Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: Home
Before Dark by Riley Sager
by Karen S. Wiesner
What would it be like to be the young child of parents who'd survived an Amityville horror-like haunting and then went on to tell the story of their terror, living in a house inhabited with evil spirits? That's the scenario of Home After Dark by Riley Sager, published in 2020.
After her family fled the house in the middle of the night, Maggie's dad decided to write a book about their harrowing experience, including the dark history of the house. Home Before Dark opens when Maggie's father has just died. She's learned that not only did he never sell the house, but she now owns it. Maggie is an adult now and remembers very little of the time she spent at Baneberry Hall with her parents. She's a skeptic and believes her father's worldwide bestseller was nothing more than a fraud, him little more than a liar who profited from telling a tall tale as if it'd actually happened to them. As an interior decorator, Maggie decides to renovate the place and then sell it. She discovers the small town filled with locals who don't appreciate how Ewan Holt made them infamous. Additionally, Maggie can't deny the weird occurrences at the house are unnerving her more and more as the days pass. She'd wanted to believe her dad's book was a fake yet ends up wondering if there was more fact than fiction to his story.
While Home Before Dark has been touted a horror novel, I'd categorize it more of mild horror, or simply supernatural fiction. That's not a flaw--merely an observation. Written by alternating present-day Maggie in POV scenes with chapters (each focused on a day of living in the haunted house) from her father's book, there's a similarity in the parallel entries. Through this, Maggie begins to slowly change her mind about all she thought she knew and believed for so long.
Almost from the first chapter, I felt I knew exactly where this story was leading--and that is precisely where it did lead. The last several chapters, however, shattered everything I thought I knew as I was dragged through whip-saw turns, one after the other, twisting and careening around hairpin bends, leaving me breathless and dazed as I took in the truth like the winded survivor of a tragedy. Well did this author earn the title as "a master of the twist and the turn" (Rolling Stone)! I closed the last page, feeling I'd been brilliantly played while the author guided me exactly where he wanted me to go, then, with a smile of glee, turned off the light, locked the door, and forced me to stumble through those final, disturbing, and, may I say, very satisfying chapters.
Home Before Dark is in no way a typical ghost story, though it had all the makings of one. If you've never read this one, you'll find it a thoroughly enjoyable read that's anything but expected. If you have, it may be time to re-experience it (kind of like a second viewing of M. Night Shyamalan's brilliantly haunting The Sixth Sense) just to see how your perspective has changed now that know what's actually going on.
Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.
Karen Wiesner is an award-winning,
multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books and see her art
here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
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