Home Before Dark

Riley Sager has quickly become a must-read author for me. I've read all of his backlist (except Final Girls which is on my TBR list) and he's an author I can trust to consistently gives me twisty, tension-filled reads.

In Home Before Dark, Sager weaves a story around a creepy old house called Baneberry Hall (awesome name, right?), giving the book a wonderfully Gothic feel. You can easily envision the old mansion with its strong ghostly vibe, long-held secrets, and nasty beasties. You'll swear you can hear the creeeeeeak of a door opening, the whisper of a breath on your neck and feel the goosebumps creeping up your arms. *shiver*  "Better beware, be canny and careful" because you'll also find yourself suddenly humming an earworm you've picked up during this read. You have been warned.

The story alternates between two POVs: Maggie's part is set in current day as she tries to get to the bottom of what happened twenty years before when she and her parents briefly lived at Baneberry Hall and what happened to cause them to suddenly leave. Maggie has no memories of those few weeks, but her father definitely does. The second part of the story is told by Ewan, Maggie's father, who gained notoriety after writing a book about his family's experiences in the creepy mansion. But is his book fact or fiction? Maggie isn't sure. But she wants to find out.

This was a good read and I enjoyed the creepy setting Sager has constructed but I had a few issues. First, I found the pacing was a bit dodgy and parts of the story were predictable. Second, I would have preferred for Maggie and Ewan to have more distinct voices. I didn't find Maggie's portion nearly as compelling, but I still felt the changeovers between their POVs were often unclear and their voices too similar. And finally, gah … I wasn't a fan of the last few chapters. They felt rushed and a little confusing.

While this wasn't my favourite Sager book, it is still an enjoyable thriller with an eerie cover that sets the tone for this ghostly whodunnit, set in a creepy old mansion with a sinister story that may have you believing in ghosts before you turn the final pages. I look forward to seeing what Riley Sager comes up with next. 

My reviews of other books by Riley Sager: 
Last Time I Lied
Lock Every Door

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Dutton Books for providing 

me with a complimentary advanced digital 

copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 3.5 stars

Author: Riley Sager

Genre: Suspense, Gothic

Type and Source: eBook from NetGalley

Publisher: Dutton Books

First Published: June 30, 2020

Opening Lines: "Daddy, you need to check for ghosts."

Book Description from GoodReads: 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?

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.