Home Before Dark

Wow, just wow. I have never in my entire reading life had a book keep me from putting it down. This book has everything a 5 star book should be. I thought I knew the direction the story was going to go, I get hit with a plot twist and just as I get my bearings from my mind being whiplash in such a good way I might as well add, my mind gets blown by another plot twist. This book left a permanent mark.

What a fun mystery/thriller to read in October! It has just the right amount of spookiness mixed with mystery. The book tells the story of one family's experience at Baneberry Hall, a supposedly haunted house. The reader is left to wonder if the house really is haunted or if there is a rational explanation for the things that occur there.

Maggie Holt has spent her entire life since the age of five trying to find out from her parents if the story her father wrote about their time at Baneberry Hall is true. She does not believe her father's tale of ghosts, but she also cannot remember those weeks. When her father dies and leaves her the house, she returns to it hoping to determine the truth of what happened there. As strange things begin to occur in the house, Maggie (and the reader) begins to wonder if maybe her father's assertions that the house is haunted might be true.

The plot of this haunted house thriller is gripping and entertaining. The pace is perfect and the atmosphere is just the right amount of creepy. Chandeliers that turn on by themselves, bells that seem to ring on their own, and record players that play on their own. All these strange occurrences lead the reader to feel as if the supernatural is at work in the house. The way the story alternates chapters from the present with chapters taken from the father's book creates suspense and reveals just the right amount of details at each point in the story.

Maggie is a somewhat unreliable protagonist because of her memory loss surrounding that time in her childhood spent in the house. She remembers some details, but even she does not trust her memories. The characters she encounters in the town are suspicious and untrustworthy. It all adds up to to create a feeling of unease, which is exactly what a reader wants in a thriller like this.

This book was the perfect read for me for the Halloween season. It provides all the spooky feels and delivers a satisfying ending. I would recommend it to any thriller lover.

“Generic Horror movie checklist”:
-Young couple moves to new house? check
-Protagonist inherits a strange house? check
-Many people died in this house? check
-Ouija Board? check
-Child seeing ghosts no one else can see? check
-Random appliances around the house moving on their own? check
-Ghosts appearing in photographs? check?
-“It was you all along” ending? check
-Generational violence for every family that lives there? check

and with all that said the only reason I read this book, the writing is solid that's it.

Wat een heerlijk boek! Je wordt continu heen en weer geslingerd tussen feiten en fictie. Zelfs tot het laatste hoofdstuk. Elk klein onderdeel van de het verhaal heeft een grote betekenis en al die onderdelen komen later in 1x allemaal bij elkaar. Echt fantastisch geschreven. Wellicht dat je sommige twist voelt aankomen. Er zitten er ook tussen die je echt zullen verrassen. Absoluut een aanrader.

This was incredible. I’m not a fan of a haunted house book but this one was done in such a good way with a some great twists. I couldn’t guess them at all and it’s not like they came out of thin air. I really really recommend this if you want a thrilling book. I’d say so much more about what I like but I don’t want to spoil a thing!

This book kept me on my toes, and not just because of the arbitrary grammar mistakes. The flow of the story was well thought out and I read through a lot of it with increasing heart palpitations. I love ghost stories and hauntings, especially when in book form. I don't have to worry about jump scares. I do have some questions though...

Spoiler time: So did I miss something or did they not explain who the little girl she was seeing was? Because Mr. Shadow was Elsa and Miss Pennyface was Marta, so who tf was the little girl? Was it a real ghost after all or an imagining? I feel bothered by the relationship between Ewan and Petra. It was inappropriate and creepy. Did anyone else guess that it was Marta as soon as Maggie met her?

It slightly touch what could have been but took a whole different path one that sadly I didn't like at all

I jus have to say this is not even a horror book a mistery book would suit way better

That ending doesn't make any sense and although some parts of the books are crazy scary it just leaves all that behind every time it cans so yeah not good

Home Before Dark is a great, if imperfect, haunted house story filled with twists and turns that will leave readers guessing through each moment of this gothic page-turner. I found the first quarter of the book to be kind of slow. In fact, my initial impression was that this book had been way over hyped. The premise of the book is that a family of three - mom, dad, and a little girl - flees a haunted house twenty five years ago. Although the girl remembers very little of her time in the house, her father's book about their experiences has been a defining factor in her life, much to her frustration because she believes it was all a lie. After her father dies she returns to the house. What will she discover? Interesting, but not revolutionary. The whole thing seemed vaguely similar to Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts, and other elements in Home Before Dark reminded me of various other horror books and movies too. I thought that this story was recycling a lot of familiar tropes, which to be fair might not have originated in some of books and movies I had previously seen them in either. But nevertheless my overall opinion was that Home Before Dark was nothing extraordinary. A horror novel written to appeal to “I don't read horror” thriller fans who were familiar with some of Sager's previous books perhaps? Yet, after the first 100 pages things started to pick up and I really got hooked. I'm not going to get into spoilers, but I'll just say that I didn't see the ending coming, and I actually liked how it ended up. The book was very twisty and overall a lot of fun, even if some parts of it were a bit less effective than others and I did ultimately feel that some parts of it felt a bit derivative of other works. I'd recommend this one, just don't go in believing the hype that it's the best horror novel ever. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book kept me on my toes from the beginning, it rarely happens so that is why I made it a 5 star reading. It was at times even terrifying and I loved how it alternates between the present and the past, making you question what is real and what is not.
Twist and turns, all in all it was a lovely read that kept me wanting to know what happens next all the way until the end.

