Riley Sager’s first novel Final Girls was almost unfair for a debut work. The mastery of this author, who operates under a pseudonym, reads more like a story you’d expect from a writer’s second or third book. The book released in 2017 to international acclaim, with hopes of another book sooner rather than later. Instead, the author followed up with two novels in each following year. In keeping with the trend, Sager will release Home Before Dark on June 30th, 2020 by Dutton/Penguin. Thanks to the publisher, I’m happy to bring this spoiler-free Home Before Dark review to Comic Years in what I think will end up being one of the year’s strongest works of fiction.

In Sager’s upcoming novel, we meet Maggie Hold 25 years after her family narrowly escapes from Baneberry Hall. The haunting Victorian estate holds a dark past and despite signs for concern, her parents Ewan and Jess move in. Ewan’s fleeting freelance career is buying the young father time until he can write the Great American Novel, which he plans to do at Baneberry.

What’s sort of funny is throughout the events following the Holt family’s move, all signs point to a hellish presence in the house. Despite these signs, Ewan seems more annoyed than frightened. It’s not until things begin to look fatal that Ewan escapes with his family. While staying in a motel, Ewan shares his suspected ghost encounter with the cops. The report leads to a saucy story in the local newspaper. The attention is as close to acclaim Ewan feels he might get, so he pens House of Horrors, a nonfiction account of his family’s time in Baneberry.

When Ghosts Become Demons
As an adult, Maggie finds people want to know all about her experience when they realize who she is. In reality, she spends her teen years and beyond believing her father made everything up. The book talks of Maggie’s “invisible friends” who serve as the home’s haunters, and she doesn’t remember any of it. As Home Before Dark plays out, we hear the full story of what happens, but we also get to review how the experience affects Maggie. Without any real recollection of the events at Baneberry, she still finds herself struggling after her family’s escape.

The fame of House of Horrors rivals that of The Amityville Horror, but Maggie ends up bearing the brunt of what follows. Countless instances place Maggie in the role of the victim. Instances include being shunned by classmates for her father’s “evil book” and never escaping the fame attributed to her surname. The experience all but demolishes her relationship with her parents, who get divorced shortly after the book becomes a hit. When her father passes away, his final words to Maggie are “so sorry.” But, for what?

Insanely Well Developed Themes Make Home Before Dark Effective
Without diving too much more into the story, Maggie finds out that her father never sold Baneberry, so she returns to assess the property. It’s here that she rediscovers the events that changed her family’s life 25 years ago. The story is far from a cookie-cutter walkthrough of typical ghost story tropes. Yes, the family experiences mysterious occurrences that cannot be explained. The Victorian layout of the house leaves room for great moments. Favorite highlights include ghostly chandeliers, record players starting without human intervention, and even an Ouiji board consultation.

What rings loudest in the novel are themes surrounding the relationship a father has with his daughter. Modern norms aside, the bond between a dad and his girl is complicated. There’s an element of fatherly duty to protect with plenty of room to overstep boundaries rooted in every one of these relationships. If a father oversteps this gentle line, then his darling daughter can either grow to hate him or encounter danger. As she grows up, any daughter desires autonomy from the man who raised her. One’s willingness to approach this natural departure from one another with caution can be the only thing keeping the process from spoiling family bonds.

The haunting backdrop of what Ewan and Maggie experience in Baneberry echos through generations of father-daughter relationships gone bad. Ewan has no desire to lose his daughter’s love. In protecting her and documenting what they go through in House of Horrors, Ewan saves and loses his daughter all at once.

Overall Impressions
I think Sager’s love of thriller and mystery novels helps guide this story smoothly. The author certainly doesn’t shy away from eerie subjects. 2019’s Lock Every Door also featured a dwelling rotted with past sins, but I think Home Before Dark nails frightening passages a little more smoothly. There’s not too much of a dependency on any gothic vibes. That said, the modern sense of the Holt family’s experience makes it scarier. In a weird way, I feel like this story seems more realistic than other haunted tales.

