Home Before Dark

Home Before Dark has renewed my interest in the work of this author. I initially jumped on the Sager bandwagon after reading Final Girls, I found it to be twisty and interesting. I immediately grabbed his next few novels when they came up on BOTM and after reading two, regretted it. I had Home Before Dark sitting on my shelf for so long because I believed I would not enjoy it. In an attempt to clean up my TBR I decided to pick it up, and I don't want to say get it over with, but that was a thought. While I was able to guess half of the ending, I found this one to be more in line with Final Girls than his more recent novels. Which means that his next novel may make its way onto my tbr, not automatically anymore but I will definitely consider it. The novel follows our main narrator Maggie Holt in the current time, and is spliced with excerpts from her father's book about an experience their family had when Maggie was young. When she was 5 years old, Maggie's family lived in a home that was supposedly haunted. Her father's book (The Book as Maggie refers to it) brought that idea into the mainstream, but the little town where it was located always held that belief. Regardless of the truth, The Book has shaped Maggie's life, and not in a good way. Maggie has always felt like an outcast, but that's not the worst part of her situation. The worst part is that she always felt like her parents were liars, especially her father who she was particularly close to. She has no recollection of the events her father memorialized in his supposedly nonfiction novel. She reasons that if something so dramatic happened to her, surely she would remember at least some parts. She has a hard time reconciling the man she admires with someone who would not only lie about a life experience but also exploit it at the detriment of his family. For these reasons she doesn't believe that her old home is haunted but seems open, almost eager, to being proven wrong. The Book was both a good and a bad thing for Ewan Holt (Maggie's father). While it brought the family wealth, it also destroyed both his marriage and his daughters faith in him. Maggie is now an adult with a business flipping houses. Over time her relationship with both parents has suffered. She's been treated as an oddity by her peers after The Book. This makes her understandably angry at her parents, especially her father. For allowing it to happen, for benefitting from it even. Upon her father's passing Maggie inherits the infamous Baneberry Hall. Surprised doesn't even begin to describe Maggie, she had no idea that her father still owned what she feels has been a stain on her family. Her father's dying request is that Maggie does not go back to the mansion. She begs for the truth finally, but he only tells her that it's not safe for her there. Maggie's mother seems to echo the same request, but not as ominously. Baneberry Hall is a beautiful old home. It has original finishes and even a lot of the original furniture. It's charming like most old houses are. The home encompasses a sweeping estate surrounded by a tall stone wall with an imposing gate that at times makes the residents feel more secure, and other times makes them feel trapped. It has a rich history, full of tragedy, all the way up to the owners directly preceding the Holts. In The Book there is even a cemetery for the original family on the grounds. In spite of, or possibly because of, her father's dying wish Maggie decides that she is going to not only visit the house but stay there while she renovates and readies it for sale. She has an ulterior motive, she wants to find out the truth. The real truth of her time in that house. Not the truth in The Book, not a lie designed to sell novels. She wants to understand why her father sullied all of their names and exploited a whole town. We meet a cast of characters, all suspicious of course, that are employed in the town and even within the house. The grandson of the infamous groundskeeper has taken over along with the daughter of the woman who cleaned for the Holt's. Maggie's father, unbeknownst to her, has traveled back to the house on a yearly basis. He continues to pay both families to do odd jobs and visits annually on the anniversary of the date memorialized in The Book as the date they fled the house in terror, never to return. As she explores, Maggie finds that while her father included true facts about the house he spun them in a way that would make his novel more interesting. The cemetery for example, ended up being a pet cemetery not a cemetery for the previous owners. If you're paying attention, half of the twist is fairly easy to figure out. I had it figured out at about 45%, but there was a part of the ending that I did not see coming. That extra twist, combined with the fact that this was still a compelling story even though I was pretty sure I knew how it was going to end, is what redeemed my interest in Sager.

Glow in the dark book? Yes please! Decent twists, classic Sager style so it was a quick and easy read but I think this was my favorite setting in all of his books.

Loved this book, I did not expect the ending at all. Possible spoilers: Part of me was hoping it was a full on ghost story, but I did enjoy all the twist and turns and how they compared the book to what she remembered.

This book was so different from Riley Sager's other books, I lowkey feel bad comparing them. This was def not my favorite for a variety of reasons. It made for a super interesting mystery, but was not a thriller at all. Normally, I feel compelled to finish his books as quickly as possible, but did not feel this way at all with Home Before Dark. It was good, don't get me wrong, but it was way too much of a slow burn for me with all the intrigue in the last few chapters.

I was captivated by the book and would have given it a 10, but I didn't care for the mechanics of the writing. It took me a while to separate the story lines of then and now. I would have liked the timelines made clearer.