Book Review: Home Before Dark

From the author of The Last Time I Lied and Lock Every Door comes a breathless thrill ride that's an entertaining work of psychological suspense. Loosely built on the narrative foundations of The Amityville Horror and The Haunting of Hill House, Riley Sager spins a murder mystery that's dressed up as a gothic yarn, employing the time-tested haunted house trope to elicit terror and unravel the psyche of his protagonist — Maggie Holt, who returns to Baneberry Hall that made her family (in)famous and to learn the truth about what made them abandon the place merely weeks after moving in. Home Before Dark, with its book-within-a-book structure, is packed with red-herrings and chilling poltergeist activity, even as the story seamlessly transitions between the current timeline and a "true story" her father wrote about their time in the Victorian mansion twenty-five years earlier — "reflect[ing] each other in unexpected ways, almost like a fun-house mirror" — leading to a surprise denouement that's both subversive and riveting. Fans of haunted house horror, look no further!