Each of Riley Sager's books tackle a different type of horror. I love the supernatural-esque elements of this new Amytiville Horror.

Oooohh this was good. Good mystery with some horror elements but not too unbelievable. Kept me up all night!!

This was really different from my previous experience with Sagar! I liked it but it did leave me a bit unsettled, but then Sagar usually leaves me a bit unsettled! The story was compelling especially the way it didn't fall into any one genre...it had the best parts of lots of different genre styles. It's really hard for me to explain without spoilers. Suffice it to say, Sagar has become one of my favorites because I never know what to expect!

There's something about Riley Sager's books that are deliciously addicting. Throughout the ever-evolving global pandemic, it has been very difficult to sit down and engage my mind with reading. This is the book that brought me back to life!

A fun page-turner from the very start, Riley Sager gives us a smart, strong-willed female lead character intermixed with a family with secrets and a house that may or may not be haunted. The haunted house trope is one of my absolute favorites and Sager stays true to the theme while still keeping it fresh and exciting.

The number one question driving the entire plot - Is Baneberry Hall haunted or did Maggie Holt's father fabricate her haunted childhood to make money off of his book, House of Horrors? The structure of the book slips seamlessly between present-day Maggie Holt exploring Baneberry Hall, and chapters describing a supposed House of Horrors that she lived through but has no memory of.

Read it! You won't regret it!

It's a great story. Flows well.. And it's quite a departure from a regular thriller and dips a toe into horror, ahem, suspense.
My only problem is with the repressed-memory gimmick recycled from Final Girls.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

I love love loved this! My fave of all the Sager books so far. A classic haunted house horror novel with lots of twists and turns along the way. The main character’s family lived in a haunted house when she was just five years old, and her dad becomes a very wealthy man after writing a book about their terrifying time in the house...but it’s all lies...or is it? Kept me scared and intrigued throughout the whole book. Thriller fans will love this one!

A book within a book, the tells the story of Maggie and her father Ewan and their time at the mysterious Baneberry Hall in Vermont. Ewan has written a best-selling work of non-fiction about the time when Maggie was very young and they purchased the hall. Strange events follow, as Maggie talks of spirits, Mister Shadow, Miss Pennyface, and a girl who doesn't speak. Told in alternating chapters, the reader is able to read this work of non-fiction, but also follow the story of Maggie, now an adult, dealing with her father's death and the fact that she has inherited Baneberry Hall. Not believing the story was actually true, Maggie begins to dig for secrets on her own. Riley Sager is wonderful at atmospheric thrillers with a sense of place and Home Before Dark is no exception. The descriptions of the house, and the sense of creeping evil will keep many a reader up at night. Coming from the age where we all had to read the Amityville Horror, fans who enjoy fiction involving "true" accounts will love the book within the book. This one should become a bestseller, I know that people in my library will clamor for it.

Another wonderfully creepy novel from Riley Sager. I love his plots from the slasher movie like Final Girls to the haunted house book in the vein of The Shining and Amityville Horror of his new novel Home Before Dark. A classic tale of a non believer who restores homes, inherits her parents haunted house, that was written about in her father's book, Maggie gets the ire of the townspeople in Vermont and the hostile ghosts inside, which she's beginning to see that they are not as fictional as she thought.

This book was a true roller coaster ride. Riley Sager has a great way of keeping you on the edge of your seat wondering what is next or what is real. Truly the top of the list of books written by Riley Sager.

Wow. This is my new favorite by Riley Sager. This page turner is full of plot twists that you won't see coming. It will keep you up at night and make you question what is in the shadows of your home. I could not put this book down and I loved the way it was told by going back and forth from past and present.

When it comes to writing horror, Sager has something of a unique talent—the ability to build stories around the tropes and clichés of the genre in such a way that the resulting novels becoming comforting rather than hackneyed. Home Before Dark features a prototypical haunted house with both a storied history and an Amityville-esque bestseller. Twenty-five years after leaving Baneberry Hall with nothing but the clothes on her back, Maggie Holt returns to finally get some answers about her past. Along the way, Sager provides everything you would expect and hope for; sinister ghosts (I even scared myself a little a few days after finishing the book by picturing Miss Pennyface!), a handsome neighbor with a violent past, secret passage ways, forbidden love, menacing thumps in the night, and the SNAKES! That is a lot for one book but, unlike in The Last Time I Lied, in Home Before Dark it never becomes too much. Additionally, the resolution manages to be both predictable and twisty, but ultimately very satisfying. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book to my patrons.

