Title: Home Before Dark
Author: Riley Sager
Rating 📖📖📖📖 / 5
Thank you Riley Sager for making a comeback!
I’ve been a fan of Mr. Sager’s since Final Girls, but haven’t really liked any of his other books since. The others were ok but lacked that same punch as Final Girls had. Home Before Dark has made up for the others. While not a perfect book, it definitely satisfied my need of a good thriller recently.
Our main character, Maggie Holt, has been plagued her whole life by her father’s book, House of Horrors, detailing their dealings with the supernatural at Baneberry Hall. Her only recollections of her twenty days in Baneberry Hall are limited to the day her family left in a hurry leaving all their possessions behind. After her father dies, she inherits Baneberry and sets out to restore the home to its former glory. Of course Maggie doesn’t believe a word of her father’s book nor does she believe that her family was haunted by malevolent ghosts. However, as she spends more time in Baneberry, she starts to question whether the experiences her family went through may have actually happened after all.
I must admit this book was a slow burn. That’s probably why it took so long to finish it. I would often put it down as I just wasn’t invested in the story. The characters seemed to lack a reason to invest in their stories and there wasn’t much of a plot to follow either for a while. The story did pick up luckily around halfway through the book. I did start to question whether Maggie was nuts or if the haunting was true myself. Not many books have made me question my own view of the characters like this one did. I only wish Maggie’s chapters were as captivating as the chapters from House of Horrors. Maggie’s chapters just never gripped me as much as they should have.
Home Before Dark does end on a couple different twists that, in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting. And when I say a couple, I mean it. There were at least three different twists that all happened within the last thirty pages of the book. Had some of these twists come sooner in the story, I probably wouldn’t have put it down so often.
Well done, Mr. Sager!
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