Book Review
Title: Home Before Dark
Author: Riley Sager
Genre: Psychological/Mystery/Thriller
Rating: *****
Review: I recently read Lock Every Door by Riley Sager and loved it, I listened to the audiobook as well as reading the physical copy and if Home Before Dark is anything like that then this is definitely going to be a 5 star read, although I was a little disappointed there is no audiobook for this on Audible yet. All I knew about this book is that Maggie and her parents Ewan and Jess move into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods and fled after a few weeks. Later Maggie’s father published a book called House of Horror that becomes a cult classic, but it is surrounded by disbelief and then Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death and returns to the place her father feared. We are introduced to Maggie Holt, who believes that her father’s book was completely made up as she can’t remember the events, he talks about in his book regarding their time at Baneberry Hall. One particular incident from “the Book” we get to read is about Maggie asking her father to check for ghosts in her room and telling him that a ghost named Mister Shadow tells her that they are going to die there. Maggie’s father has recently died and left her the royalties from the book and infamy, but he failed to mention that he still owned Baneberry Hall and it is now hers. Much like Lock Every Door this novel is told over a short period of time, less than a month and much like Lock Every Door, we jump between past and present in the form of excerpts from her father’s book coupled with Maggie’s perspective in the present. The second excerpt from her father’s book details the buying on Baneberry Hall and learn on the murder-suicide of the Carver family, the previous owners before the Holt’s and that the house probably has a more unpleasant history that people aren’t willing to talk about. So far, the atmosphere is creepy but not dark, but knowing what happened with Lock Every Door, I have a feeling it won’t be long until I am seriously creeped out.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, we learn that Maggie tries to make her parents tell her the truth about Baneberry Hall and the book although both stuck to their stories even her father did as he lay dying but he made Maggie promise never to return there as it was too dangerous for her there. However, having lunch with her mother after meeting her father’s attorney, her mother offers to buy Baneberry Hall from Maggie making her think that the house is hiding secrets about their time there and Maggie is determined to find out what they are even if it means breaking her promises to both her mother and her father. We then go back in time again, where we learn that Maggie’s father, Ewan had a habit of looking into things he shouldn’t but her mother, Jess, made him promise he was going to focus on the future but the mysteries of Baneberry Hall were already pulling him in. However, Ewan isn’t the only one to notice strange things happening in the house. Both he and Maggie feel odd cold spots throughout the house and one chandelier mysteriously keeps turning on when no one has turned it on, but these small signs are ignored. Maggie decides that she is going to do Baneberry Hall up and sell it, to finally be rid of it once and for all. Even as she arrives at her former home, Maggie knows there are secrets upon secrets in those walls as Dane Hibbet, grandson of the former groundskeeper informs her that her father uses to visit Baneberry Hall every year on July 15th, the day they left Baneberry Hall without fail up until his death but never mentioned it. Her father also kept the staff on, mainly the groundskeeper and housekeeper since they left all those years ago. Upon entering the house, she knows it is old but in relatively good condition compared to what she was expecting when a figure darting around in the next room catches her eye, although this is pure misdirection, and it is probably the former housekeeper who now has Alzheimer’s. I was right about Elsa being the one in the house, but it also seems that her daughter when missing around the time that Maggie’s family left Baneberry Hall. We can also see from her father’s account and her own that strange things are happening in the house but the strangest thing by far that happens is Maggie remembers something about her time here which has never happened before. She remembers painting the kitchen walls grey with her father and making a handprint in the paint so she would always be part of the house. So far, I was enjoying the story and the mystery surrounding Baneberry Hall, but the atmosphere isn’t as dark or chilling as Lock Every Door was.