"Every house has a story. Ours is a ghost story. It's also a lie. And now that yet another person has died within these walls, it's finally time to tell the truth."

Fellow Riley Sager junkies, you've waited so patiently for me to slip out of my Covid-19 induced anxiety, and I'm here to tell you that I've shaken the funk and am feeling passionately encouraged to word vomit my thoughts about this book. Before I get started, you need to know going in that this book has a slightly altered feel to his previous novels, but I feel like this is a given, as each book he writes evolves into a new thrilling sub-genre. If I had to compare Home Before Dark to another one of Sager's books, I'd say that it would mostly align with Final Girls, as it portrays that same growing since of dread while serving a side of mainstream horror. The blurbs calling this a tale for fans of Hill House are spot on, and if you love a good ghost story, whether those ghosts are supernatural or manmade monsters, I think you'll adore this book.

If you enjoy books within books, they you're in luck, because that's just what we have here! In the book portions, AKA the past, Maggie and her parents moved into this big scary mansion where some really questionable things happened in the past, but they aren't weenies and decide that the low low asking price is worth the risk of their lives. *cue the scary music* When we alternate to the present tense, we know that something really bad happened that caused Maggie's family to abandon the property in the middle of the night, just a few short weeks after moving in, and that is the large suspenseful build up throughout the book. Obviously, we need to know what happened and who was responsible!

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The beauty of this story is that there are a million little working parts that come together to form the outcome of the whole book, and even if you guess a few of the twists, I can guarantee there will be a few others that will blow your mind. One of the twists crossed my mind from the moment the curious behavior piqued my interest, and I wasn't disappointed when I ended up being correct in my assumptions, because it showcased one of my favorite plot twists from a movie in recent years (which I won't mention here for fear of spoilers). There are ghosts of various kinds, snakes, hot contractors with washboard abs, snakes, delicious baked goods, snakes, things that go bump in the night... Did I mention the snakes and the guy with the really great bod? Just checking.

*In my best Stefan voice* This summer's hottest book is Home Before Dark. It has everything: creepy haunted houses, mysterious people from the past, and an ending that will have you sure to keep on the lights when you sleep for at least a few nights. This one is well worth the pre-order friends!

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Riley Sager at it again with Home Before Dark. While I do not think this was his best book, it was still a very good book. I love his creepy story telling and the fact that I never guess the twist.
I will read every book he come out with.

I would like to thank Netgalley for the advance reader copy of this book.

In typical Riley Sager fashion, we are at the edge of our seat for the entirety of this book. Mixing psychological thrills and gothic horror chills, we are dealt a story that is reminiscent of Jay Anson's "The Amityville Horror" and Ruth Ware's "The Turn of the Key."

Maggie Holt has been trying to escape the book that her father wrote about their time at Baneberry Hall for most of her life. The book, titled "House of Horrors," details a gothic horroresque experience that Maggie cannot remember. When her father dies, and she inherits Baneberry Hall, Maggie decides to spend some time fixing up the old place and digging for clues as to what really happened in her time there as a child. Strange things begin to happen that are eerily similar to the occurences in her father's book. Maggie tries to maintain a level head during her stay, but as the occurences escalate and the house's haunted history reveals itself, she must choose between uncovering the truth about her troubled childhood and saving her own life. Maggie's perspective alternates with chronological chapters of her father's book to bring both stories to life in this unputdownable pageturner.

This book is a good one for the fans of the supernatural. It switches between a book written by Maggie's father and Maggie's present perspective. Is there something supernatural going ok n or is it all a hoax?

I love Riley Sager's books because they always keep me guessing until the end. This one was proper freaky. I slept with a light on the night I started it. The snakes! Ahh, the stuff of nightmares.

There were so many secrets and moving pieces in this one that I really didn't know who to trust - everyone was so convincing! Maddie, the main character, wasn't my favorite. She was hard to like because she wasn't kind to a single person, but I think she was the right kind of person to go back into that house.

