I just want to start this review by saying Riley Sager is one of my favorite thriller/mystery authors. Home Before Dark is about a girl named Maggie Holt. Maggie renovates old homes. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie and her parents moved into a Victorian estate called Baneberry Hill. After living there for three weeks, the family mysteriously flees in the middle of the night, never to return to the house. Maggie's father wrote a ghost story book about the experience, and it turned into an instant bestseller. Years later, Maggie returns to the house to renovate and sell it, and to also figure out whether or not her father's story held any truth to it.

This story was wonderfully creepy. It jumps back and forth between Maggie's POV and excerpts from her father's book. I loved how the excerpts often foreshadowed the experiences Maggie would have in the story. The pacing of the story is fast and full of information and scary bits. The ending was hinted at, but in a way that when you find out the twist you do a double take.

Overall, Riley Sager did it again. I cannot get enough of this man's writing.

In Riley Sager’s latest thriller, a young woman returns to the house her parents abruptly abandoned after two frightful weeks. A house with a history of murder, where the dead seem to be speaking from the other side with either a threat or perhaps a dire warning.
Shifting between the present and the past, grown up Maggie Holt tries to make sense of what happened at the house when she was a child, while her father's ‘Amityville Horror’ type bestseller recounts effectively what she doesn't remember. The stories gallop side by side with eerily similar events happening in quick chapters that dare you to not turn the next page.
What I so appreciated about this book is that at the start I was ready to write it off as a thriller similar in tone to the terrific “Haunting of Hill House” on @netflix. And yet Sager did a similar thing with last years entertaining “Lock Every Door” which felt slightly inspired by “Rosemary’s Baby”. Clearly I should have trusted that he had plenty of cards up his sleeve to craft a wholly original and devilishly fun thrill ride which keeps you on your toes and possibly vowing to never listen to “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” from the “Sound of Music” again.

This is his best one yet! The tension and suspense is fantastic! This has a book within a book, potentially supernatural events, and thrilling plot twists!

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read this before the publish date. This was a good suspenseful story that left you guessing until the end. The perfect book for a day at the beach, or lounging in your house.

I really like the writing style of this author. This new offering is a good old fashioned ghost story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I suggest knowing as little as possible about the plot. Just jump in and enjoy! Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC.

Well Im a wimp. A HUGE WIMP. I don't really like thrillers and requested it anyway, I wanted to see what it was like to actually read a thriller novel, andddddd yeah I was completely scared SHITLESS. The suspense killed my back now that I am overly tense, but the writing was impeccable. I think it takes a lot of skill to write a successful thriller, you have to know how to appeal to emotion very well, and Sager did just that.

Thank you Dutton Books for sending me this ARC .

Maggie Holt's father wrote a horror memoir and she is trying to figure out if what he wrote is really true or not. He is gone now, and all she has is the book to go on. Readers of Sager's new thriller will read Maggie's point of view as well as chapters of her father's book for a delicious ghost story that won't be soon forgotten.

Maggie Holt is a very young child when her family moves into Baneberry Hall, a spooky old home that turns out to be a real life haunted house with a violent and troubling history. Things get so bad, in fact, that the family ends up fleeing the home a mere three weeks later. Now, 25 years later, Maggie is a grown woman with no memory of living in Baneberry Hall; all she knows comes from the best-selling book her father wrote about their experience. When the book begins, her father has just passed away and left her the home in his will. (She has no idea he still, secretly, owned it!) Maggie, who happens to be a restorer of old homes, goes back to the house to renovate it for sale. She’s not nervous. She doesn’t believe a word of anything her father wrote in that book. But then, strange things start to happen in the house. Lights and record players turn on by themselves. There are mysterious noises, and even shadowy figures lurking on the property. Suddenly, the oh-so-skeptical Maggie starts to believe that maybe some of her father’s book may have been true, after all. Told in alternating chapters that toggle between Maggie’s present day experience and the best-selling book itself, we slowly learn the secrets of Baneberry Hall, right along with our main character. I really enjoyed this book—I think it’s my favorite Riley Sager yet! It’s creepy and gripping, but still somehow seems totally realistic! I was turning the pages so quickly, and actually found myself wishing I could visit Baneberry Hall in real life. (But maybe only during the daytime hours!)

