This is my first Riley Sager novel, and it may not be my last. I chose to read Home Before Dark first because it is a story about a supposedly haunted house, and I love haunted house stories. I found this novel to be deliciously spooky (so spooky, that I kept telling myself that I really should stop reading spooky stories before I go to bed), but I was disappointed with the ending.

Home Before Dark is about a thirty-year-old woman named Maggie whose father has just died. She has complicated feelings about her father because he wrote a massively popular book called House of Horrors, which is about her family’s experience living at Baneberry Hall, an isolated Victorian estate located deep in the woods, when Maggie was just five years old. Maggie’s family lasted a mere three weeks at Baneberry Hall before fleeing in the middle of the night, with her father insisting that the house is haunted.

Maggie has no memories of living at Baneberry Hall, but she does not believe that it is haunted, and she has spent years trying to get either of her parents to confess that House of Horrors is based on a lie. But neither of them will talk to Maggie about Baneberry Hall except to tell her that it is not safe for her to go there. So, after her father dies, Maggie is surprised to discover that not only did her father still own Baneberry Hall, but she has also inherited it from him. Maggie immediately sets out for Baneberry Hall with the intention of renovating it so that she can sell it, and to try to figure out the real reason why her family left Baneberry Hall and never went back.

Home Before Dark is essentially two novels in one. It opens with the prologue to House of Horrors, and then the chapters alternate between Maggie’s story and her father’s novel. House of Horrors is your run-of-the-mill ghost story and is so overwrought with horror tropes, that it is no wonder Maggie does not believe it to be based in fact.

It is Maggie’s story that gives me the creeps because she goes to Baneberry Hall totally convinced that ghosts are not real, but then she begins experiencing the same strange things that her father wrote about in his book: a tapping sound in the hallway, a record player that keeps turning on by itself, and a shadowy figure in the woods behind the house. Maggie thinks that somebody (not a ghost) must be getting into Baneberry Hall to mess with her, and yet she still stays in the house by herself?! And she chases after the shadowy figure in the woods?! Girl is both brave and stupid.

At its core, though, Home Before Dark is a story about familial relationships. As Maggie uncovers certain truths about her family’s time at Baneberry Hall, she must learn to reconcile what she thinks she knows about her parents with the people that they actually are/were. I can understand why Sager chose to end Maggie’s story the way he did, but I would have preferred the alternative. Still, I think Home Before Dark is worth reading if you like experiencing the heebie jeebies.