Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - Home Before Dark

Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

44 reviews

ylienna's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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kaylasbookgram's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

When I read Lock Every Door I wasn’t super impressed with Riley Sager but decided to give his books another chance and I’m so glad I did!

This book was amazing! Kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time & had a surprise ending I should’ve seen coming but definitely didn’t. And I’m always here for a surprise ending! This is a haunted house type book which made me nervous because I don’t believe in ghost and the last “ghost” story I read I wasn’t a fan of but Sager definitely wrote this one magnificently and had me shaking in my seat! I highly recommend this one if you haven’t read it yet.

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francesturpin's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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ryankaybee's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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shereadsmysteries's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Content Warnings

brittanyae's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Grief is tricky like that. It can lie low for hours, long enough for magical thinking to take hold. Then, when you’re good and vulnerable, it will leap out at you like a fun-house skeleton, and all the pain you thought was gone comes roaring back.

The more I think on this book, the more issues I have with it. Knocked the rating down to 3 stars, though it's probably somewhere between 3 and 3.5 if I could be nuanced.

Okay, finally diving into trying to write this, even though I feel awful tonight. But I feel like I've put it off for long enough.

So I think the main issue here is just that... I went into this with too high of expectations.

Everyone that remotely enjoys horror/thriller has been hyping this book up, and almost everyone I've seen talk about it or review it has given it 5 stars. I listened to an interview the author did about the book before I read it as well and it got me even more excited to read it. It seemed like everywhere I turned, this book was popping up, and everyone was singing its praises.

And it's not like it was bad - not at all! I enjoyed my read of it. But it was just that. Just enjoyable, not amazing, not worth all the hype to me. It wasn't scary to me at all - though I fully realize that that's entirely a personal preference kind of thing. I've seen others say it kept them up at night. But nothing about this book was particularly scary to me. Was there some good spooky imagery? Yes, for sure. I had Sixteen Going On Seventeen stuck on a loop in my head for days because of the way it popped up creepily in this story. But that was probably the most unsettling thing for me: the idea of a normally cute, cheerful song playing hauntingly in an empty house, seemingly on its own.

And then we get to the ending, where we seemed to go through about 4 actual endings before we knew what really happened. It wrapped up with one ending, then we found out that was wrong when another character came in and gave us a different ending. And then another character came back along and gave us a different ending and explanation - and all of this happens in the span of the last handful of pages! It felt like Sager was trying to make this overly complex and add in unnecessary twists and turns for shock value, but it just felt like too much to me.

There's also a bit of... I don't want to say false advertising really, but you're definitely led to believe by the blurb and the hype around this book that it's

a supernatural story, when in fact, it isn't at all.

Also the book revolves around the premise that our main character doesn't remember anything that happened to her when she was 5 and the original timeline went down, which is just a little hard to swallow. Some willing suspension of disbelief is needed for this story, I think. 5 is quite young and I wouldn't expect her to remember everything, but I wouldn't expect it all to be gone. I think we're supposed to assume that's chalked up to a stress reaction - her mind forcing her to forget to protect her from the horrors she endured as a kid - but based on the ending, I just don't really buy it.

What I will say is that the format of this book is so interesting. I loved the book inside of a book concept, and I thought it was an interesting way to give us the whole picture of what was happening in the house, both from when Maggie was a child and from her return as an adult. And I will also say that I think Riley Sager knows how to write very compelling characters. I was drawn in by Maggie's messy childhood and by her father's secrets and by the small town gossip characters; I feel like the characters are where this book shines over the plot.

Immediately upon finishing this book, my reaction was "That was really good" but the longer I sat with it, the more I felt a little more out of sorts with it. I just think that maybe one false ending and then the real one coming out and a little more build-up to that would've made the book better. I needed another maybe... 50 pages put into the ending explaining things, and more of an epilogue going over the aftermath of it all, for it to really shine.

I do still really want to try more of his books, though, because this read super fast and was still a fun read! I'd like to see what his other works are like. (Also, not really important in the long run, but I have to mention how gorgeous and how cool the dust jacket for this book is. I have to. It glows in the dark; that's too cool not to touch on!)

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annelihghh's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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paulrichard's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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toorsdenote's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Solid ghost story, cool plot twist.

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toofondofbooks_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I don't even know what to say y'all
I don't know what I expected but it wasn't this. This book scared me so much. I'm scared of armoires now. I feel like I can't really talk about this book effectively while still keeping it spoiler free, but I think what I will say is that I did not see the ending coming and I can't tell if I was disappointed by it or not. I opted for the 4 star rating bc of my confusion in relation to that, but overall this was a very immersive and well written book that I think you'll love if you're into horror.

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