Reviews with content warning for Grief - Home Before Dark

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!)

Content Warnings

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

Content Warnings

bookishgoob's review against another edition

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dark emotional lighthearted tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Riley Sager does it again. and by does it again i mean writing a “not like other girls” main character and using “ample bosom” as a descriptor for no apparent reason. Maggie was so annoying to me. she oozed pick me energy to a point where it made me want to DNF. another thing i don’t like about sagers writing is that he literally waits until the end of the book to do the final twist which is predictable but often annoying. plot twists are fine at the end once in a while but damn, every book? i don’t know man. i have a lot of problems with riley sager and his writing. i would almost recommend you watch haunting of hill house (5/5 show) than read this but i do have to admit that the atmosphere was creepy and would be a great “spooky szn@ read. it’s quick. it’s creepy. it involved and old house. so i’m torn. either way the characters were so bland but the story was good. do with that information what you want.

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seawarrior's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-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

3.0

Home Before Dark is an engaging read that glued me to its pages, but began to lose my suspension of disbelief near the end. The title is narrated by the text of the notorious House of Horrors and the inner thoughts of its now grown feature character Maggie Holt, who lived her life in the shadow of her father's writing. Early on it becomes obvious that we're not reading a story of a haunting, but rather one of a series of lies that spirals into a decades old "whodunnit". Sager presents just the right amount of description for us to richly imagine Baneberry Hall without losing momentum in the plot, or creating something that felt like a drudgery to read. Yet to me, the ending twists were more annoying than satisfying, as the sheer amount of them seemed unnecessary and almost silly. I would still recommend this book to others who enjoy a mystery novel that it almost effortless to read. There was never a period where reading this book felt tedious, and I repeatedly looked forward to spending more time with it.

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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.

Content Warnings

toofondofbooks_'s review

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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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shelfofunread's review against another edition

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mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Having previously read and enjoyed The Last Time I Lied, I was excited to see that Riley Sager’s latest thriller came with some additional spooky stylings. The former novel was packed with growing tension and page-turning plot beats so I was keen to see what the addition of some trademark horror tropes would do to that mix. The answer, it turns out, is to make it even more page-turning – and to provide more than a few ‘sleeping with the lights on’ moments!

Maggie Holt’s life has been defined by The Book – the tell-all memoir that her father Ewan wrote after her family’s fateful stay at Baneberry Hall. According to The Book, the vengeful ghosts of Baneberry Hall drove Ewan, Jess, and five-year-old Maggie away from their dream home, never to return. But after her father’s death, Maggie discovers that her parents never sold Baneberry Hall. Despite being warned to never go back there, Maggie is determined to make the most of her unexpected inheritance – she’s going to renovate and sell her family’s cursed legacy; but not before she gets to the bottom of why her family really fled all those years ago.

When the body of a missing teenager falls out of her kitchen ceiling, however, Maggie gets far more than she bargained for at Baneberry Hall. Could her parents really have been involved in a murder? Or are the strange noises and fleeting shadows of Baneberry Hall really signs of the supernatural? As Maggie starts to delve into the history of her father’s House of Horrors, she finds herself wondering if he was telling the truth about Baneberry Hall all along.

Whilst Home Before Dark continues to showcase Sager’s command of pacing and plotting, it serves up some genuinely spooky and atmospheric moments alongside the more familiar mystery-thriller territory of its main storyline. If you love ghost stories and ‘true life’ tales of the paranormal, you’re sure to love Home Before Dark which alternates between excerpts from Ewan’s Amityville Horror-style memoir and Maggie’s own investigations in the present day.

Content Warnings

horizonous's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.75

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