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, we learn that Maggie was called a sensitive child by Elsa, not sensitive in emotions but sensitive to the world which is why Maggie firmly believed in ghosts and imaginary friends and her father is slowly coming to believe it when he witnesses strange events for himself like Maggie’s bedroom door closing without a breeze and Maggie herself fast asleep as the doors to the armoire, the place Maggie said the girl disappeared too, are wide open. Back in the present, Maggie is beginning to believe that some of the her parent’s story is true but she still believes they are small grains of truth and that the story is mainly false but there is something in the back of her mind telling her that her father wasn’t lying. When return to Ewan’s story they have been in the house 3 days and Ewan has been trying to rid Baneberry Hall of all traces of the Carver’s. In a box in the study, Ewan finds a box of photos taken by Curtis Carver, all of him slightly off-centre as if he was taking pictures over his shoulder and there is one for every day and as each day passes her becomes more and more haggard in appearance and knowing he killed his daughter and then himself, Ewan doesn’t want to look at them anymore. Looking at the photo he took of Jess and Maggie, he sees a human-like figure lurking in the corner of the photo which scares him only for this to be broken by Jess and Maggie screaming. As he races out into the woods, he finds Maggie has fallen and cut her face, which results in the scar she has now, but she cut it on the corner of William Garson’s tombstone, and he was the builder of Baneberry Hall. Back in the present, Maggie and Dane being planning the renovations for Baneberry Hall but in addition to the strange things happening there, Maggie is also finding things that show there was truth in what her father wrote but the main question is how much of it is true? She comes clean to Dane, telling him her real reason for being there and he agrees to help her if he can which was rather sweet but as bounce back and forth, we know Maggie’s memory can’t be trusted as she doesn’t remember anything really for the time they spent there even though there is evidence like picture that back up what her father was saying and yet she refuses to believe it.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, Maggie is trying to piece together why her father lied about Baneberry Hall but at the same time she is dealing with more and more strange things happening in the house, lights turning on when she is sure they weren’t on before, items disappearing and the like. In the past, we see Ewan trying to cope with the same strange occurrences happening in the home but after discovering the graveyard in their back garden he learns from Dane’s grandfather about lot of other horrendous events that have taken place in the house. He believes that the house remembers that pain and somehow causes history to repeat itself and that if he wants to avoid the same fate, he should show the house all the love he has for his family and hope that it is enough but considering how the family fled the house, we know it wasn’t. Speaking of the timeline, in the past, the Holt family has been in Baneberry Hall for 10 days now and we know they flee the house after around 25 days, so we are almost halfway through but nothing substantial has happened yet. Jumping back in time again, Ewan is becoming more and more scared by the strange things happening in the house and the sudden appearance of Maggie’s imaginary friends frightens him even more and he decides to invite Elsa’s daughters, Hannah and Petra for a sleepover, although he says it is a decision they would come to regret and I am not sure why but I am sure it ties in with Petra’s disappearance the night they fled the house. In the past, Ewan becomes more and more paranoid as everyone hears strange things including tapping and the record player starting which Maggie says is the doing of Mister Shadows and that there are other people with them, and these are the ghosts not imaginary friends. As we are getting closer to July 15th when the family left, two weeks away. While in the present, Maggie is experiencing the same paranoia and fear that her father did, and it seems to be getting to her a little. At this point things really start to heat up as Ewan find snakes pouring from the collapsing ceiling in the kitchen and by this point neither he nor Jess wants to stay in the house, but they have nowhere else to go. Back in the present Maggie stands under the same spot her father did when Dane prods the ceiling it collapses. Although this time they don’t find any snake, but the skeleton of Petra which Hannah identifies as her gold crucifix is found in the same bag as her remains. This doesn’t look good for Maggie’s father as he was rumoured to be close to Petra and she disappeared on the same day the Holts left Baneberry Hall for good.