The ghostly portions of the book aren’t spine-chilling, but keep the reader nervous. Not to mention, plot points that seem obvious evaporate as Maggie discovers more about her past. All in all, Maggie is one of the more enjoyable characters I’ve encountered in fiction the past 18 months. Sager’s incredible novel is one I look forward to hopefully seeing adapted for film or TV. Sony Pictures and 21 Laps recently won the rights to the book’s adaptation via auction. The latter is run by director-producer Shawn Levy, who started his career directing family films like Cheaper by the Dozen and the Night at the Museum films. More recently, his efforts with his production company earned him a Netflix partnership where he helped launch Stranger Things as executive producer.

Home Before Dark Review Rating
I like to rate my book reviews on a scale of 1-5; five being something like Gone Girl and one being gone from my memory. I’d place the review score for Home Before Dark at a 5 for the many reasons above and because I’ll likely re-read it in the near future. Be sure to check out all reviews, interviews, and news coverage we provide for books on Comic Years.

Riley Sager’s Home Before Dark is scheduled to release June 30, 2020, via Dutton/Penguin. A digital copy of this novel was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.

This may be my favorite Riley Sager book yet. Home Before Dark brings all the creepy vibes with some amazing twisty turns at the end that I definitely didn’t see coming. I’m not a huge ghost story fan but this book just worked for me. It felt like Turn of the Key meets The Sun Down Motel as Maggie tries to discover the truth about her childhood at spooky Baneberry Hall. Highly recommend!

Thank you Netgalley and Dutton Books for the advance egalley for this book.

A fabulous haunted house thriller from one of my favorite thrill writers at the moment. Very easy to fly through this one, and kept me guessing to the end.

2.5 * This book started off strong. I was immediately pulled in and ready to love Sager's next book. I liked the dual timelines of Maggie's POV and chapters of the book her father wrote about their time at Baneberry Hall. The atmosphere and timing was perfect. Where this book lost me is the ending. I felt everything I read had been a waste and I am so let down!

Each of Riley Sager's books tackle a different type of horror. I love the supernatural-esque elements of this new Amytiville Horror.

Oooohh this was good. Good mystery with some horror elements but not too unbelievable. Kept me up all night!!

This was really different from my previous experience with Sagar! I liked it but it did leave me a bit unsettled, but then Sagar usually leaves me a bit unsettled! The story was compelling especially the way it didn't fall into any one genre...it had the best parts of lots of different genre styles. It's really hard for me to explain without spoilers. Suffice it to say, Sagar has become one of my favorites because I never know what to expect!

There's something about Riley Sager's books that are deliciously addicting. Throughout the ever-evolving global pandemic, it has been very difficult to sit down and engage my mind with reading. This is the book that brought me back to life!

A fun page-turner from the very start, Riley Sager gives us a smart, strong-willed female lead character intermixed with a family with secrets and a house that may or may not be haunted. The haunted house trope is one of my absolute favorites and Sager stays true to the theme while still keeping it fresh and exciting.

The number one question driving the entire plot - Is Baneberry Hall haunted or did Maggie Holt's father fabricate her haunted childhood to make money off of his book, House of Horrors? The structure of the book slips seamlessly between present-day Maggie Holt exploring Baneberry Hall, and chapters describing a supposed House of Horrors that she lived through but has no memory of.

Read it! You won't regret it!

It's a great story. Flows well.. And it's quite a departure from a regular thriller and dips a toe into horror, ahem, suspense.
My only problem is with the repressed-memory gimmick recycled from Final Girls.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

I love love loved this! My fave of all the Sager books so far. A classic haunted house horror novel with lots of twists and turns along the way. The main character’s family lived in a haunted house when she was just five years old, and her dad becomes a very wealthy man after writing a book about their terrifying time in the house...but it’s all lies...or is it? Kept me scared and intrigued throughout the whole book. Thriller fans will love this one!

Another wonderfully creepy novel from Riley Sager. I love his plots from the slasher movie like Final Girls to the haunted house book in the vein of The Shining and Amityville Horror of his new novel Home Before Dark. A classic tale of a non believer who restores homes, inherits her parents haunted house, that was written about in her father's book, Maggie gets the ire of the townspeople in Vermont and the hostile ghosts inside, which she's beginning to see that they are not as fictional as she thought.