Dit boek stond al een jaar op mijn te lezen lijst, maar ik wou het persé via audioboek lezen, net zoals de vorige boeken van deze auteur. Sinds ik audioboeken ontdekt heb lees ik quasi bijna alle thrillers die ik wil lezen via audioboek, omdat het in dit formaat meestal nog beter tot zijn recht komt.
Helaas kwam dit boek maar niet op Storytel en was ik het bijna vergeten, totdat ik toch eens snuisterde bij de Nederlandse audioboeken en de vertaling wel vond. Ik besloot dan maar om nog eens een audioboek in het Nederlands uit te testen. En ik moet zeggen, ik heb toch wel verschillende keren op mijn tanden moeten bijten bij de tongval en bepaalde uitspraken (er passeerde weer een therapuit of twee), wat me regelmatig uit het verhaal haalde. Maar uiteindelijk was het verhaal boeiend genoeg, dat ik mijn aversie uit kon schakelen en gewoon kon luisteren naar het verhaal.

En dat was toch wel met momenten behoorlijk griezelig en deed me twijfelen of er nu echt iets paranormaals gaande was of niet.
Ik was ook een grote fan van de manier waarop het verhaal verteld werd, aan de hand van een boek in een boek. Het gaf zo de extra dimensie en een onheilspellend gevoel terwijl je samen met het hoofdpersonage feit en fictie probeert te achterhalen.
De ontknoping, ondanks dat die spectaculair is, is er helaas weer eentje dat geen steek blijft houden als je er iets te lang bij stil staat. Maar ik ben bereid dit over het hoofd te zien, vanwege het leesplezier doorheen dit verhaal.

This book has good bones but the author's prose is bloated and often felt like I was reading a teen's diary. Maybe the first person POV made it seem worse, but I felt that the narration was made up of incessant inner dialogue from the protagonist that repetitively over explained their feelings about everything. This narration also frequently trails off into exposition that is largely inconsequential.

This writing gets in the way of itself and keeps any good moments in the book from being great.

Not as much preposterous fun as Lock every Door. The explanations are still silly, but more mundanely so. Everything is, as ever with this, are a bit of a stretch, but this became a trifle tedious. Derivative and ludicrous and not as much fun as I'd hoped. And the characters were largely dull or just inane. All the explanations really make no sense whatsoever.

Maggie's life has revolved around what happened to her when she was a child...a time her father put into a book which in turn made her famous...albeit in a most unwanted way. Maggie has never believed the ghost story her father wrote. She would remember if all those crazy things happened to her... wouldn't she?

With her father's passing Maggie now has the chance to return to Baneberry Hall and get the answers both her mother and father refused to give. When weird things begin happening while she is there she is starting to wonder if maybe there is a little truth to the story her father told...

I really enjoyed this one, although I knew there was a logical explanation to the mysterious happenings in the home. I had a feeling as to what was going on about 30% of the way in and was partially correct BUT not even close as to what was finally revealed.

I love Riley Sager and he can certainly keep you captivated and thrilled. This one did not disappoint in that aspect at all. This would make a great Halloween read.

4⭐️/5. Classic who-dun-it, but with a twist. With every chapter, a new tidbit of information was revealed. This made the expected income pivot ever so slightly. Over time and while feverishly reading, one doesn't notice how this influences the end result but when you look at a side by side comparison of what you thought was going to happen at the beginning of the book to what actually happened at the end— it's totally different. This was my first Sager novel and I thought it was quite good. I do wish this was less hyped by the time I picked it up. I debated back and forth between a 3.75 (too low) and a 4.0 (seems a tad high), but decided to round up because my mouth made an ‘O' formation at the end (my bf has the pic to prove it... [yes he took my picture at a supremely vulnerable stage—the unveiling of The Who did it in a who-dun-it!!]). Anyways, would recommend. Especially on a crisp New England fall day with cinnamon rimmed hot hard cider.