Home Before Dark

September 23, 2020 |  No Comments

Home Before Dark

by Riley Sager

Date Published: June 30, 2020
Published By: Dutton Books
Page Count: 384


Publisher’s Description:

What was it like? Living in that house.

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.

In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?


My Star Rating:

4 of 5 stars

My Review:

Home Before DarkHome Before Dark by Riley Sager
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I knew this book was going to creep me out before I ever started reading it. I’ve had my own haunted house experience years ago when I was a young teen, and wouldn’t you know I started dreaming of that house after starting to read this book?

Maggie is an adult who has just lost her father and has now inherited a house she and her family haven’t lived in for years. A house that her father wrote a notorious book about for being more haunted than the Amityville Horror. His last parting words to her before he left this world: don’t ever go back there. It’s not safe, especially for you. But this book has ruined Maggie’s life. She doesn’t believe a word of it or remember anything the book says happened while she and her family lived there.

As far as creep-factor goes, I think this book was fairly tame compared to other horror books I’ve read, but there were a few parts here and there that raised the hairs on the back of my neck a bit. I think the underlying story rather than the haunting – with the neighbor girls, the house’s true history, and the caretakers and such – those were the really interesting bits of the story and what kept me turning the pages.

It was also interesting to read how the past, the book, and the fame her family received since her father wrote the book – wanted or not – affected who Maggie is now and how it made her almost reclusive and untrusting of others.

If you’re hoping for a nightmare inducing thriller, this one is a bit too tame for that, so might be a good read for those who don’t usually like horror but want to dip their toes in.

View all my reviews


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