Spoilers ahead - The book ended in true Sager fashion with a conclusion and explanation, which is nice, but I weirdly found myself wishing for that haunted house! That's probably because the author did such a good job making it very scary. I had no doubt it was real. That being said, I do appreciate that there is a reason most of the time, and they were some genuinely creepy reasons, haunted or not!

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this one!

I have loved every single one of Riley Sager's books, and Home Before Dark was no different. The story was well thought-out, and I could see a movie happening in my mind while reading. While some of the story was a little slow at times, the major twists at the end were worth it. And they kept coming! I will definitely recommend this to my audience, especially to those who enjoy a good thriller!

I was given this arc in exchange for a full review, but you’ll have to wait to read the review until June! I will say...you HAVE to get this book when it’s released on June 30th! Full 5 star review will be up on my goodreads in June!!!

A defining experience of my childhood was the broadcast of a BBC program on Halloween night of 1992 entitled Ghostwatch. It featured a well-known UK TV personality of the time entering a house in North London that was purported to be haunted by a Poltergeist. The wholesome morning television presenter, named Sarah Greene, visited the house live on air in the hours leading up to midnight to interview its occupants - a mother and her two daughters - and to capture evidence of the supernatural on camera.

The show began quite lightheartedly, with carving pumpkins and bobbing for apples, but as the night went on, strange things started to happen, and the poltergeist - named Mr. Pipes by the two young children for his habit of banging on the houses water pipes - began to cause havoc. As the seconds counted down to midnight, Greene descended into the cellar of the house, as all hell was breaking loose around her when, suddenly, the broadcast abruptly ended, leaving viewers wondering if she survived.

The next morning, after 30,000 viewers had called the BBC to find out if Greene had lived, and to say the broadcast had terrified their children, the BBC released a prompt statement communicating that the show had been entirely fictional, and, had been recorded many weeks before, but broadcast "live" to increase the dramatic effect of the show for viewers. The show was banned from repeat broadcast and only resurfaced as a cult classic in recent years.

I was nine years old at the time, and I certainly wasn't allowed to stay up and watch it on the night it aired. As I was fascinated, even at that age, by ghosts and the supernatural, my mother recorded the show for me, and I was able to watch it the next morning. It terrified the life out of me. I was terrified of Mr. Pipes and, for some reason, believed that he was situated on our home staircase for months after watching the show. Later, in the car, a radio show was discussing the controversy, and my mother reiterated that the show was entirely fictional. Mr. Pipes stayed with me, and, from then on, I've always been fascinated by haunted houses, ghosts, poltergeists, and all things paranormal.

Cut to 2020, and 36-year-old me reads the synopsis for Home Before Dark, the new novel from Riley Sager. I had to get my hands on that novel, and boy was I glad I did.

"What was it like, living in that house? Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents...moved into Banebury Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tales of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity - and skepticism."

Home Before Dark begins as Maggie Holt inherits Banebury Hall upon the death of her father, and heads back to the infamous property to renovate and sell it. Sager brilliantly structures the novel, alternating between chapters of Ewan Holt's book, House of Horrors, and Maggie Holt's experiences as she attempts to flip the house and rid herself of it, but also find out the truth about her father's book.

I won't say much more, as I don't want to ruin a single twist or turn in this wonderfully paced, thrilling adventure. It doesn't surprise me one iota that Home Before Dark has already been optioned for adaptation. Needless to say, you might not want to read late at night if you're of a nervous or easily scared disposition.
Home Before Dark is published on June 30, 2020. A huge thank you to Dutton Books for sending a copy my way, it was much appreciated.

Thank you Dutton Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.


First of all: 🎶 “You are sixteen, going in seventeen”...this will get stuck in your head.🎶

ALL OF THE STARS. PREORDER NOW.

Riley Sager did it again.

Maggie Holt returns to a “haunted” house she once lived in after her father passes away, even though her mom told her to never go back. Once she arrives, her night terrors come back and history seems to be repeating itself, just like her dad wrote in his book.

All of the paranormal aspects in here kept me hooked. The twists were all over the place and it kept me guessing until the end.

I loved the format of the book. The mixture between Morgan in the present and text from her dad’s book helped connect the past with the present.

Note: Don’t read when alone and in the dark, I did and I heard some noises in the house and couldn’t sleep.