Author Ranking: Riley Sager (Through With a Vengeance)
I can officially say I’ve read every book by New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager published to date. After reading and enjoying the premise of Survive the Night a few years back, then loving The Only One Left when I read it in late-2023, I knew I had to make it my personal mission to finish reading all of Sager’s books, including a handful of older titles and a couple newer ones too. Now that I’m caught up on all nine books in Sager’s backlist (including the summer’s newest release — With a Vengeance), I can FINALLY make and share an author ranking. I’ve been looking forward to writing this post for quite awhile because I REALLY LIKE Sager’s writing… *most of the time. Here’s what I like: Sager’s twisty, suspenseful thrillers are perfectly set to suck you in, each bringing something a little bit different to the reading experience; be it a modern day take on a 90s slasher film or something more haunted with hints of paranormal or psychological elements, no two Sager books read exactly the same.
Riley Sager is one of those authors whose writing seems to divide the masses. Every time I read a review of a Sager book or see another author ranking of Sager’s backlist, it never ceases to amaze me how different everyone feels about the books they’ve just read. While Sager is an auto-buy author for me, I totally understand why his writing isn’t for everyone. I’ve personally rated all his books 3-4 stars and can honestly say I’ve found elements to like even in the books I didn’t love. But the books I loved, I LOVED. I find his novel concepts to be unique and engrossing. His stories have a way of keeping you guessing until the very end — and even if you think you have it all figured out, there’s usually a twist or two in every book that catches you off guard. But sometimes the payoff isn’t quite there. I think that’s why reader opinions end up so divisive. Honestly though, that’s why I love reading books — the interpretation of literature is a unique experience for every single reader.
So, which Riley Sager books should you prioritize if you’re looking to jump into his backlist? If you’re taking my advice, here’s my spoiler-free ranking!
#1: The Only One Left
I think I’ll believe it forever — The Only One Left is Crème de la Crème when it comes to Riley Sager’s writing. Immersive, thrilling, twisty, and smart, The Only One Left is the perfect book for readers of all genres. The book’s set in the 80s, with most of the story taking place in an old, remote murder mansion built on the edge of a cliff. The spooky vibes are on point here: a creaking house, footsteps down the hallway in the middle of the night, shadows under the door frame and in the window, morally questionable characters with dark secrets, and a paranormal feeling, among other things. I’m convinced The Only One Left was made for fans of Verity by Colleen Hoover and true crime aficionados, specifically those interested in the Lizzie Borden murder story. It’s good!
Returning from a recent suspension (and police investigation) for breaking medication protocol with a former patient who subsequently died in her care (overdose on medication left in the patient’s reach), Kit’s been assigned to a new patient, Lenora Hope, an elderly woman accused of killing her entire family when she was 17. Though she was never tried or convicted of any crime (police citing a lack of evidence to support the charges), Lenora’s widely suspected to be the killer. Upon learning of her new assignment, Kit begs her boss for a different patient, but the deal is clear: take the job at Hope House or be fired. With no choice but to take the job — she desperately needs the money — Kit agrees to care for Lenora Hope, and that’s where the story begins. The book features a dual timeline, alternating from the current day (Kit’s POV) back to 1929 (Lenora’s POV through typewritten pages). I loved the dual timeline aspect and loved following Kit as she tried to piece together the night of the town’s most infamous murders. From the beginning, I was sucked right into this fictional world, completely engrossed in all the details. There were so many directions my mind thought the book was heading, and while I kind of figured some of them out, I had so much fun following the storyline. I needed to know what really happened that night in 1929. I needed to know how all the characters were connected. I needed to know Lenora’s story. I’ll never stop telling everyone I know to read this book. If you’re reading this post (and I haven’t already convinced you to read), please read The Only One Left — right now!
My rating — 4 stars (could be 4.5, but I really don’t do half stars). While I wish this was a 5 star read, the ending was a bit chaotic, making it a bit too imperfect for that 5 star feeling.