Thank you to Dtton Books for the gifted earc as part of the Mystery Book Club monthly selection.

4.5/5 rounded up to 5! | DAMN! Home Before Dark was a solid thriller. I'm not sure about the title - but the storyline was done so well. I had no clue - NOT ONE about where this story would go, but I was pleasantly surprised at the end. There was a point in which the story lagged and I thought the letter was a long winded, BUT THAT DAMN ENDING....BLOWN AWAY!!!!!

I'd recommend this to anyone who love thrillers and a little hint of spook (think paranormal/ghosts). Don't miss out.

“Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share.”

Just as he has done with each of his previous books, Riley Sager has outdone himself. One of the things I admire most about RS is that each of his books is unique and vastly different from all the others. I can’t compare this one to any other RS book to date. However, fans of The Haunting of Hill House and Amityville Horror will want to snag this one up!

With his latest offering, RS serves up a ghost story with a surprising study of familial bonds and the lengths family will go to. This book had me second guessing what was real and what was a lie almost up to the very end. I frighten easy in real life, but only once before has a book managed to scare me to any degree. That book was In Cold Blood (because that scariness happened in real life!). But RS has written a book that has managed to do it again. There are scenarios happening in this book and you are so caught up in it, you can’t help but fear that same thing is about to play out in your own home.

This is my new favorite RS book and one of my favorites of 2020. If this one is not on your summer reading list, add it now!

Maggie Holt has always lived in the shadow of her father's bestselling horror book - a "true" story of their twenty days living in a haunted house when she was five. Having inherited the infamous house from her father, she is determined to fix it up. Ghosts aren't real, so there's nothing to worry about. Jumping between her father's novel and Maggie's return to the house, Sager keeps you on edge the whole time. With creepy happenings and crazy twists and turns, Home Before Dark will be a perfect thriller to curl up to this summer.

Sager is masterful in Home Before Dark!

Ever since Sager wrote The Final Girls, I've been a fan of his writing. He has a way of grabbing your attention. His writing hooks you. This book was no different!

A Classic Haunted House Story with a Chilling Twist!

Maggie Holt is a cynic. Her father wrote a Horror memoir of an old haunted house and although many people actually believe it is haunted, Maggie does not have time for such childish beliefs. Her job is to restore old homes. After her father dies and leaves Baneberry Hall to her, she must restore it in order to sell it. When she is there, strange things begin to happen. Could it just be her imagination? After all, Maggie knows ghosts couldn't POSSIBLY exist. . . could they?

A Spinetingling read!

5 Stars!

Home Before Dark is Riley Sager’s latest psychological thriller. Having just inherited the house her and her parents fled from when she was a young girl, Maggie is shocked to find out her Dad still owned it after all those years. Even more so when she finds out he’s been visiting it on the anniversary of the day they fled all these years.
Determined to get to the bottom of the secrets the house holds, and be rid of the negative attention she’s always lived with, Maggie moves in to begin renovating the home to sell. There she is met by old faces, new mysterious characters and her old “imaginary friends”.
Told from alternating POVs of Maggie and excepts of the book her Dad wrote about their experience at the house, this is a taut, atmospheric thriller that will have you guessing until the very end.

I think I've landed on a 4.5 for this one? Which is mostly a matter of comparison to Sager's other titles which were such hard 5s for me. Home Before Dark was a really excellent "haunted house" thriller, but I have just a few things that gave me pause.

First, the premise is startlingly similar to The Haunting of Hill House, at least on the surface, and for at least the first half of the book. It's clear where the author drew inspiration. On the plus side, if you loved Hill House, as I did, the book will appeal (as it did to me). But I found myself basically daring the book to subvert my expectations and do a good job in it's twists/conclusions of being nothing like Hill House, despite the similar set-up. And I am pleased to report the book did a great job at this! Things start to properly diverge at around 50% and the ending is SUPER different.

The book also features one of my favorite tropes, which is book within a book. You alternate between Maggie in the present and excerpts from her father's bestseller, House of Horrors. I actually found it amusing how the excerpts were almost purposefully hackneyed--it was fun to compare Sager's excellent hand at character-driven narrative & clean prose to Ewan Holt's cheesier approach. The chapter cliffhangers with constant foreshadowing SENT ME.

