Book: Home Before Dark
Author: Riley Sager
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Pages: 400
Read On: Kindle
How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days
Plot Summary: 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.
Alternating between Maggie’s uneasy homecoming and chapters from her father’s book, Home Before Dark is the story of a house with long-buried secrets and a woman’s quest to uncover them—even if the truth is far more terrifying than any haunting.
Things I Liked:
1. The premise had me at Hello! I mean, come on, a haunted house, a famous book written about it, lies and a woman back to figure things out! HIT ME UP! Plus, I've enjoyed 2 out of 3 of the author's previous works. So, picking this book up was a no brainer!
2. This book is a not-so-subtle hat-tip to the Amityville Horror movie franchise/ true story, which made it even more interesting to me! If you don't know about the Amityville case, then do Google it before you read this book, you'll find it quite interesting! The constant pull-push between was the house really haunted? Or did the family make it up to make a quick buck? Who is telling the truth? All of that dynamic is very interesting and is really nicely captured in this book as well. Maggie is almost 100% convinced that the events in her dad's book are all lies. She doesn't remember the trauma or the haunting outlined in her father's best selling book. So, her trying to reconcile what she thinks she remembers with what is written in her dad's book is an interesting journey.
3. The writing is good. It is evocative yet fast-paced and there is never a dull moment in the book!
4. The narrative switches between Maggie's present day efforts to renovate Baneberry Hall and her trying to piece together the events of the 20 days that her family lived in the mansion and the chapters of the book- The House of Horrors- written by her dad, which is supposed to be a "true story"/ factual account of the same twenty days. So, on the one hand, you have a story that's rich in horror/ supernatural elements and another story (Maggie's present day journey), which is more of a classic thriller/ whodunnit saga. Both of these together make the book gripping and unputdownable. If you love horror as a genre or crime/ thrillers as a genre, then this book is for you!
5. There are multiple red herrings in this book. There are loads of questions on which the book keeps you guessing, such as:
> Is there a ghost? Who is this ghost? Is it more than one ghost?
> Is it a ghost plus a human behind all of the events mentioned in the book? Who is the human?
> Is it just a human? Does that fully explain all the happenings in the book?
Things I Didn't Like:
1. In all of Riley Sager's books, there seems to be a common thread of eventual disappointment. It's like this- the ride and journey that the book takes you on is, usually, top notch. It keeps you engaged, interested, keeps you at the edge of your seat and sometimes even scares you quite a bit. However, the destination, the big reveal, always leaves a lot to be desired and is a tad disappointing! Don't want the spoil the book by giving more details, but a lot of times in books with a similar premise, it boils down to just communicating with one's parents to resolve the situation! The author ends up deploying all sorts of convoluted nonsense to make the book's premise work by making Maggie's parents absolutely refusing to tell her about the truth of the 20 days that they spent at Baneberry Hall.
2. The ending is a bit 'meh'.
Rating: 3.5/5
Purely for the journey, the unputdownability of the book and the Amityville vibes!
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