#2: Home Before Dark
Sager hooked me good with this one! In Home Before Dark, Maggie Holt has just inherited her childhood home, a place she hasn’t been back to since she and her family fled in terror late one night. Flipping between two perspectives — current day Maggie and chapter’s from her dad’s bestselling horror memoir “House of Horrors” — we learn more about the events that led to her family’s abrupt departure. Skeptical about her dad’s recollection of events, Maggie accepts her inheritance and moves into the abandoned property with plans to renovate and sell the famous Baneberry Hall — until she’s met with a few horrors of her own. There were several parts in Home Before Dark that had me at the edge of my seat. Especially the scenes with the record player. So haunting, so addicting, so thrilling to read. Because Maggie’s present day perspective differs so much from her dad’s retelling, it’s unclear who you’re supposed believe — and that makes the entire story so much more engaging to read. But for some reason, the title IS a little misleading. It has less to do with being home before dark… and more to do with the haunting elements taking place within the walls of Baneberry Hall. I highly recommend reading this book — it’s a worthy read.
My rating — 4 stars.
#3: Middle of the Night
This might be an unpopular opinion given the reviews I’ve seen on Instagram and Goodreads, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading Middle of the Night. While it’s a little more of a slow burn compared to his other books, the classic Sager twists and turns were still so ever present. I loved how 90s nostalgia-coded the whole thing felt. Who amongst us hasn’t pitched a tent in the back yard? I remember doing it once or twice in my own backyard (and hating it too). Middle of the Night follows the story of Ethan, some 30 years after his curious, ghost-obsessed friend Billy went missing from the tent they shared one summer night in 1994. The next morning, Ethan awakes to a slashed tent and a dreamlike partial memory, but no other clues to help he or the police solve the mystery at hand. Over the years, Billy’s case goes unsolved, making it the greatest neighborhood mystery. As Ethan moves back to his old stomping ground, eerie things start happening around him. Garage lights turn on in the middle of the night. A blurry figure appears on camera. Cryptic notes show up at Ethan’s bedside. There’s a supernatural undertone sprinkled throughout as Ethan tries to understand if his childhood friend has come back to communicate with him. The whole thing was so fulfilling for me! I really think Sager utilized the dual timeline really well in Middle of the Night. Alternating between the present day and the past, Sager gives us backstory from a multi-POV perspective; we hear from many different characters in the days leading to Billy’s disappearance. I love that I didn’t guess the ending. There’s just enough detail to keep you guessing — what happened to Billy? I think Middle of the Night would make a great tv adaptation!
My rating — 4 stars.
#4: The Last Time I Lied
Less “thrilling” than usually expected in a Sager novel, The Last Time I Lied is more a summer camp-style mystery, a la one of the best books of 2024: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. I must really like the summer camp mysteries because I always eat them up! This time around, at Camp Nightingale, Emma is a camper in a cabin with a group of three other girls who go missing after sneaking out late one night. In Emma’s memory, the last thing she remembers was one of the girls — Vivian — putting a finger to her lips in a shushing motion as she closed the cabin door. Years later, the summer camp is planning to reopen for the very first time and Emma, a now up-and-coming figure in the art scene, is being requested to join the camp as an art teacher/counselor. Seeing an opportunity to investigate the disappearance of her bunk makes whose cases have gone cold, she gladly accepts the job. As Emma unravels the events of the past using clues, her memory, and her paintings, the true story starts to unfold. I believe Sager played the “soft suspense” card really well here. Following the more horror/thriller nature of his debut, Final Girls, he twisted his sophomore follow-up into something a little more mysterious and chilling. And, as the title insinuates, there’s some unreliability in the narration at play too (and I love me an unreliable narrator). I truly enjoyed The Last Time I Lied. It’s one of those novels that makes you remember why mysteries are so much fun to read — they keep you guessing until the end.
My rating — 4 stars.
