REVIEW OF HOME BEFORE DARK (2020) BY RILEY SAGER

 

     It is that time of year my dudes. It is October, it is pumpkin time, it is Jack-O-Lantern time, it is witchy time, it is ghostie time, it is zombie time, it is that time. It's the time where I drown myself extra hard in the horror genre, consuming books about haunted houses and vengeful ghosts and mysterious shadows in the fog like candy. Riley Sager's book Home Before Dark could not have been a more perfect read to kick off my month. 

    Home Before Dark freshens up the haunted house genre but also serves as an homage to the haunted house genre (think Haunting of Hill House, The Amityville Horror, The Shining, The Turn of the Screw, etc. etc.) and delivers a well-aimed punch in the gut with multiple twists and turns. When reading horror, I'm picky. Sometimes writers try to take a perfectly creepy narrative and twist it into something more complex when simplicity would create a more terrifying and compelling plot. Home Before Dark does a great job of not doing this. Let's go down the checklist, shall we? 

We have: 

☑ Small, isolated town setting (Vermont)

☑ House with a troubled past and troubling name (Baneberry Hall)

☑ Ghosts with terrifying names (Mr. Shadow, Ms. Pennyface)

☑ Aged caretakers

☑ Reluctant and skeptical narrator

☑ a record player that turns on by itself, flickering lights, mysterious polaroids

☑ Unsolved mysteries (with no shortage of clues)

and lastly 

☑ a woman both literally and figuratively haunted by her past. 

    Home Before Dark starts with Maggie Holt visiting her father's lawyer's office shortly after his death to sort out his estate. Upon her visit, she finds out she has inherited Baneberry Hall. Baneberry Hall. The house that has haunted Maggie's memories all her life. Where supposedly as a young girl she communicated with multiple murderous spirits. The house her father wrote a book about which forever set Maggie aside from her peers as the "weird girl". The house which split up her parents. The house that she can remember nothing about. 

    Maggie is a skeptic. She doesn't believe anything her father wrote is true. She doesn't believe in the ghosts. She doesn't believe in Mr. Shadow or Ms. Pennyface. She doesn't believe she spoke to ghosts and she definitely doesn't believe that it was ghosts that forced her family to flee in the middle of the night. And now, she's out to prove it. Despite her mother's urges not to, Maggie decides to return to the house that is the source of her frustration. Maggie is no longer a little girl, but is now in her late twenties and works as an interior designer with her step-sister flipping houses. The plan is for her to flip Baneberry Hall and turn a profit on the house. Her real motive is to uncover why she can't remember anything about her time at Baneberry Hall, and why her father was convinced the house was haunted. 

   Home Before Dark was a great read. Sager (pen name for former journalist Todd Ritter) is clearly fond of horror tropes. His first book, Final Girls, was an electrifying read centering around the "Final Girl" concept in many slasher movies (think Laurie Strode in John Carpenter's horror classic Halloween). His book The Last Time I Lied deals with a haunted summer camp (Friday the 13th anyone?). Home Before Dark is clearly an homage to the haunted house genre, as well as gothic horror in general. 

     I wasn't scared by it though and that was my only complaint. The atmosphere of this book is what I want cozy mysteries to be, just scary enough to keep me going and gritty enough to make me feel like an adult. The old crumbling house, the small sundown town, Sager uses these things without them feeling too campy or cliche. He also writes women in a way that isn't...disgusting? A rare trait that I find in first-person female narratives written by men. I suggest this book as a great October read for those who want a mix of the frightening and the familiar. 

Rating: 💛💛💛💛💔

Links: 

USA TODAY REVIEW (2020): https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/06/28/review-riley-sager-chills-haunted-house-thriller-home-before-dark/3244218001/

HAUNTED HOUSES AND FEMINISM FROM ATTIC ON EIGHTH BLOG (OCT 2019): https://www.theatticoneighth.com/blog/2019/10/24/the-haunted-house-as-feminist-horror-trope

A-Likes: 

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House dir. by Mike Flanagan

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

There's Someone Inside Your House Stephanie Perkins

White Is For Witching Helen Oyeyemi