Ultimately a few things in the ending/wrap-up left me with a bit of wanting, but I won't go into too much detail. The twists were sufficiently twisty, and I enjoyed the read.

This book blew my MIND!!!!! I have only read Lock Every Door by Riley Sager, but now I know I must read every other book
He wrote! This book had me reading late into the night and so creeped out at times, I was seriously holding my breath. This book pulls you in to the characters so quickly that you really feel you are part of the story. It has me feeling happy, sad, cheering, laughing, in tears and every emotion in between! This is a 5 star OMG MUSt READ!!!!!!!!

“Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share...”

I LOVED this book!!! It had a lot of multifasceted characters—some more likable than others. I also loved how this book kept me guessing up until the very end what was real and what wasn’t!

Some aspects I liked were the creepy, spooky, and downright TERRIFYING vibes this book gave off! Def would not recommend reading this one alone at night!!🙅🏻‍♀️ I also liked the foreshadowing and symbolism that Sager used...the whole story felt so ominous!!! I also loved how the plot twists totally threw me for a loop and had me like🤯!!! I absolutely loved how everything tied together at the end— I hate loose ends!!

The only criticism that I have of this book was that with it being split between Ewen’s book and Maggie’s perspective, sometimes I felt like it was repetitive. I think it probably could have been shortened a little, especially in the middle.

If you like reading about haunted houses, mysterious deaths/disappearances, and a woman seeking the truth about her childhood House of Horrors, then this one is for you!!!

(Review will be posted on my Instagram @tipsybookreviews on the week of 6/30)

4.5 stars

Thank you, Riley Sager! During this pandemic, I've had a horrible time staying focused and engaged in a story, but I had NO problems with that reading this book! In fact, my problem was the fact that I'd have to put the book aside to work or go to bed. I've only read a few of Sager's book, but he has solidly earned his place on my list of must-read authors.

This book was a roller coaster of creepiness, with two twists at the end that I (happily) never saw coming. It just may leave the reader pondering over every little sound they hear or shadow they see around their own home. I also really enjoyed the back and forth between Maggie in the present and her father's book from the past.

Sager has the ability to craft a story that contains cliches or even predictable elements, all the while pulling the reader in and not letting them go with unexpected turns and gripping-your-seat tension.

This is actually a horror/mystery combo in a lot of ways. While it has an entirely different vibe from Ruth Ware's TURN OF THE KEY, in some ways they fit into that subgenre together. That said, this is scary enough that I wouldn't casually recommend it to mystery readers.

I have tried a few Riley Sager books and I haven't been able to stick with them until this one. I'm not sure if it's me or the book, but this time I was happy to just let it move me along. The pacing is quite good, with the structure interspersing two stories: one is the nonfiction bestseller telling the story of the Holt family moving into a haunted house, the other is daughter Maggie's return to the house decades later, not just to flip it but to prove that the book her father wrote is a lie. One of these is trying very hard to be scary and the other is trying to be less scary, letting you have the important breaks that you need in a good horror novel.

The end here is ridiculous, not in the normal horror novel way (all horror novels have bad endings, it's the most annoying) but in more of a twisty mystery kind of way, but that doesn't change the fact that it annoyed me enough to take this rating down to 2.5 stars. I would have preferred a normal bad horror novel ending, tbh.

The premise of Home Before Dark is basically what would happen to those Amityville Horror kids if they grew up and had to move back to the haunted house?
Maggie's father wrote a bestselling book about their family's time living in the supposedly haunted Baneberry Hall. The book has been hanging over Maggie's head her whole life, and her family has kept what really happened a secret. When her father dies, she finds out that not only did her family not sell the haunted house like she assumed, but she has inherited it. In order to uncover the secrets of her past, Maggie returns to the house and unexplained phenomena ensues. Riley Sager writes fun, fast-paced books and this was just that. On a scale of 1 to 10, with Lock Every Door being a 1 and Final Girls a 10, Home Before Dark is about a 6. The resolution is pretty complicated (I might even say over-complicated) and there are several unexpected twists that make you think you know what's going on, and then surprise! more revelations.

I really love Riley Sager and his thriller releases. This was scary, formatted so well, and had a great and solid ending. I'll definitely be recommending to friends.