#5: Final Girls
If Paramore’s You First lyric “Turns out I'm livin' in a horror film / Where I'm both the killer and the final girl / So who, who are you?” was a book, it’d be Final Girls. It fits the aesthetic of the story really, really well. In Final Girls, Quincy and her friends are on a vacation when a brutal murder claims the lives of everyone but Quincy. On the brink of death from several stab wounds herself, Quincy is saved by a police officer and brought to safety. As Quincy, newly dubbed “Final Girl” (aka the sole survivor of a massacre), tries to move on from the watching eyes of the public, she’s constantly haunted by the biggest mystery of her life — that she’s unable to recall any events from the night of the murders. When Quincy learns that one of the other two final girls (from previous murder/massacres) has died of an apparent suicide, she teams up with the only remaining “Final Girl” to help her try to regain her memory and get to the root of the crimes. The plot execution in Final Girls was really well done in my opinion. It was a book that read like a classic horror film — nothing life changing, very close to script, but addictive all the same. I liked that there were tasteful twists and red herrings scattered throughout. I did anticipate some things correctly, but still enjoyed the reading experience. Not my favorite book ever, but not bad for a debut novel!
My rating — 4 stars.
#6: The House Across the Lake
OH the plot twist. The plot twist, the plot twist, the plot twist. The plot twist I didn’t see it coming, as it came from the leftest of fields — at a time I was really (!!) enjoying the build-up. I’ve struggled to gather my thoughts in a cohesive manner when talking about The House Across the Lake. On one hand, I was soooo into the story. I was listening on Spotify and ran out of listening hours near the 60-70% mark and almost couldn’t wait two days for my hours to reset. On the other hand, from the plot twist until the end, I felt kind of bummed with the direction Sager chose to take it. When I tell you I loved the setting — I loved the setting. The darkness of the lore surrounding the lake! The way something felt off from the very beginning! The setup was SO good. But then came the blessed plot twist…
The story starts when Casey, a widowed actress in the midst of public turmoil, returns to her family’s lake house — a secluded lakefront property overlooking the mysterious Lake Greene, the place her late husband drowned a year prior. While on her quiet retreat, Casey stumbles upon her new neighbor, Katherine, who’s nearly drowned in the middle of the lake. After saving Katherine’s life, Casey finds herself befriending and obsessing over Katherine and her husband in the house across the lake. In fact, she spends most of her time looking through a set of binoculars to see what’s going on. Soon enough, Casey sees some things that alarm her, those things later exacerbated by the fact that her new friend Katherine has seemingly disappeared without a trace. It’s a very interesting plot concept, one which reminds me of a similar-but-different take on The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn. You’ve got the stalker neighbor, an alcohol addiction, and a sudden, highly suspicious disappearance. Then, with Casey’s addiction, you never know when Casey’s truly remembered a crucial piece of evidence or if she’s fictionalized the entire scenario. Like I said, once I started listening, I couldn’t stop. But the final twist had me doing a double take — it was so out there. And I’m not saying out there is a bad thing — it was just way too out there for my personal taste. I was left feeling confused and underwhelmed. I wish the there’d been more of a premonition to help set the scene for the impending twist. Like when you’re finishing a puzzle and find you’re one or two pieces short… that’s how I felt in the end. Nonetheless, it’s a very imaginative story from Sager. I found out later that his inspiration came from the Hitchcock film “Rear Window” and a quiet getaway he took to a lake house (he posted the book’s homecoming on his Instagram earlier this year). I love a good sneak peak into the making of anything creative.
PS — One of my friends absolutely LOVED this book and gave it 5 stars. Another “reading is subjective” teachable moment.
My rating — 3 stars.
