[Review] Home Before Dark - Riley Sager

Summary: 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. (Pub Date: Jun 30, 2020)

Riley Sager keeps doing it!

This time it's about a haunted house. Maggie's life has been defined by her father's book about a couple of weeks they'd lived in a house of horrors. Even though she's one of the main characters, she can't remember a thing and knows her parents are telling lies about those days. However, she never knew how far the lies went until her father dies and she inherits that same house. What will going back to it reveal about her family?

I'm sure it was on purporse, but the beginning is almost a The Shining what-if. What if the main character had written a book but his son didn't remember at all the supernatural events in the Overlook? Doctor Sleep would have surely been different, as is Home Before Dark.

Maggie is alone in that house of horrors and as much as she doesn't believe in ghosts, the events since her arrival sure make her scared. It also made me. This isn't really a horror story like The Shining, it's actually a very well built thriller, bringing you to the edge with every discovery Maggie comes upon.

As for the storytelling, Sager opted to show us chapters of her father's book while we follow Maggie in the present. I'm not a big fan of the two-timeline trope, but it wasn't too bad for this book. It's also worth noting how easy it was to differentiate both of the character's voices. Their experiences in the house were also visibly different. Even not being a fan of this style, I enjoyed a lot the author's choice and manner of execution.

This was suspenseful and exciting. I do think the plot twist in the end was a little predictable and not so believable, but it was still a good ending—far better than how Sager's previous book explained everything. I'd even dare to say this was the best thriller I read this year so far.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.