Home Before Dark

I devoured this within one weekend, it’s so good. This is my second Riley Sager book, the first was Only One Left. I won’t review that one here but I cannot recommend it enough. If you haven’t read that yet, go read it! But don’t forget about this one! Riley Sager is very talented at writing winding, twisting narratives that keep you guessing. I’m usually really good at predicting what “plot twist” is coming my way in a book or show/film. But each Riley Sager story I’ve read has always taken me for a ride on the edge of my seat, and left me floored by the end. I scare very easily and at times I’d have to put the book down for a few minutes to shake off the goosebumps. But I was too captivated to walk away for long. This book was so fun to read and a perfect spooky read for a snowed in (or rainy!) weekend. Read it!

I've read all four of Riley Sager's novels. I've liked them all and thought all four would make fantastic movies. But I think Home Before Dark is his best work to date. It's not as throwback or fun as Final Girls and it didn't have the same romantic ambiance of Lock Every Door, but this one was really balanced and well crafted. There's something about Sager's work I've realized the fourth time in. His work always seems "familiar" to me, as though I've read or seen the concept before. But I actually had a realization in this book that this style may actually be on purpose. I actually love a homage and, in this book, it's just too obvious to miss. So yes, it's like an idea you've seen, but a completely fresh angle. In this one we have Maggie, a thirty year old interior designer, who is famous for being the surviving child/victim in a non-fiction book written by her father about a haunting they experience in a rambling Victorian home they lived in 25 years prior. The book has defined her and she despises it. She has no memory of the actual events and is convinced her dad made the whole thing up just to profit. And profit they have. The money has paid for her education and their lives and she's just inherited the entire share after her father's death.... including the house itself. She makes the decision to go back to the house, despite a death bed promise to her father that she won't, and her mother's insistence as well (who offers to buy the house off her, as she's now remarried to a realtor). There was a tiny lapse in logic here. It was clear her parents are desperate for her to NOT return to the house. So I found it amazing they left it to her in the estate. But lapse of logic aside, and putting myself in Maggie's shoes, I would ABSOLUTELY go back to the house to see if I could figure out what happened. Especially to see if the memories would come back from living in the house. So off she goes with a double agenda. To realize the mysteries of her past while being productive and renovate the house to sell. The cast of characters from her perspective is largely limited to the people from the book itself, people her family knew as a child... neighbors, police, locals, etc. She has a female friend and business partner but that interaction is limited to cell phone communications. The friend, Allie, was the weakest link character as she only serves as a plot device to give updates and is not a realized character. Another Riley Sager style is the flashbacks. I did not like the device in Lock Every Door (the story is told from the same character's POV but from a future self and a current self told side by side). But in this book, it really worked. As Maggie is going through the motions of the current day mystery, etc., we get to read portions of her father's book in which she is the main character. So her father, in present day deceased, is the other main character and his story of the haunting is told from his perspective. There was only one moment I lost track of the POVs but, overall, Sager did a great job of giving both characters a unique voice. I had a small issue with the ending simply because it was super rushed. Just BAM, BAM, BAM. That being said, Sager pulls off the difficulty of giving us a satisfying ending in a horror novel. And, yes, I've seen the other reviews in which it's questioned if this is a horror novel. I say, yes, absolutely. It's more horror than any other genre. I would not expect to be "scared" as it's not that type of novel. It's more like atmospheric horror with a mystery at the center. And it leaves enough open that we are left to wonder and question, while still being given a very solid conclusion. Overall highly recommended if you love all the stuff I love... old Victorian houses, trips to libraries to do research, mysteries and investigations, old love letters, family and town folklore, ghosts, etc. I think this book is a real treat and absolutely to be enjoyed.

This is my introduction to Riley Sager and man! Idk anything about the other books, but I can't imagine anything topping this one! I went into this fully blind. Just a random book rec video, and I didn't have ANY idea what the story line was. I didn't even read the jacket. I COULDN'T PUT THIS DOWN. The jump scares, the little moving parts, the book within a book, the story telling, the TWISTS!?!? It was all amazing. What a ride. It's 1 am and I may have to start the next Sager book because I DON'T KNOW HOW I SLEEP AFTER THIS ONE.

