Riley Sager

"In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father's bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound-and dangerous-secrets hidden within its walls?"--

Home Before Dark

I was so excited to read this book, mostly because some of my Twitter mutuals started it and enjoyed it. They had good things to say about the author's other works, so my hype was real. I was also shocked to realise I actually started this book back in November 2024… and it’s now November 2025. An entire year. That’s… not good sign. Especially when you take into account the fact that I’ve put this book on hiatus like 

 since then. Hopefully, I actually enjoy it this last chance, otherwise I’m dropping 1 star and calling it a year.

Coming Soon… which for me means sometime between December 2025 and the day before I die.

Tali ⋆.˚🦋༘⋆

Pre-Full Reading
I was so excited to read this book, mostly because some of my Twitter mutuals started it and enjoyed it. They had good things to say about the author's other works, so my hype was real. I was also shocked to realise I actually started this book back in November 2024… and it’s now November 2025. An entire year. That’s… not good sign. Especially when you take into account the fact that I’ve put this book on hiatus like three times since then. Hopefully, I actually enjoy it this last chance, otherwise I’m dropping 1 star and calling it a year.


Post Reading
Coming Soon… which for me means sometime between December 2025 and the day before I die.

I was confused at first just like the main character, Maggie. I wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t. The plot twists in this book were great, entertaining, and had me guessing the entire book. Just when I thought I had it figured out another twist came. Great read, well paced, definitely recommend.

Chrissy Gray

torn tbh ab the rating! will let that simmer…

i love a good unreliable narrator… i felt like the readers were deadass being jerked around up until the last 5% probably. at some point, i started believing in the possibility of ghosts too. didnt help that i finished this mostly at 12am.

as usual, riley sager books have at least 3 consecutive plot twists lined up so i fully expected the part about maggie being petra’s killer to be later debunked cause tbh if it was maggie that’s just boring & bland. some of the twists didnt make sense but tbf i don’t take most of these books seriously! sometimes you just have to enjoy them.

maybe i’ll change my rating later on… can classify it as a good book since i sped through it to find out what was going to happen but not as good as the only one left or possibly other horror/thriller books.

torn tbh ab the rating! will let that simmer…

i love a good unreliable narrator… i felt like the readers were deadass being jerked around up until the last 5% probably. at some point, i started believing in the possibility of ghosts too. didnt help that i finished this mostly at 12am.

as usual, riley sager books have at least 3 consecutive plot twists lined up so i fully expected the part about maggie being petra’s killer to be later debunked cause tbh if it was maggie that’s just boring & bland. some of the twists didnt make sense but tbf i don’t take most of these books seriously! sometimes you just have to enjoy them.

maybe i’ll change my rating later on… can classify it as a good book since i sped through it to find out what was going to happen but not as good as the only one left or possibly other horror/thriller books.

This one I keep going back and forth on. I have read a paranormal thriller before and I really enjoyed it and for most of this book I couldn’t keep a true level of interest into it. But then the twist of the book was actually really good. It all came together don’t get me wrong but it took so long to sort through it all and to reveal everything it but the ending of the book was really good. So again I keep going back and forth and I honestly still don’t know if I liked it or not. 

Priscilla Stanfield

3.75/5⭐️

This one I keep going back and forth on. I have read a paranormal thriller before and I really enjoyed it and for most of this book I couldn’t keep a true level of interest into it. But then the twist of the book was actually really good. It all came together don’t get me wrong but it took so long to sort through it all and to reveal everything it but the ending of the book was really good. So again I keep going back and forth and I honestly still don’t know if I liked it or not. 

Not my favorite book but it did have some good plot twists.

Jazz

this was a crazy ride. i genuinely couldn’t look away 

marie

The way my jaw dropped at the twists at the end of this book. I had to explain this whole book to my boyfriend while I was reading the last three chapters because I needed to talk about it so desperately 

Abbi Brown 

Yanna Alghamdi

This one follows the life of Maggie Holt as she uncovers the sinister secrets of her family’s old home. 

Sooo good!! It’s giving me The Haunting of Hill House vibes but spookier.🙈

first book i read by the author and it surprised me.

Rebecca Hurd

This is an AMAZING book!! Mysterious and frightening!! Told in a way that made me just need to know what really happened in the House of Horrors and once I found out...dang it gave me chills!! Highly recommend!!!!

The only saving grace of this book were the narrators. 

Brittany Peterson

not me reading this while my fiancé is out of town... 

Katie Avila

This book is very haunting of hill house, which I love! 

Shelby Brooks

Riley sager NEVER fails to amaze me with his writing. This was one of the spookiest books I’ve read in a long time. But let me tell you the TWISTS were insane. Definitely a must read

Lauren Dale

'Clever, twisty, and altogether spine-chilling. . . . [A] deliciously terrifying story. . . .You'll want to read this one after dark, ideally with the wind whistling in the eaves and a window banging somewhere just out of reach. But keep the light switch handy. You just might need it' Ruth Ware, Book of the Month What was it like? Living in that house. Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into a rambling Victorian estate called Baneberry Hall. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a memoir called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon. Now, Maggie has inherited Baneberry Hall after her father's death. She was too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father's book. But she doesn't believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don't exist. But when she returns to Baneberry Hall to prepare it for sale, her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the pages of her father's book lurk in the shadows, and locals aren't thrilled that their small town has been made infamous. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself - a place that hints of dark deeds and unexplained happenings. As the days pass, Maggie begins to believe that what her father wrote was more fact than fiction. That, either way, someone - or something - doesn't want her here. And that she might be in danger all over again . . . THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of . . . Huff Post's "10 Of The Most Anticipated Book Releases Of June 2020" - Good Housekeeping's "The 35 Best Books of 2020 to Add to Your Reading List" - Travel + Leisure's "20 Most Anticipated Summer 2020 Books" - PopSugar's 17 Most Anticipated Summer Thrillers - Working Mother's "The 20 Most Anticipated Books of 2020" - Newsweek's 20 most anticipated summer reads - Publishers Weekly's "Summer Reads 2020" - BookPage's "2020 Most Anticipated Thrillers and Mysteries" - Today.com's "16 highly anticipated summer reads" - The Star Tribune's "Great Escapes" summer reads - BookPage's "Private Eye July" - USA Today's"Summer reading guide: 20 new books you won't want to miss" - CrimeReads "10 New Books Coming Out This Week" - Buzzfeed "17 New Thrillers That Will Keep Your Summer Exciting" - The Everygirl "30 Books That Should Be on Your Summer Reading List."