This book was a true roller coaster ride. Riley Sager has a great way of keeping you on the edge of your seat wondering what is next or what is real. Truly the top of the list of books written by Riley Sager.

Wow. This is my new favorite by Riley Sager. This page turner is full of plot twists that you won't see coming. It will keep you up at night and make you question what is in the shadows of your home. I could not put this book down and I loved the way it was told by going back and forth from past and present.

When it comes to writing horror, Sager has something of a unique talent—the ability to build stories around the tropes and clichés of the genre in such a way that the resulting novels becoming comforting rather than hackneyed. Home Before Dark features a prototypical haunted house with both a storied history and an Amityville-esque bestseller. Twenty-five years after leaving Baneberry Hall with nothing but the clothes on her back, Maggie Holt returns to finally get some answers about her past. Along the way, Sager provides everything you would expect and hope for; sinister ghosts (I even scared myself a little a few days after finishing the book by picturing Miss Pennyface!), a handsome neighbor with a violent past, secret passage ways, forbidden love, menacing thumps in the night, and the SNAKES! That is a lot for one book but, unlike in The Last Time I Lied, in Home Before Dark it never becomes too much. Additionally, the resolution manages to be both predictable and twisty, but ultimately very satisfying. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book to my patrons.

Riley Sager at it again with Home Before Dark. While I do not think this was his best book, it was still a very good book. I love his creepy story telling and the fact that I never guess the twist.
I will read every book he come out with.

I would like to thank Netgalley for the advance reader copy of this book.

In typical Riley Sager fashion, we are at the edge of our seat for the entirety of this book. Mixing psychological thrills and gothic horror chills, we are dealt a story that is reminiscent of Jay Anson's "The Amityville Horror" and Ruth Ware's "The Turn of the Key."

Maggie Holt has been trying to escape the book that her father wrote about their time at Baneberry Hall for most of her life. The book, titled "House of Horrors," details a gothic horroresque experience that Maggie cannot remember. When her father dies, and she inherits Baneberry Hall, Maggie decides to spend some time fixing up the old place and digging for clues as to what really happened in her time there as a child. Strange things begin to happen that are eerily similar to the occurences in her father's book. Maggie tries to maintain a level head during her stay, but as the occurences escalate and the house's haunted history reveals itself, she must choose between uncovering the truth about her troubled childhood and saving her own life. Maggie's perspective alternates with chronological chapters of her father's book to bring both stories to life in this unputdownable pageturner.

This book is a good one for the fans of the supernatural. It switches between a book written by Maggie's father and Maggie's present perspective. Is there something supernatural going ok n or is it all a hoax?

I love Riley Sager's books because they always keep me guessing until the end. This one was proper freaky. I slept with a light on the night I started it. The snakes! Ahh, the stuff of nightmares.

There were so many secrets and moving pieces in this one that I really didn't know who to trust - everyone was so convincing! Maddie, the main character, wasn't my favorite. She was hard to like because she wasn't kind to a single person, but I think she was the right kind of person to go back into that house.

Spoilers ahead - The book ended in true Sager fashion with a conclusion and explanation, which is nice, but I weirdly found myself wishing for that haunted house! That's probably because the author did such a good job making it very scary. I had no doubt it was real. That being said, I do appreciate that there is a reason most of the time, and they were some genuinely creepy reasons, haunted or not!

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this one!

I have loved every single one of Riley Sager's books, and Home Before Dark was no different. The story was well thought-out, and I could see a movie happening in my mind while reading. While some of the story was a little slow at times, the major twists at the end were worth it. And they kept coming! I will definitely recommend this to my audience, especially to those who enjoy a good thriller!

I was given this arc in exchange for a full review, but you’ll have to wait to read the review until June! I will say...you HAVE to get this book when it’s released on June 30th! Full 5 star review will be up on my goodreads in June!!!