Survive the Night - Danielle Vega
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.
It is going to be hard to write this review without spoilers because honestly. HONESTLY, this book was absolutely terrible. Usually I'm all for a good YA book because usually they end up being pretty decent, if not a bit hokey. I feel like if you start a YA book you have to assume it's going to be a little hokey and that's OK. What isn't OK is when the story builds and it feels like the author has decided to say "oh to hell with it" and give up. And not just regular give up, like leave a bunch of loose ends, but to give you an ending so completely ridiculous you swear you've walked into a really lame horror movie.
And I say this as a huge fan of R.L. Stine, but this book came off like a really bad Goosebumps novel. R.L. Stine had more action in his books aimed at elementary and middle school kids than this. Yeah, that's right, a murderous "thing" with tentacles is NOT SCARY. It's not even good plot material. It just is not.
Now, I got hopeful when I started it because we have Casey, who was a typical all-American kid, who after a sports injury finds herself addicted to prescription pain medication. Mostly because she's found a loser friend, Shana, who is basically the friend we hope our children never, ever have. So Casey ends up in rehab, and during her first forays into the world post-rehab, she finds herself hanging out with Shana because Casey is basically oblivious to which friends are good and which ones are not. Anyways. So she's hanging out with her, along with a few others including her former boyfriend, Sam.
Somehow, they hear about this "Survive the Night" party, which is essentially a rave in the underground system of New York city where it's like sewers and abandoned train tunnels. So they go, like completely irresponsible children, and (dun, dun, dun) people start dying. At first I was sure this would turn out as Casey relapsing and it all being a really terrible drug induced hallucination (which would have been cheap, but in hindsight, far better than what it actually was) but no. It's not that, and that's not even a spoiler, so calm down.
What it ends up being is so incredibly stupid and awful that I won't even give it the dignity of a spoiler. I'll tell you one thing, if I had actually paid for this book I would have demanded a refund. Seriously. It was that terrible. Normally when I read a book and don't like it, I want to be able to suggest it to someone because surely someone else will love it, even if I didn't. The only group I think would love this are 15 year old girls who haven't read anything great. Just saying.
