in the glove compartment, lies about being employed by the college, a false name, and the age of this mysterious driver. Josh displays all the deadly red flags seen in movies, and she considers jumping out of the moving car for fear of what he might do to her. But like all protagonists in countless horror stories, Charlie isn’t the perfect girl.

In Survive The Night, Charlie is someone you want to say has an overactive imagination, but you feel that phrase doesn’t quite do her justice. She sees unreal events, what she calls “movies,” in her mind sometimes and most times, it is difficult for her to say whether or not what she sees really happened. Many readers would agree that Charlie had many opportunities in this book, to escape her supposed would-be killer; when the car slowed down at a checkpoint, when a police officer asked her if everything was alright, and even when jumping out of the moving car was the only thing to do… but she didn’t exercise any of these choices. She couldn’t tell whether or not her mind made up those stories about Josh.

When Josh finally drives them to a lonely diner, Charlie goes into the bathroom and instead of escaping; she decides to avenge her best friend’s death. She refuses to confide in Marge, the aging waitress, who asks her point blank if something is wrong, and doesn’t say anything to the police officer who walks into the diner afterwards. She resumes her position in Josh’s car after calling her boyfriend, and they drive off.

Charlie waits her time in Survive The Night, and when she gets the chance, she stabs Josh in the gut with a knife she got from the diner. She runs out of his car with blood on her hands and clothes, back to the diner where a conniving Marge drugs her. It gets worse for Charlie in the same night, because Marge isn’t just some psycho waitress; she is also Maddy’s Grandmother who paid Josh to kidnap her. Marge takes Charlie to an abandoned building and literarily tries to pry the tooth out of her. She doesn’t believe the now-crying Charlie told the police everything needed to catch Maddy’s killer and blames Charlie for her granddaughter’s death.

Unknown to both Charlie and Marge, two things are happening close by. Charlie’s boyfriend, Robbie, had trailed Marge’s car to the abandoned building where they are now, after seeing her drag a semi-conscious Charlie into the car with her. Josh, who Charlie thought she left for dead, is actually not, and he tails an unsuspecting Robbie, who is following Marge, to the same building. There is a lot of shooting here, but Robbie and Charlie manage to escape. We think the story is all over now, until “a box of teeth” falls into Charlie’s lap in Robbie’s car. It is then that the truth in Survive The Night becomes terrifyingly clear…

If you are into horror reads with fast twists, the Survive The Night may just be your perfect summer read.