Survive the Night - Book Review

With us about to enter the spookiest month of what many would consider to be an already spooky year, I decided to scour bookstores for a good horror novel. Now, despite my fondness for Hell House (see my review here), I generally dislike ghost/possession stories as I prefer a more tangible antagonist. With that said, I wanted to read something akin to Friday the 13th, but in written form and with less hockey masks. After a bit of digging, I saw several recommendations for this one and was pleasantly surprised for what turned out to be a frighteningly good read.

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General Information

Survive the Night was published in 2015 and is written by Danielle Vega. It is a young adult horror novel that falls under the slasher sub-genre. Entertainment Weekly gave the book a B+ in its review, while Goodreads has the book listed at an above-average 3.2/5 stars. I noticed that apparently a movie with the same name as the book released earlier on 22 May 2020, however that is unfortunately an unrelated (and heavily mediocre-looking) project. Beyond that, I'm not familiar with Danielle Vega's other work, however she apparently runs an ongoing book series, titled The Merciless, which is published under her pen-name, Danielle Rollins.

The Story

Casey Myrtle is a high schooler that just got out of rehab after an increasingly nasty addiction to pain killers. After ducking out of an upper-middle class sleepover party, she goes clubbing in Manhattan with her three friends: Shana, Julie, and Aya. It's at this club that the group of teenagers learns about the secretive rave, called "Survive the Night," which is held somewhere in the bowls of the city. The girls are just looking for some fun, but they get a lot more than they bargained for when the party gets crashed by someone/something with murderous intent. The group will have to escape before whatever is catches up to them.

Something I loved about this book was the concept of drug addiction and peer pressure that both play a massive role throughout the entire story. We see characters act stupid all the time in slasher flicks, but this book actually explains some of these poor decisions as you can't tell who's high and who's not. The psychological aspect of what's real and what's imagined is a nice flourish to a rapidly aging subgenre.

Something else I loved about this was the premise. Vega has a way of describing everything in the most disgusting way possible, and it really adds to the overall ambience and setting. Another great aspect was the pacing, which charges at a solid rate from beginning to end. It was never a chore to read certain sections of this book and I was glad to see that there was no filler.

From a story perspective, my only major issues were some of the finer details that tend to hurt immersion. There's multiple points in the book where characters are walking around barefoot in areas where that would be unbearably painful (if not outright dangerous) and yet the characters suffer no consequences for these actions. Another example is when the group is being chased by the antagonist but then suddenly the plot simply decides that they're safe without any explanation. This really got confusing near the end as there was no explanation for why the antagonist was not ending someone. Lastly, although we don't get too much information on the antagonist, there were times when it seemed like the author deployed plot armor around certain characters in an unabashed way.  

The Characters

Like some of the other young adult fiction authors I've read from, Vega has a knack for making a relatable protagonist. Casey doesn't make a lot of smart decisions in this book, but they all make sense for her character. Her battle with peer pressure and drug addiction was particularly interesting to examine, which made her special in a long line of young women involved in slasher horror stories. Vega shows us that experiences like withdrawal and sexual assault can be just as horrifying as being chased by a killer in a subway.

The best character of the story though is Shana. Vega paints a character who is incredibly self-destructive and on the edge. I think we all had a "Shana" in our high school that was both disgusting but alluring at the same time. There were a couple of times that I thought Vega went a little too far with the extremes Shana was willing to go, but I think it works for what the story was trying to convey.

Lastly, no slasher story is complete without a killer. I'm intentionally hiding who/what the killer is as I don't want to spoil that, but I can say that we learn very little about the killer in this story. I was fine with this too as it reminded me somewhat of films like Alien; where we rarely see the killer and find them more frightening as they retain their aura of mystery. As mentioned in the story section of this review though, there were times when the killer did things that simply didn't make sense. When it comes to these types of stories, the author must establish their own set of rules as to what the characters must live by, and these rules were never quite clear with the killer. Once again, I don't think that this issue ruins the story or the antagonist, but it made me scratch my head from time to time. 

The Best of the Best: The setting of being trapped in an underground rave with a murderer was pretty awesome. I was completely engrossed when the story finally got there.

The Worst of the Worst: The plot armor for a couple of parts was incredible. For a killer that can apparently rip people in half, he/she/it really struggled with certain characters. 

Would I Recommend?

If you're looking for a spooky modern slasher story, this is a nice and breezy read that shouldn't take you too long. It kept my attention from beginning to end. Fans of movies like Alien, Friday the 13th, and Halloween will enjoy this one immensely. 

-------------------------------------------------Spoiler Comments-----------------------------------------------------

• When it dawned on Casey that Shana had drugged her, I was pretty blown away. What a not-so-nice young lady...
• Speaking of which, I kind of wanted to hear the story about how she took Sam's virginity considering everything about her repulsed him.
• My barefoot complaint sounds stupid, I know, but think about it. Aya walked around the streets of Manhattan ,and an abandoned subway, for nearly twelve hours almost completely barefoot. Even Lawrence knew to put some damn plastic bags around his feet!
• I wanted to see the creepy suspenders clown guy again from the dry bar. That dude should've been the killer. Licking someone's face makes a hell of a first-impression.
• Considering the killer is some weird Lovecraftian wolverine-octopus, why did it feel the need to string up Julie from pipes? It sounded awesome when I read it, but didn't make any sense when I thought about it later. The creature doesn't seem capable of rational thought, so it seems like Julie's corpse got moved and strung up purely because the plot demanded it.
• After slicing and dicing Woody, Julie, and Aya with no issues, the monster suddenly has a problem with Casey despite the fact that she's half-drowning and has a broken leg?
• How the hell did Sam rescue her? This thing has apparently enough strength to lift people off the ground and yank them around like a ragdoll, but yet an exhausted 17-year-old was too much for it.
• Speaking of Sam, did he just power through suffering a six-inch deep wound on his spine? I don't think you can do that...
• I'm calling it now, the monster's true identity is Bill de Blasio.

----------------------------------------------------References--------------------------------------------------

*Survive the night. (n.d.). Book cover image. Amazon.com. Retrieved from: https://www.amazon.com/Survive-Night-Danielle-Vega/dp/159514725X.