Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

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.
 

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?

At long last I’ve finally read a mystery novel in 2023 with an actually compelling mystery full of surprises, who knew that the bar would be so low after so many contemporary novels in the genre fail to deliver on their basic premise. Home Before Dark is a quality mystery horror novel that follows a similar premise of the Haunting of Hill House refreshed through it’s unique split presentation told from Maggie’s Holt perspective in the present and her father Ewan Holt from 25 years ago via his published nonfiction book House of Horrors. It’s this split perspective narrative that helps separate Home Before Dark from the countless other “family moves into a house with history, bad things happen” storyline as you’re never quite sure how much authenticity House of Horror portrays as an unpredictable unreliable narrator. The two perspectives also contrast each other by their distinctive tones and beliefs with House of Horrors firmly portraying a haunted house with malevolent spirits vs Maggie’s perspective as a skeptic who just wants to know what actually happened in the house 25 years ago. The two split perspectives are done well and not only drop clues relevant to each other, but focus on seemingly different core mysteries they are trying to solve. House of Horrors sets out to discover what kind of supernatural entity is affecting the Holt family, its past residents (a growing history of death and familial tragedy), and 5 year old Maggie’s odd behaviors vs adult Maggie digging into her father’s life prior to his death from cancer, discovering a newly uncovered murder at her inherited estate, and what transpired in her childhood that she has no recollection of.

While classified as a horror thriller mystery novel, most of the read felt more like a slow but steady burn with a growing sense of dread. Perhaps my biggest point of criticism is that the mysteries are unveiled a bit too slow. The material is interesting to read and the pages go by fast (I finished reading this in two days vs my usual 5-7 days), but it feels deliberately slow with its clues. However the plot picks up very fast half-way through and the last 40 pages are a literal explosion. I feel like I got 2nd hand whiplash from the sheer number and intensity of plot twists at the end (who killed who, 3 different culprits with 3 very plausible scenarios back to back), though I have no problems with them as they were mind-blowing without being absurd. Riley Sager had an ambitious plot planned from the get-go and that final conclusion doesn’t just tie it’s plot threads together, it literally yanks them. This might be the first mystery novel I’ve read this year where I was so far off from predicting the true resolution/culprit, I’m both humbled and hugely impressed (thank you for not having a cheating spouse, creepy random male culprit thrown in at the last moment, or poorly motivated villain that I’ve been so tired of in this genre). Also while Maggie has moments of emotional insanity, she’s written far smarter than 90% of female mystery protagonist I’ve read lately and I was not rooting for her to be off-ed for once; that perhaps might be the biggest win.

All in all Home Before Dark was a quick and satisfying read for me. A true 4.5 that was almost to a 5-star, some slow pacing and the usage of many familiar tropes hold me back from rating it higher. For being advertised horror novel, it’s also decidedly not very spooky or suspenseful (quiet dread is a better descriptor) which may actually make it a more accessible read. But it constantly builds on itself and sticks a tough landing. View Spoiler » (not to mention it successfully pulls off one of my favorite themes of portraying haunting supernatural events only to reveal that they were all caused by very real and methodical means. I’ve seen this attempted many times to varying degrees of success; I thought Home Before Dark is one of the better executed ones.) « Hide Spoiler

Edit: How Home Before Dark lost to The Guest List for 2020 Best Mystery & Thriller I will never know, Goodreads reviewers voters yall have questionable tastes.