HOME BEFORE DARK BY RILEY SAGER

Home Before Dark is an insidious and compelling novel that had me questioning everything. This book unnerved me to the core making the perfect pre-Halloween read!

Rating: ★★★★★
​Release Date: June 30, 2020
Genre: Gothic Thriller
Series: None. Complete Standalone. 
Pages: 397 pages
Format: Hardcover. Source: BOTM Box.

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?

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.

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𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪 𝗦𝗡𝗔𝗣𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗧: Home Before Dark is an insidious and compelling novel that had me questioning everything. This book unnerved me to the core making the perfect pre-Halloween read!

WOW, WOW, WOW!!! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve read a book by Riley Sager, and I feel like I’ve missed out! What a dark and sinister read this one is. It not only gave me the creeps, but it instilled a sense of dread throughout my reading experience. I didn’t know WHO to believe; is it haunted? The book and Maggie’s father say yes, it is. Or isn’t it? Maggie says no. She can’t remember anything about that time in Baneberry Manor though. Perhaps finally going home to the place they fled will give her those answers that have been haunting her throughout her life…

Sager has written one heck of a fear inducing novel with Home Before Dark and I was flipping the pages as fast as I could. I needed to know if I was reading a ghost story about a haunted house or if I was reading the musings of a troubled man who may also be a liar. No matter what though you will get those answers. But don’t expect them to be something you’ve been anticipated because Sager throws a major curve ball and shocks us with a twist you won’t see coming.

Overall, this is one hell of a read and I stayed up way too late to finish it. Sager puts a unique spin on this gothic haunted house tale and gives readers two stories in one. We get “the book” that has nearly ruined Maggie’s entire life as it depicts spending 20 days in a house so haunted, they needed to flee in the night, and then Maggie’s POV 25 years later when she goes back to the house that has ruined her life. There’s a killer twist, an exceptionally written ending, and a whole lot in between the will give you the goosebumps! I highly recommend it.

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗘𝗖𝗧 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗙𝗔𝗡𝗦 𝗢𝗙:
• Gothic Horror Novels
• Intense Psychological Thrillers with Shocking Twists
• Authors like Simone St. James, Alex North, and Jennifer McMahon

𝗠𝗬 𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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