Book Review: HOME BEFORE DARK by Riley Sager

HOME BEFORE DARK by Riley Sager

Dutton; 6/30/20

CBTB Rating: 5/5

The Verdict: A chilling ghost story-meets-family mystery

Riley Sager has done it again. The New York Times bestselling author of LOCK EVERY DOOR, THE LAST TIME I LIED, and FINAL GIRLS is back this summer with another irresistible work of chilling psychological suspense—and it’s his best, and most ambitious, book yet. HOME BEFORE DARK is a modern-day ghost story-meets-family mystery sure to deliver all the page-turning entertainment value readers of Sager’s work have come to expect, but this time, with an extra-chilling twist. In HOME BEFORE DARK, readers follow protagonist Maggie Holt as she returns to the home her family owned—and fled—years prior, an experience that became the inspiration for her father’s bestselling nonfiction book, House of Horrors. There’s just one problem: Maggie doesn’t believe a word of what her father has written about her childhood, and she’s determined to prove that this storied home is nothing more than a dilapidated house in need of some TLC. But as Maggie settles into the house, events unfold that defy logic—and begin to call into question all that Maggie believed (or didn’t believe) about her family’s ordeal years prior. Ghosts aren’t real… are they? HOME BEFORE DARK will make you think twice. Blending a chilling present-day mystery of family secrets with a glimpse into the book that defined Maggie’s childhood, House of Horrors, HOME BEFORE DARK is as masterfully-plotted and relentlessly readable a thriller as you’ll read this summer. So turn on all the lights in your room, double-check that your closet is as empty as you think it is, and dive into the spine-tingling world of Riley Sager’s HOME BEFORE DARK. 

Plot Details:

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.

How some authors manage to get better with each book they write, I’ll never know—but Riley Sager is one such author, and he makes it look easy. HOME BEFORE DARK is undoubtedly Sager’s most ambitious book yet, and it delivers on every level. Perhaps most impressive of all is that, as readers will quickly discover when they crack this book open, HOME BEFORE DARK is essentially two books in one. First and foremost, HOME BEFORE DARK is a story that follows protagonist Maggie as she returns to her former family home, Baneberry Hall—a vast mansion in the Vermont woods. As Maggie moves back into Baneberry Hall and begins renovating the house, she also finds herself journeying back into her own past, returning to the memories of her family’s time in the home and forming her own opinions about what really happened there years prior. Sager could have stopped there; that would have been an intriguing story in and of itself. But, luckily for all of us readers, he didn’t. Instead, Sager chose to weave into HOME BEFORE DARK chapters from Maggie’s father’s book, House of Horrors—his nonfiction account of what happened to his family, an instant-bestseller that (in the universe Sager has crafted here) captured the attention of readers across the country, and established Baneberry Hall as an iconic location much like the Amityville house that spawned The Amityville Horror. HOME BEFORE DARK effortlessly draws readers from Maggie’s present to her father’s account of her past, and the interplay between the two storylines adds an irresistible layer of intrigue, and genuine scares, to this story. Because the farther readers venture into this story, and the more time Maggie spends at Baneberry Hall, the more readers begin to recognize that the past might be repeating itself… and Maggie’s father’s stories might not be as far-fetched as she initially believed. 

Of all of Sager’s releases thus far, HOME BEFORE DARK isn’t just his best—it’s also his creepiest. Sager fans will already know that his novels are frequently influenced by the horror films that he personally loves, and in HOME BEFORE DARK, he takes this passion for the horror genre to the next level. While HOME BEFORE DARK is not in and of itself a horror novel, its nods to the horror genre are more pronounced than ever before, and the scares it serves up are practically guaranteed to make readers think twice before turning out the light at night. Central to the scares Sager crafts in his newest release is his story’s exceptional setting: Baneberry Hall, a mansion whose reputation, readers will quickly discover, is very well-deserved indeed. Baneberry Hall is the stuff my Gothic suspense-loving dreams are made of: a mansion buried deep in the woods, a building that has seen better days, and now sits in silence, waiting to claim its next resident. Such a strong presence is Baneberry Hall in this story that readers will begin to view this house as a character unto itself, and a very untrustworthy character at that. When it comes to Baneberry Hall, what you see is not what you get—a lesson that Maggie is about to learn all too well. As Maggie settles into Baneberry Hall and begins the process of restoring this building to its former grandeur, the house’s secrets begin to make themselves known to her… because Baneberry Hall is a house that holds more than just dusty old furniture and relics of a time gone by. It is a house that holds the secrets, memories, and emotions of its past residents, and some of them might be deadly. Readers who love suspense novels with a strong sense of place will soak up every little bit of Gothic atmosphere that Sager crafts in his story’s setting, Baneberry Hall. 

HOME BEFORE DARK wouldn’t be a Riley Sager novel without a compelling protagonist for readers to cheer for, and in Maggie Holt, Sager crafts a worthy successor to the strong, smart “final girls” who have filled the pages of his previous novels. Maggie Holt is, in many ways, the perfect guide to lead readers through the chilling maze that is HOME BEFORE DARK. Maggie is the ultimate skeptic—a woman who has grown up never trusting the version of her childhood that her father shared with the world in House of Horrors. Maggie holds a fair measure of disdain for her father’s decision to, in her opinion, sensationalize their family’s experiences to make money, and she is determined to disprove his narrative once and for all by renovating Baneberry Hall and ridding it of the specter of gloom that has followed it since her family fled. Through Maggie’s character, Sager elegantly walks the very fine line between a story that is fully a supernatural thriller and a story that is fully grounded in reality. Maggie’s perspective is one that many readers are likely to find relatable: she is an unabashed skeptic of her father’s ghost stories, a woman who prefers to view the world through tangible facts, rather than lore and legend. But as Maggie—and readers—will discover over the course of this novel, Maggie’s time in Baneberry Hall will reveal to her much more than the truth behind her father’s claims of a supernatural presence in the home. Maggie’s return to Baneberry Hall is a journey of self-discovery, and an experience that allows her to finally put to rest the questions that have haunted her as she has grown into adulthood with the shadow of House of Horrors looming over her. Through Maggie’s narration, HOME BEFORE DARK becomes more than a straightforward ghost story: it becomes a story of a woman reclaiming the narrative of her own past.

There are very few authors whose new novels I look forward to with as much anticipation as I do a new Riley Sager novel, and this year’s release is his best yet. HOME BEFORE DARK is an instant classic haunted house story, and a tale that belongs in the company of the horror genre staples that inspired it. A chilling blend of supernatural suspense and compelling family mystery, HOME BEFORE DARK is an iconic new thriller from an author who just gets better and better every year. Readers in the market for a psychological thriller that blends a spine-tingling ghost story with a gripping tale of a woman’s investigation of her own family history will devour Sager’s exceptional new release, HOME BEFORE DARK.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. All opinions my own. 

---

While you’re here…

• New to Riley Sager? Check out my Guide to Riley Sager Thrillers!

HOME BEFORE DARK Details: 

Hardcover: 400 pages

Publisher: Dutton (June 30, 2020)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1524745170

ISBN-13: 978-1524745172

Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches

Crime by the Book is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This in no way affects my opinion of the book(s) included in this post.