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, there are only ten days left in the past before the Holts flee in the night and only a small amount of time for Maggie to unravel the mystery surrounding her family before something happens to her too. Maggie is disturbed by the discovery of the body in the ceiling but spending a night away for Baneberry Hall seems to give her a brief relief from the anxiety and paranoia she has been feeling. However, in the past, Ewan finds letter to Indigo from her lover Callum but her father refuses to let them marry so they plan to elope. Her father learns of this plan at Callum makes it seem like he was willing to do anything to prevent their marriage even kill his daughter as we know she died at 16 and never married. Ewan and Petra are going to try and find out if Indigo was really killed by her father but the atmosphere in the house is becoming darker as Ewan suspects Jess of turning the record player on and messing with him while Jess suspects him of having feelings for the young Petra. Upon returning to Baneberry Hall, Maggie makes the connection between the notes he father kept and the body as they were sent to him but Hannah, Petra’s younger sister, as what he did to her sister and where she was which means Hannah might possibly know something about Maggie’s father that she doesn’t and she needs closure badly so I have feeling she might seek Hannah out. She does seek Hannah out and Hannah tells her that two weeks before she disappeared Petra had begun sneaking out to see her boyfriend who Maggie believes might have been her father, but she doesn’t want to believe he was that type of person. Hannah also mentions a teddy bear named Buster that disappeared with Petra that keeps making random appearances around Baneberry Hall. Hannah also tells her that the events her father wrote about on the night of the sleepover were completely true as she was there and can verify them. Back in the past, Petra and Ewan have been trying to prove Indigo was murdered by hit a brick wall, however, the night of the sleepover Maggie is agitated as she doesn’t want the other girls there because it will anger the ghosts but her parents convince her to try. Not that long into the night, Petra is awakened by something pulling her hair and Maggie begins screaming that the ghosts are angry and everyone in the room can feel the ghosts sometimes as a physical touch. Hannah who is sensitive like Maggie begs her to make them stop and they only relent when Maggie punches Hannah in the face causing her to bleed. Maggie is also making the connections with the photos as in some she doesn’t have her scar even though they were supposedly taken after her fall. Maggie is beginning to believe what her father wrote but when the record player begins playing again, she takes it outside and smashes it to pieces.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, the pace really begins to pick up, in the present timeline Maggie is trying to work out the dark history of Baneberry Hall and how it ties in with her family’s history. She learns that good portions of what her father wrote and indeed true but there are conversations in there that never took place or took place well after her father said they did. However, she is beginning to believe more and more that there is something haunting the house, or more accurately haunting her which is why her father warned her never to return there as everyone that did in that house was under 16 and with their father’s. She also find out Hannah as been sneaking into the house to steal items to sell including the letter opener which went missing but when Maggie mentions Buster, Hannah tells her she hasn’t gone into the house since she returns and that she has never seen Buster in her time there, in fact, she hasn’t seen the bear since her sister disappeared. In the past we see that Ewan is digging deeper into the mystery and discovered the same things that Maggie has but he tries to contact the spirits using a Ouija board and succeeds. He contacts the spirits of Curtis Carver who warns him to be careful and tells him that he didn’t murder his daughter like everyone says he did. Ewan puts it together are realises that William Garson’s ghost is haunting Baneberry Hall making the fathers kill their daughter just like he did. That night Jess wakes him up screaming at him and he suddenly realises that he has attacked Maggie, almost strangling her, he lets Jess leave with Maggie as she doesn’t believe in the ghosts or his reasoning for his actions but he stays behind to wait for the spirits to contact him. In the light of this information as well as Hannah giving Maggie the location of the secret back entrance to the house, the final section of this novel is going to be thrilling.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, everything explodes, and I was honestly not prepared for the amount of twists that this novel took in the final 70 pages. I swear if Sager had stuffed one more twist into this novel I don’t think my poor heart could keep up. Much like Lock Every Door I can’t say anything about the ending of Home Before Dark without giving so much away and spoiling it for all of you. All I can say is Sager is honestly the master of building atmosphere and suspense to a point where the reader doesn’t think things can get anymore tense, then they explode in twist after twist and then come to a screeching halt that just leaves you reeling. Riley Sager has become an insta-buy author for me and I will be making my way through Sager’s back catalogue of books as soon as I can and I am looking forward to anything that comes out in the future if it is in the same league as Home Before Dark and Lock Every Door.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
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