** spoiler alert ** Riley Sager is an author that I will automatically buy. I remember reading Final Girls when it first came out and throwing it across the room when it got to the climax, not because I was frustrated, but because I was excited for the story that Sager was spinning. I am a devoted fan, and while I acknowledge that Sager's writing leans toward reboots of horror tropes, I still seek out the thrill I get from reading his books. All this to say that I was incredibly surprised to find that I was dragging my feet to finish one of my most anticipated books of 2020 - Home Before Dark. In Home Before Dark, Sager plays to his strengths of reconfiguring one of our canon works in the horror genre, The Amityville Horror. This is familiar territory for Sager. Each of his previous books stands as a tribute to similar horror sub-genres or a specific work. Final Girls was a slasher throwback reminiscent of the movie Scream, The Last Time I Lied can be tied to Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, and Lock Every Door was a clear love letter to Ira Levin and Rosemary's Baby - in a fitting tribute, the book is even dedicated to him. I've seen other reviews compare this book to The Haunting of Hill House, and I think that is an apt comparison. It is worth noting though that, if we are using the show as our example, the first episode lays out exactly what the older brother experienced and then wrote about that made the estate - and his family - famous. As the show reveals through all the following episodes is what the rest of the family experienced that was left out of his book. In Home Before Dark, we do see a similar play between constructed truth, the faultiness of memory, and the apparently supernatural. Maggie Holt is the daughter of Ewan Holt who wrote 'House of Horrors', the book that has plagued her life since she was a child. In 'House of Horrors', Holt explains why his family fled in the middle of the night from their recently purchased home in rural Vermont - Baneberry Hall. Holt weaves a story of a haunted house that is doomed to repeat its tragic past with each family that occupies its walls. The problem is, while Maggie is a starring character in her father's book, she remembers next to nothing about when her family lived at Baneberry Hall. Convinced her parents lied about the contents of the book, she has grown-up frustrated and hurt by their chicanery. The book opens when we learn that Maggie's father has recently died and she discovers that Baneberry Hall now belongs to her. Determined to uncover any repressed memories she has of her time at the house, Maggie decides to return to Baneberry Hall to not only flip the house for resale, but to do some much needed soul-searching. Once back at Baneberry Hall, Maggie connects with the locals who remember when the Holts lived there and help Maggie put some of the pieces of her memories back into place. Consequently, Maggie learns what parts of 'House of Horrors' were fictions and which hold up as truth. Following the pattern of Sager's previous works, Home Before Dark jumps between the present day and flashback scenes. However, unlike the previous novels, Home Before Dark exercises this plot device to excess. The structure of the book is arranged so that nearly every other chapter is from Maggie's present day perspective punctuated by Holt's original text - 'House of Horrors'. While this effectively syncs up the events and peculiar happenings we experience with Maggie, with her foreknowledge of her father's book, it ultimately leaves readers deflated and following irrelevant and unnecessary red herrings. In fact, it isn't until the last 20 pages of the book that "all becomes clear" in an almost too tidy fashion that left me incredibly unsatisfied while Maggie is finally at peace with her past. An added frustration I noticed with this plot structure was that, if the fonts had not changed to indicate to me whose story I was readying - Maggie's or Ewan's - their 'writing' voices were exactly the same. It's not clear if this was intentional because Maggie had internalized her father's book, or just a bad choice on Sager's part. Either way, I would have liked to see more distinct characters emerge from these pages. Near the end of the book, when Maggie does finally learn the full truth of her past, what does she decide to do with that knowledge and her newfound sense of agency? She writes a sequel to 'House of Horrors', and in a bait and switch ending, we realize that we've been reading Maggie's book ' House of Secrets' alongside the text of 'House of Horrors'. I cannot decide if this was a brilliant literary move on Sager's part...or manipulative. Yet again reinforcing that information has been withheld from the reader all along. Regardless, there might have been a more engaging ways to have set up this frame narrative more along the lines of The Golden Notebook or even an interactive approach like in S.. Lost somewhere between uninspiring character development, withheld information, the split timelines, whiplash frame stories, and the grand reveal, Sager didn't leave much for readers to hold onto. However, Home Before Dark is still an enjoyable read for what it is. It still has many of the typical Sager marks of excellence, but I nearly DNF'd this book and only my loyalty to the author kept me going.

