Home Before Dark

Home Before Dark is my second book from Riley Sager. I read Lock Every Door last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the author's writing and was fascinated by his style of storytelling. This story was no different. I am also excited about the arrival of my copy of this book from a book subscription box!! It was an alternate choice for a different book and I am so glad I picked this one.The whole ambiance of the book is the perfect setting for horror. The paranormal elements in the book within the book were brilliant. I did get scared at times, and I had a difficult time sleeping at night as well. The writing is captivating and engaging. I found myself engrossed in the book and the dual storylines that brought something new with each chapter. I loved Ewan's (Maggie's dad) book more than Maggie's POV. Still, the story was unputdownable, and the eerie, ominous vibes made the story so captivating. The characters, both dead and alive, add to the mysterious, creepy vibe of the book. The haunting house, scary sounds at night, crawling things, the creepy song, and ghosts all add to the disturbing and hair-raising mood of the book. The plot-twists are ones that I did not see coming. There were some elements I thought I figured out only to find that I was wrong. I had a good time reading this book, and as I read the book at night, it elevated the reading experience so much! Home Before Dark is a fantastic story that will make you a fan of Riley Sager. If you love books within books, haunted mansions, dark secrets from the past, and hair-raising moments that will make you terrified, this is the perfect book for you. I gave the book 5 stars. I highly recommend checking it out. This suspenseful read is guaranteed to make you a Riley Sager Fan.

I love a good haunted house story. And as a skeptic myself, albeit one with a love for supernatural fiction, I also love a story that's about the search for truth behind apparently supernatural events. This book ticks all those boxes, so I dug into it with great eagerness. What I found was a book that kept me thoroughly entertained throughout--I read it in a single day, with only a couple short breaks--but nevertheless had a couple flaws.Let's start with the good stuff. The writing is top quality, and the pacing is definitely on point. The characters are reasonably well-developed, and the dual (past and present) story lines manage to work surprisingly well (though the narrative voice is perhaps a bit too similar between the alternating sections). I particularly like the way the author manages to simultaneously build suspense and keep the reader flip-flopping regarding what actually happened, and the blend of supernatural and skeptical is both intriguing and narratively effective.However, I have two complaints. First, the story starts off feeling a bit too familiar. Family flees haunted house, writes a book, and their adult child returns decades later to find out what really happened. Following numerous real-world scandals involving families' fraudulent claims of supernatural terrors in their homes, this plot has become well-trod. That doesn't mean it can't be effective, but it does mean that, while we might enjoy the same old tropes, if a book really wants to stand out, it needs to bring something new to the table. Early on, it doesn't really look like this book will bring anything new to the table. The first half or so reads like a well told version of the story, but fundamentally the same old story none the less. However, fortunately, though I won't spoil exactly what they are, there are some twists, beginning about halfway through the book, that call the familiar into question and leave the reader guessing and turning the pages right until the ending.The ending itself is a mixed bag, however. Again, I won't spoil anything, but I find myself conflicted between acknowledging that the novel's conclusion certainly does wrap everything up and feeling like some of the revelations, offered in fairly rapid succession in the book's final chapters, while logically sound, still undercut some of the book's tension. I've said many times (in reviews of other books and films, and in other places) that ending a horror novel is a tricky business, because it requires balancing the reader's need for narrative closure against the simple fact that the unknown is scarier than the known. This novel definitely suffers from the same problem. It's not that the ending is entirely unsatisfactory--it actually does a good job of concluding the story--but rather that once the reader has too much information, the story simply isn't all that scary any more.All that having been said, despite my couple of complaints (which I guess can be viewed as one complaint resolving the other), I found this to be an excellent novel on the whole, and I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a good spooky tale.

“Twenty-five years ago, my family lived in a house named Baneberry Hall, situated just outside the village of Bartleby, Vermont. We moved in on June 26. We fled in the dead of night on July 15. Twenty days.”Much as was the case with Lock Every Door (though that was a high-profile apartment building ), the house in Home Before Dark is as big of a character as any of its human counterparts. The Book, as Maggie refers to it, is a strong supporting character. However, unlike with Lock Every Door and The Last Time I Lied (another novel I really enjoyed by Riley Sager), I didn’t find this novel nearly as interesting. There are things that go bump in the night, but nothing made me feel particularly on edge. I think part of that is because the reader is set up to not know if the Book is real — that didn’t particularly work for me since the novel alternates between Maggie in the present and the Book’s excerpts (from the perspective of Maggie’s dad) in the past. Why should I care about the passages from the Book if I don’t even know if it’s valid?Around 60% (kindle count), or roughly 230 pages in, my interest did pick up. Though it felt like a long time to wait. I had various theories as to what happened, and I did see a couple things coming. But the end? And the last several chapters leading up to it? I feel like I don’t even know what I read. It all made sense — but in a deeply sad, weird, and disturbing way. One of those stories that left me feeling disoriented; there’s a dizzying effect to the way all of the theories/potential revelations happen within a short period of time.As usual, the author has a good writing style and there are very few grammatical errors and/or typos. I just didn’t like how I felt when the book was complete, so that’s the reason for 2 stars.

Reading the description I couldn’t wait to pre order this but after getting halfway through started to realize it was nothing like the what was promised. No scares, no thrills just a basic LifeTime murder mystery... well written but if you are expecting ghost story scares you’ll be let down.