#7: With a Vengeance
Hear me out: I really wanted to love Sager’s newest release With a Vengeance. Locked room thriller? A revenge story? A classic whodunnit? I was in, and the setup was great. A 12-hour ride on a desolate train orchestrated by Anna, a vengeful woman who’s ready to take her own kind of personal revenge on the people involved in her family’s downfall… classic. The way Sager set the scene so early on — with personal invitations that blackmailed each of the riders to show up for the journey — and the way the book was sectioned — a page break for every hour left on the train — I was very much intrigued to want to keep reading to uncover the who-did-what aspect of why they were all there. Of course, with a locked room thriller, there’s always a mystery to solve, and the mystery here was great. A “train killer” on a killing spree aboard the train, plucking off passengers one-by-one. The way no one could be trusted! I had so many theories running in my mind, and up until the reveals started coming, I was having a lot of fun reading along. Unfortunately for me, With a Vengeance fell sort flat in the back half, and I found the twists and reveals to be a little more bland than I hoped for. Some were okay, others just felt kind of “meh”. But it was really the book’s conclusion that was a bit too cookie-cutter for my personal taste — I don’t love when bows have to be tied on everything. Sometimes in a Sager novel, the endings reach a little too far, and I felt like the ending here was just that. Overall, I enjoyed my time aboard the Philadelphia Phoenix, getting to know the backstories of all the passengers and uncovering whether they were all truly evil people, but the book as a whole just felt “okay”. The way I see it, with the number of books published out there in the book sphere, not every single one you pick up will be a gold medal winner. Sometimes the books you read simply don’t make the podium.
My Rating — 3 stars.
#8: Survive the Night
Of course, as I mentioned above, Survive the Night was the very first Sager book I ever read. I bought the physical copy in my Book of the Month box, but ended up listening to the audiobook on a drive to the beach and back. Being stuck in a car for several hours ended up being the PERFECT way to consume this book because… Survive the Night basically takes place in a car. Almost the whole book, in a car. Our main character, Charlie, is looking for a ride home from college after her best friend was murdered by “The Campus Killer”. She accepts a ride from someone she doesn’t know, and gets in the car late at night despite uncovering many red flags leading up to her departure. Because Charlie suffers from trauma-induced hallucinations that sometimes impair her ability to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not, the ride home ends up being a ride of great tumult. The rest of the story is basically Charlie’s internal monologue as she struggles to know if she’s really in danger — or not.
You’ll find this book at the bottom of a lot of ranking lists. While I don’t think it’s completely justified, I think it’s the easiest of Sager’s books to rank last. There isn’t a lot of plot/character development. It reads kind of boring in that way. But it also reads like a classic slasher film — the kind of story that lacks classic judgement 101. Why would Charlie get into the car with a complete stranger? Because it’s a slasher novel. You can’t go into a slasher-esque medium and expect that the characters aren’t going to make stupid decisions. You make bad decisions because you do it for the plot! If I read another review that says “sHe HaD pLeNtY oF oPpOrTuNiTiEs To GeT oUt” — DUH!!! That’s the point. Anyways… I had more fun that most with Survive the Night. I didn’t hate it by any means. But it was slow and the ending was just okay.
Whew, guess I had a lot to say about this one. If you’re looking for something similar, try No Exit by Taylor Adams.
My Rating — 3 stars.
#8: Lock Every Door
From the start, Lock Every Door seemed like a well-constructed thriller. I was into the story for quite awhile before it lost me. On the surface, the vibes were immaculately creepy: Jules, a young, broke woman takes a too-good-to-be-true apartment sitting job at the luxurious Bartholomew building in Manhattan; shortly after moving in, she learns the previous sitter went missing and sets off on a race against time to uncover the story of what’s happened. Knowing something sinister was taking place (but not knowing exactly what) made the story bingeable. Throughout the story, it was really unclear how everything was going to come together — and I really, REALLY like that in a thriller. But the end… I just didn’t like it. The final twist and ensuing result went completely opposite of where I wanted it to go and I had a hard time rationalizing what I was so compelled by with the ending.
My Rating — 3 stars.
As always, reading is subjective, so your opinions may not match with mine and that’s okay! If you’ve read any or all of Sager’s backlist, drop your comments or rankings below. I’d love to chat.
Enjoy!
JBW