Home Before Dark

A Novel

De: Riley Sager

Narrado por: Cady McClain, Jon Lindstrom

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • One of USA Today's Best Books of 2020

“A haunted house story—with a twist….[Sager] does not hold back”(Rolling Stone) in this chilling thriller from the author of Final Girls and Survive the Night.

Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share.
Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt and her parents moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. Three weeks later they fled in the dead of night, an ordeal her father recounted in a memoir called House of Horrors. His story of supernatural happenings and malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Maggie was too young to remember any of the horrific events that supposedly took place, and as an adult she doesn’t believe a word of her father’s claims. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When she inherits Baneberry Hall after his death and returns to renovate the place and sell it, her homecoming is anything but warm. The locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous, and human characters with starring roles in House of Horrors are waiting in the shadows.

Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place where unsettling whispers of the past lurk around every corner. And as Maggie starts to experience strange occurrences ripped from the pages of her father’s book, the truth she uncovers about the house’s dark history will challenge everything she believes.

Meh...Not My Favorite Sager Book

Sager is an automatic order for me, usually. Alas, this one was not my cup of tea.

I won't rewrite the same book bio. You can read it on the same page as the book or on Goodreads. There are suggested hints of Haunting of Hill House, The Amityville Horror, or The Shining when you first start reading the book. As the reader goes along, you realize this is LESS of a paranormal thriller and more of a psychological one. It is simply a mystery about an old house and the girl who used to live there finally figuring out why her family fled one night so long ago. As Sager novels go, this ended up as my least favorite.

The book is well-written and performed well, but I have a few issues with the story overall. I don't mind the story being told from two points of view (Maggie's now, her father, then). Cady and Jon narrate these respective characters well. However, Maggie is not the most likable character and there are a few inconsistent plot points I had issues with. The book is much longer than necessary, even for a slow-burn mystery.

Sadly, you can listen to the first two, two-in-a-half hours and jump to chapter 25 and listen from there and learn everything you need to know. The book is padded with a lot of misleading red herrings and dead ends in between. It was a very very slow burn and reveal. Not as clean of a mystery as I would have hoped, especially since it was marketed as a paranormal one. This is not a horror either. The big reveal twist and the ending, for me, went a little flat.

As a Sager fan, I can appreciate what he was trying to do. It just wasn't my thing.

A Ghost of a Story

Full of atmosphere and plot this book had me hooked pretty quickly. Very good narration and a plot that twists and turns. Don’t turn out your lights!!

It's...fine

This story is fine. Just fine. It starts out seeming a bit derivative of other cult classics in the genre, but it's not for nothing that those were classics. Even leaning generously on those tropes, I really wanted to finish.

And I did, because all the twists and turns are kept completely hidden until the last chapter or so, so I had no way to know the story was going to undermine it's whole set up for a weird mystery/thriller angle.

I found the female lead, Maggie, to be totally unbearable. She thinks she is a lone bastion of logic and intellect, but is completely rude to others and constantly in denial about things she sees and finds because it doesn't suit her narrative. "Oh no, my father didn't lie about these easily verifiable facts and I keep finding proof of things he wrote about... but I already made up in my mind that he lied about it all so how can that be?? I don't understand how I'm seeing these things if he lied! The cognitive dissonance!" MAYBE HE DIDNT LIE MAGGIE. MAYBE USE YOUR BRAIN. The fact she thinks she is Hot Shizz and leagues smarter than everyone else makes this especially annoying, because it seems like she never suffers consequences for being a total ass to everyone else in the book. They just let her be pompous and rude, all the while feeding her information to move the plot forward.

A lot of the motivations of the characters require TREMENDOUS suspension of disbelief, which would be one thing if I was already doing that on the basis of it being a ghost story... but the author's intent to make it thriller/murder mystery without a supernatural explanation needed makes this very frustrating. There is just no reason that this many people would all choose the most convoluted, self serving paths for themselves that happened to work in harmony with all these other people to create this ghost story narrative. Truly, the things characters choose to do are totally beyond me and have no explanation aside from making the plot Sager wanted "work".

As far as the narration, I thought both the male and female narrator did a great job overall... except for the damn accents. The story is set in rural Vermont. Why on EARTH does every townie have a grizzled old Brooklyn grandma voice? Huh?? The choice to make the protagonist (who is from Boston!) have a mid American accent while every other side character either gets New York Jewish Mom or bordering-on-offensive Blaccent was.... well, it was a choice.

Loved it

I was captivated by the story from beginning to end. I really loved how it made me feel terrified and worried for Maggie and her parents. I was always guessing and trying to figure it out but I didn’t see the end coming one bit. 10/10

MEH.

if you're looking for a scary or haunted tale, look elsewhere. Boring, and not surprising though the performers did a fine job of reading the story.