I love a good haunted house story. And as a skeptic myself, albeit one with a love for supernatural fiction, I also love a story that's about the search for truth behind apparently supernatural events. This book ticks all those boxes, so I dug into it with great eagerness. What I found was a book that kept me thoroughly entertained throughout--I read it in a single day, with only a couple short breaks--but nevertheless had a couple flaws. Let's start with the good stuff. The writing is top quality, and the pacing is definitely on point. The characters are reasonably well-developed, and the dual (past and present) story lines manage to work surprisingly well (though the narrative voice is perhaps a bit too similar between the alternating sections). I particularly like the way the author manages to simultaneously build suspense and keep the reader flip-flopping regarding what actually happened, and the blend of supernatural and skeptical is both intriguing and narratively effective. However, I have two complaints. First, the story starts off feeling a bit too familiar. Family flees haunted house, writes a book, and their adult child returns decades later to find out what really happened. Following numerous real-world scandals involving families' fraudulent claims of supernatural terrors in their homes, this plot has become well-trod. That doesn't mean it can't be effective, but it does mean that, while we might enjoy the same old tropes, if a book really wants to stand out, it needs to bring something new to the table. Early on, it doesn't really look like this book will bring anything new to the table. The first half or so reads like a well told version of the story, but fundamentally the same old story none the less. However, fortunately, though I won't spoil exactly what they are, there are some twists, beginning about halfway through the book, that call the familiar into question and leave the reader guessing and turning the pages right until the ending. The ending itself is a mixed bag, however. Again, I won't spoil anything, but I find myself conflicted between acknowledging that the novel's conclusion certainly does wrap everything up and feeling like some of the revelations, offered in fairly rapid succession in the book's final chapters, while logically sound, still undercut some of the book's tension. I've said many times (in reviews of other books and films, and in other places) that ending a horror novel is a tricky business, because it requires balancing the reader's need for narrative closure against the simple fact that the unknown is scarier than the known. This novel definitely suffers from the same problem. It's not that the ending is entirely unsatisfactory--it actually does a good job of concluding the story--but rather that once the reader has too much information, the story simply isn't all that scary any more. All that having been said, despite my couple of complaints (which I guess can be viewed as one complaint resolving the other), I found this to be an excellent novel on the whole, and I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a good spooky tale.

Where do I even start?! This book was incredible from page 1. I legit stayed up for 6 hours straight reading this because I just could not put it down. What a perfect October read! This was an amazing, gripping, supernatural story with awesome plot twists and an incredibly mind-blowing ending, keeping me intrigued from beginning to end. This novel features multiple stacked twists at the end and kept me guessing until the conclusion, with excellent writing throughout. Again, what a perfect spooky thriller! 1000/10 recommend!

Near perfect. This is my favorite type of haunted house. It had everything! A kid that can see ghosts, bumps in the night, creepy record players, items moving and lights turning on when no one is watching, and a ton of quirky characters. The FMC was slightly off-putting, but I absolutely adored Ewan! He stole the show for me. Hated Jess with every fiber of my being… but maybe that was the point??? In terms of the plot, she was TWISTY. It was never a question of who was involved but how and why. I suspected some of the twists, but as soon as you have it figured out, Sager pulls the rug out from under you. I will say that it was a bit of a slow burn until around the 60% mark… but once it takes the first turn, it’s full throttle until the end. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, til the very last word. I was really satisfied with the ending. Very, very sad that it’s over. Will definitely re-read.

Riley Sanger is definitely cemented as one of my top 5 <i>can't wait for the next book</i> authors!! I have absolutely loved everything he has written! In fact, I love him so much, I would even read his grocery list!!! His most recent thriller, <i>Home Before Dark</i>, did not disappoint AT ALL! <b>SUMMARY</b> Maggie has lived her life in the shadow of the book that made her father and their house famous. Well, maybe <i>infamous</i>. Twenty-five years prior to her fathers death, he wrote a <i>non-fiction</i>account of the haunting of their New Hampshire estate. The story was as well read and shocking as <i>Amnityville Horror</i>. It was passed off as a true story but Maggie always knew it was untrue. The book became a best seller, remaining popular for the twenty-five years since its publication date. Although the book provided the family with financial security, there were many downsides to it. Maggie's parents divorced, Maggie always felt like she lived in the shadow of the book and she was never sure if people befriended her out of genuine friendship or due to her notoriety. To make matters worse, Maggie cannot get a straight answer about what really happened. She was five years old when everything happened and remembers nothing from her time at the house. All she knows is that they fled the house in the middle of the night, never to return. Her parents would never give her a real answer about what happened. Her mother out rightly denied everything and her father would only say was, "what happened, happened." Needless to say, the whole thing really messed with her head. When the story opens, Maggie's father has just passed away and she finds out that, not only does he still own the house, but that he willed it to her. Her mother, although she has always denied any haunting, begs her to just get rid of it and never return. Well... what do you think Maggie does? <i>WHAT I LOVED</i> Where to even start???? I loved so darn much about this book!! The format was so well done. The story skips back and forth between the present, when Maggie inherits the house and goes to check it out and the past and the past, from the time the family buys the house until the night they escape from the house. Maggie is the narrator for the present tense and her fathers book is the voice of the past tense. It was the perfect way to tell the story! I loved the plot. It's exactly how I love my ghost stories. The whole <i>is it or isn't it a ghost</i> mystery is so fun! I also loved the history of the house. So many things happened over the years, it was a perfect house for a haunting. LOVED the characters. Maggie herself was so likeable, it was easy to root for her. I would love to see this made into a movie or series and I'm already choosing which actors will play each character. <b>WHAT I DIDN'T LOVE</b> I really can't think of anything I didn't love but I'm not sure this is quite timeless or life altering enough to be a 5 Star book for me. <b>OVERALL</b> This is a fantastic thriller!! If you love a good haunting, I could not recommend this more!!