Every Riley Sager Novel Ranked
Riley Sagar is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple thrillers that are huge hit with fans of suspense and psychological thrillers. Fans of Sager’s work love the way his thrillers include complex characters with dark pasts, page-turning storylines, and plenty of surprising twists. Sure, you want to read them all, but which Riley Sager book should you read first? Here is our ranking of every single Riley Sager novel.
7
When you think of Riley Sager books, one of the first things that comes to mind is the author’s shocking endings. Without giving anything away, it’s hard to think of an ending more surprising than his 2021 novel Survive the Night. Sure, the twists left readers divided, but read it and see how you feel about it. This story follows Charlie Jordan, who is being driven across the country by someone who is a stranger. And the more time she spends with him, the more she suspects he’s not who he says he is. Could he, in fact, be a serial killer?
6
Final Girls was Riley Sager’s first novel, and so for a lot of diehard fans, this was their first introduction to the author. Of course, Sager isn’t the only author to ever write about the final girl trope. Famously, Stephen Graham Jones covered the topic The Last Final Girl, and Grady Hendrix recently released his own take on final girls with The Final Girl Support Group. But Riley Sager’s take on final girls is certainly worth a read. Quincy Carpenter is a member of a club no one wants to be a part of—a group of survivors known as The Final Girls. Each girl survived their own horror movie-style murder spree. Now, ten years later, one of them has turned up dead, forcing Quincy to relive the worst time in her life and reexamine past traumas.
4
With number four on our list. we’re getting into the Riley Sager novels that you can go ahead and consider must-reads! In Lock Every Door, Jules Larsen is working as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, a high-profile and highly mysterious luxury apartment building in Manhattan. As she gets to know the residents of the Bartholomew and her fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, Jules learns just how strange the history of the building is. When Ingrid goes missing, Jules’ investigation into the Bartholomew turns into a frantic hunt to catch a killer.
3
Set in a summer camp, The Last Time I Lied is a fun summer read with an irresistible premise. And it was recently optioned for television! So read it now before this story hits screens. Fifteen years ago, Emma Davis’ cabin mates snuck out in the middle of the night and were never seen again. Now Emma is an artist with a successful career in New York City. Yet the past is still not entirely behind her, so when she’s invited to come back to Camp Nightingale as a counselor, she agrees to go in the hopes of finally coming to terms with the memories that still haunt her. Then three more girls go missing, and it seems like history is repeating itself.
2
If you’re a sucker for haunted house stories and thrillers, then you need to pick up Home Before Dark. Baneberry Hall is a large Victorian estate in Vermont. Ewan and Jess stayed there with their daughter Maggie for three weeks before leaving suddenly in the middle of the night. Ewan later wrote about the events that lead up to their sudden departure in a nonfiction book House of Horrors. Now, twenty-five years have passed, and Maggie has little memory of what happened in that house when she was a young child. After her father dies, Maggie returns to Baneberry to renovate it before its sale. But is the house truly haunted, like her father’s memoir says?
1
Sager’s latest thriller The Only One Left might just be his most shocking story to date, and it’s one you’ll definitely want to add to your TBR pile when it comes out this June. In 1929, the Hope family was brutally murdered. The only survivor was seventeen-year-old Lenora Hope, and while most people assume she murdered her own family, the police were never able to prove it. The year is now 1983, and Lenora is in her seventies and can only communicate through typing on a typewriter following a series of strokes. Now, for the first time ever, Lenora is ready to tell her story to her home-health aide Kit McDeere. But is Lenora telling the whole truth?
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Emily Martin has a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi. She’s a contributing editor at Book Riot and blogs/podcasts at Book Squad Goals.