All Riley Sager Books Ranked with Reviews (+ PDF)

Home Before Dark

Best for fans of ghost stories

• My Ranking: #1 of 7
• Goodreads ranking: #2 of 7

In Home Before Dark, a woman named Maggie returns to her childhood house, made famous by her father’s bestselling memoir describing it as a haunted house of horrors, with a sordid trail of deaths within its walls. Maggie’s family fled the house after living there for only three weeks after a series of ghostly encounters.

Skeptical Maggie was only 5 at the time and remembers nothing, as she makes plans to renovate and sell the home. After a grizzly discovery, the house gains notoriety once again as Maggie goes on a quest to determine the true history of the horrors described in her father’s book, and dark secrets are revealed.

Home Before Dark feels like both a slow burn and a page-turner at the same time. The ending surprised me, and it truly delivered. I enjoyed the concept of a “haunted house” book, which I have never read before, and I also enjoyed reading the perspectives of both Maggie’s adult story and her father’s book, the chapters of which are sprinkled throughout Home Before Dark.

While some readers hated the “ghost” descriptions in this Fall inspired thriller book, I thought Sager explained them in retrospect in the end in a way that made sense.

And, like many have been saying, you will never think of The Sound of Music the same way again…

The Only One Left

Best for fans of spooky thrillers

• My Ranking: #2 of 7
• Goodreads ranking: #1 of 7

The Only One Left is Riley Sager’s new book, and it’s Riley Sager at his absolute finest. It’s a chilling 1980s Gothic tale about a tarnished caregiver named Kit who must work for a woman named Lenora, accused of a gruesome family massacre in 1929, in her spooky cliffside estate called “Hope’s End.”

Lenora, the fear-inducing “Lizzie Borden” of her Maine town, has been rendered mute by a stroke but wishes to tell her side of the story over a typewriter.

It’s eerie and ominous, and it takes twists and turns the reader can never expect. My jaw actually DROPPED several times. It would be a great book to read in the Fall.

Survive the Night

Best for fans of suspense

• My Ranking: #3 of 7
• Goodreads ranking: #7 of 7

In the Riley Sager book Survive the Night, it’s November 1991, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie is in a car with Josh, a man who might be a serial killer. They met via a campus board, both looking to share the drive home to Ohio.

Charlie is wracked with guilt and grief over the murder of her best friend — the third victim of the Campus Killer, and she’s also an unreliable narrator struggling with mental health issues.

Josh claims to be heading home to care for his sick father. There’s something suspicious about Josh and, as they travel across the highway in the dead of night, she begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer.

This entire book is filled with suspense, and what follows is a game of cat and mouse that keeps you on the edge of your seat, playing out during an age when the only call for help can be made on a payphone and in a place where there’s nowhere to run.

It kept me super engaged, and I was not able to solve the mystery. I also thought the ending tied the book together really cohesively and made me feel really satisfied.

Lock Every Door

Best for fans of unexpected plot twists

• My Ranking: #4 of 7
• Goodreads ranking: #4 of 7

In Lock Every Door, twentysomething, orphaned, newly single, and down-on-her-luck Jules feels like she won the lottery when she gets a job apartment sitting at the renowned New York City building, The Bartholemew.

But the building’s rules are odd: No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other rich and famous residents.

Then, things get even weirder when another apartment sitter in the building goes missing and leaves behind a note: Be careful.

In her quest to find Ingrid, Jules digs into the building’s sordid past, which catches up with the present and leaves her fighting for her life.

I loved the descriptions of the historic building in Lock Every Door and, while there was a major twist I wasn’t expecting, I did suspect the main “culprit” halfway through. I also hoped for more resolution about Jules’ past. Overall, though, it was a really satisfying, unique thriller!

Final Girls

Best for fans of crime-filled thrills

• Ranking: #5 of 7
• Goodreads ranking: #5 of 7

In Final Girls, Quincy Carpenter became a member of the so-called “Final Girls Club” ten years earlier, when she went on a vacation with friends in college and was the only survivor of a horrific murder massacre.

There are two other members of this club: Lisa, whose nine sorority sisters succumbed to a college dropout’s knife, and Sam, who fought and survived against the “Sack Man” during a shift at the Nightlight Inn. Despite the media’s attempts, they never meet.
 
Flash forward ten years, and Quincy has an apartment, a popular baking blog, a boyfriend, and lastly, a trusted friend in the police officer who had saved her life during the massacre. In fact, her memory won’t even recall the events of that night.
 
Then, Lisa is found dead and Sam appears at Quincy’s doorstep. Sam’s presence and the circumstances surrounding Lisa’s death force Quincy to face the past — with a whirlwind of consequences and suspense.

I found Final Girls to be really engaging and unique, and I was unable to guess the ending, which is always a plus for me. I found Sam’s character to be a bit annoying in constantly pushing boundaries with Quincy, but overall, I really enjoyed this thriller, and would definitely recommend it!

The Last Time I Lied

Best for fans of solving mysteries

• Ranking: #6 of 7
• Goodreads ranking: #3 of 7

The Last Time I Lied is the story of the game “Two Truths and a Lie” gone wrong. A group of girls played it as teenagers in their cabin at Camp Nightingale. But the game ended the night Emma watched from the bed as the others snuck out of their cabin into the darkness. They disappeared without a trace.

Over a decade later, Emma is a rising artist in New York art, painting massive canvases of her vanished bunkmates. When the owner of Camp Nightingale learns this, she invites Emma to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor. Seeing an opportunity to find out what really happened to the girls all those years ago, Emma agrees.

Upon arriving at Camp Nightingale, Emma finds familiar faces and is even assigned to the same cabin. But when strange things start happening, she finds that digging into the past can cause serious threats in the present. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price.

I enjoyed The Last Time I Lied overall, BUT I was able to guess “what happened” very close to the beginning, and there was an additional plot twist at the very end that I found to lack believability. That being said, a lot of readers disagree with me and REALLY like this one.

The House Across the Lake

Best for fans of unreliable narrators and the supernatural

• Ranking: #7 of 7
• Goodreads ranking: #6 of 7

The House Across the Lake begins ominously with an epigraph from “No Body, No Crime,” a Taylor Swift song, “I think he did it but I just can’t prove it.”

In the book, a recently widowed actress passes time at her family’s Vermont lake house, watching the glamorous couple in the house across the lake through binoculars.

When she befriends the woman across the lake, it becomes clear that the marriage isn’t perfect after all. And when the woman suddenly vanishes, she becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her, uncovering even darker truths in the process.

While I enjoyed this novel overwell and thought it was well written, the first half felt too similar to other popular thrillers, like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window. And, while I don’t really know why supernatural elements work for me on shows like Stranger Things, it just felt odd to me here. Maybe these elements will work better for you, though!

Conclusion

While many readers differ as to the Riley Sager books ranked, one thing is clear: they are twisty thrillers that satisfy your itch. This particular backlist catalog is a great one to dive deep into because they are all so good!

Share your favorite Riley Sager book or any remaining questions you have in the comments below.