Home Before Dark by Riley Sager Narrator: Cady McClain, Jon Lindstrom
Published by Penguin Audio on June 30, 2020
Source: Purchased
Genres: Horror, Ghost Story, Thriller
Length: 11 hrs 4 mins
Pages: 388
Format: Audiobook
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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.
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?
The set-up is good. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt’s father wrote a book, House of Horrors, about their family’s three weeks in the haunted Baneberry Hall. The book became a best seller, but now her father is dead and she’s inherited the house. Maggie’s convinced the book was fiction and remembers nothing from their time there, so she moves into Baneberry Hall to renovate it for sale and, hopefully, find out the truth of what really happened that summer.
It turns out that the house is creepier than Maggie had expected. The book alternates between the present timeline and chapters from House of Horrors, using what her dad wrote to echo what she’s living through. It turns out that more might be true than she thought. I listened to the audio and having two narrators, one for House of Horrors and one for Maggie’s point of view, worked well.
I don’t read many horror books and this is my first by Sager, but I honestly expected it to be more scary. The atmosphere was good and the house appropriately gothic, but it never made me shiver or cringe. Maggie could have been a stronger character, too. The chapters from her point of view are repetitive and she’s angry and whiny and doesn’t treat people well.
The reveal of why they left the house ended up disappointing and unbelievable. So many of the character’s actions just aren’t believable.
About Riley Sager
Riley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, most recently With a Vengeance, Middle of the Night and The Only One Left.
His novels have been published in 40 countries, with more than 5 million copies sold worldwide. His latest book, The Unknown, will be released on August 4.
A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
This sounds like it could be good. I do like horror, but I’ve never read this author.
Great review.