Book Review: Survive the Night - Danielle Vega

Title: Survive the Night
Author: Danielle Vega
Pub Date: July 7th, 2015
Publisher: Razorbill
Page Count: 272

We're all gonna die down here. . . .

Julie lies dead and disemboweled in a dank, black subway tunnel, red-eyed rats nibbling at her fingers. Her friends think she’s just off with some guy—no one could hear her getting torn apart over the sound of pulsing music.

In a tunnel nearby, Casey regrets coming to Survive the Night, the all-night underground rave in the New York City subway. Her best friend Shana talked her into it, even though Casey just got out of rehab. Alone and lost in the dark, creepy tunnels, Casey doesn’t think Survive the Night could get any worse . . .
              
. . . until she comes across Julie’s body, and the party turns deadly.

Desperate for help, Casey and her friends find themselves running through the putrid subway system, searching for a way out. But every manhole is sealed shut, and every noise echoes eerily in the dark, reminding them they’re not alone.

They’re being hunted.
              
Trapped underground with someone—or something—out to get them, Casey can’t help but listen to her friend’s terrified refrain: “We’re all gonna die down here. . . .” in this bone-chilling sophmore novel by the acclaimed author of The Merciless.

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Survive the Night is like a 2000's horror movie except the movie would've scared me. The book just bored me. - Nova @ Out of Time

Unfortunately, when it comes to books being scary, it just doesn't happen. I don't have much of an imagination and there's a difference between describing gore and seeing it. One makes me roll my eyes, the other turns my face green. This book just really relied on the gore for some reason. There was never really much logic in the scare either. It's about some kind of monster in the sewers but there's no explanation. It also felt like no one else but the group in the book was affected, which doesn't make sense. Really, if there's been a monster down there, why hasn't anyone ever gotten hurt? Why is it only choosing the Survive the Night night to strike? There were descriptions - lots of them, and unfortunately, they took precedence above the actual plot.

Survive the Night is about Casey who's just come back from rehab. She goes to a birthday party from what feels like some of her straight-edge friends. In the middle, it's crashed by some other people who are Caseys druggie friends. I had such a bad feeling about this but for some reason, Casey chose to go with them. THE GIRL JUST GOT BACK FROM REHAB and now she wants to do something that could potentially get her back in?

That should've been the first warning.

Things only went down from there. It really did play out like a horror movie trope. Dark setting? Check. No escape? Check. A monster that isn't explained - we're just supposed to roll with it? Check. Oh, an old flame to raise tensions and romance? *angrily checks* I really shouldn't have found much reason to like it but I did.

It was a pretty short read and I breezed through this one. I think it's the simplicity of the reading style and how I was able to skim because a lot of it was description anyway. I found myself kind of liking parts of it. Before I knew it, it was done anyway.

What I kind of felt bad for was Shana. She's the character who works on her own agenda. She seemed very selfish in the beginning. I mean, she drugged Casey for "fun" purposes. I was pretty sickened by how awful she was. However, when things got real, she kind of smartened up and got more serious. By the ending, it almost seemed like she'd turned a new leaf. In a way, it was Shana's fault and I think she blamed herself. The ability to feel something for a character worked in my favor because it meant that I liked the book that much more.

While I found this one really flat and kind of boring, I couldn't help but read it and go through it quickly. If you're looking for a quick read with descriptions of gore that make you nostalgic for those 2000's horror movies, this would be it.

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Danielle Vega spent her childhood hiding under the covers while her mother retold tales from the pages of Stephen King novels. Now an adult, she can count on one hand the number of times in her life she's been truly afraid. Danielle has won numerous awards for her fiction and nonfiction, and earned a 2009 Pushcart Prize nomination for her short story “Drive.” She lives in Brooklyn.