Home before Dark by Riley Sager

Title: Home Before Dark 

Author: Riley Sager  

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Type: Standalone 

Genre: Suspense Thriller, Horror, Mystery thriller 

Narration: Limited third party 

Primary Characters: Maggie Holt & Ewan Holt 

I picked this book on total random basis as I was in mood for mystery thriller. I thoroughly devoured this book. It was everything I needed and more. It has mystery, horror, thriller and kept me awake until I discovered all of secrets of this story. 

Story toggles between past and present. In present we see Maggie Holt has inherited an old house named “Baneberry Hall” when her father recently passed away. She had lived in the house for 3 weeks when she was 5 years old and has no memory of that. Her father wrote a book about that house and their experience in house. The experience was a horrible one and the family ran from the house, with just the clothes on their backs, leaving everything else behind, when they abandoned it. 

Maggie thinks all things her father has written in the book about her and house is fiction. She doesn’t believe the horror Story. She ignores her father’s warning to not back to house and moves into house to redecorate it and sell it. But she is curious to uncover what happened 25 years ago. 

Past part of the book goes hand in hand with present. In the past her father recites his story and experience in house. What seemed ridiculous to her after reading her father’s book doesn’t seem like that anymore after experiencing the strange occurrence straight out of her father’s book. 

Book had its own up’s and down moment for me, but it had a gripping narration. I totally loved the creepy haunted house setting along with its historical significance. Chills, thrills, mystery, and mayhem are all included here. I enjoyed the format of going back and forth between a book written by one character about a mysterious and likely haunted house and another character’s experiences in the same house years later. 

Overall, I highly enjoyed this book! The creepiness of it along with my what next moment. If you are into a sort of haunted house sort of story with mystery filled thriller, then this is for you. 

Source: My purchased copy

Buy link – https://www.amazon.com/Home-Before-Dark-Riley-Sager-ebook/dp/B07Z2TY6HV

Blurb as per good reads

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.