'Clever, twisty, spine-chilling' Ruth Ware

This had me but then lost me and then had me again. I was so invested 30% in and loved the switching narrative but then it got way less scary/creepy and more bordering on lit fic I guess? But overall I enjoyed. 

I do have to say.. wtf is up with a father telling his daughter he and her mom “needed to f*ck like rabbits”? Excuse me? Bro you could’ve just said you needed a date night. Based on how the MC described their relationship they did not have that kind of banter so he was being straight with that comment. So off-putting and made a letter not really sound like a letter.

I listens via audio and the narration was AMAZING. 

Abigail

This had me but then lost me and then had me again. I was so invested 30% in and loved the switching narrative but then it got way less scary/creepy and more bordering on lit fic I guess? But overall I enjoyed. 

I do have to say.. wtf is up with a father telling his daughter he and her mom “needed to f*ck like rabbits”? Excuse me? Bro you could’ve just said you needed a date night. Based on how the MC described their relationship they did not have that kind of banter so he was being straight with that comment. So off-putting and made a letter not really sound like a letter.

I listens via audio and the narration was AMAZING. 

Thoroughly enjoyed!! This book was a little creepy and never lost my attention. The first plot twist was meh but the SECOND 👀

Jillian Roberts

Keely Calagos

This one was tough to put down and had me a l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ lot creeped out. I had sooo many running theories throughout this book, but it still kept me guessing until the very end. A few of my ideas panned out but not exactly the way I was expecting. The ending felt a bit rushed for me, but the suspense was wonderfully done.

I’d recommend this to anyone looking for a haunted house story… BUT at the same time, if you want a haunted house story just go watch @thehaunting of Bly Manor because it is so so so good.

If you’ve read HBD you’ll know what I mean by this… Sound Of Music is one of my all time favorite movies and I’m not sure Sixteen Going on Seventeen will ever be the same. 👻🎶

⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ 3.5/5 (my favorite Sager book so far)


Full post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CidtU3yPN...

Cody Degen

Prob 2.5 stars for me, just too many things to nitpick in the book to ever feel fully engaged or invested.

Julie Failde

** spoiler alert **
           Really great book, it reminded me a lot of The Haunting of Hill House show on Netflix (not the Shirley Jackson novel). It was so intriguing and I definitely got scared on more than one occasion. Spoilers: The only reason I am giving it 4 stars, rather than 5, is because I wish some of the supernatural things that occurred throughout Ewan’s version of the story were true. I love a good haunted house story and the fact that it was almost all explained away as real people left me wanting an actual Mister Shadow or Indigo spirit hanging around. Other than that it was amazing and I loved the way it was told by going back and forth between the fiction and reality.

isabella

I should read more books about ghosts because they are the only ones that really can  scare me. At first the plot looked like it came out of a bad horror movie from 2010 but it's okay because I like those kind of movies. I liked how the chapters alternated between the present with Maggie and the book her dad wrote. 
Did it scared me? Definitely.
I was convinced that I was not going to like this book since i had a bad experience with this author, but I was surprised. 4/5 stars.

honour

** spoiler alert **
           this was my first riley sager book and i honestly quite enjoyed it! some of the writing, especially within the chapters “written” by ewan, wasn’t my favourite but i cant tell if that was just sager’s writing style or intentional, especially as quite a few times in the story his writing was more or less described as mediocre. 

i’m not gonna lie, i Really didn’t expect the ending and (sort of spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read the book yet) the not single, not double but triple twist! this book had me crying at Least three different times throughout my time reading it, especially towards the end. 

i found myself really wanting to continue this book whenever i had to put it down and during work would end up wishing the hours away just so i could get out and continue it, which hasn’t really happened with me and a book in a while!

i’ll definitely read more of sager’s book. i really hope they reach the same standards of this book, if not exceed them!

edit: i really should mention that this is one of the very few thrillers i’ve ever read so it’s probably not very hard to impress me within this genre. if you are more familiar with thrillers than i am, or even if you’re not, you might not like this book! you might absolutely HATE this book, or u might absolutely love this book. i definitely think it’s worth the chance tho bc i really did enjoy it a lot

The horror was good. The story was good. The plot twists were good. I just didn’t feel the usual Riley Sager has blown my mind feels from it so 4 stars instead of 5. 

nuha ✨️

Some of the twists were predictable and leaned a little trope-y, but some were pretty clever and surprised me. Overall a fun read with enough spooky/crime intrigue to keep me reading to the end even though the characters felt a little flat and expected. 

erin alise 

Denaiir

I was quite excited for the new Riley Sager book since he is one of my favorite thriller authors, and probably the only writer of psychological thrillers that I enjoy, always delivering. I'm generally more of a procedural fan but his books are different. That's because each of his books, even though they are thrillers, includes tropes from horror sub-genres. This one is no exception. I really enjoyed his take on the haunted house genre, which confirms he's quite good at making characters doubt their beliefs and their sanity. 

As for his previous works it is a thriller, not a horror book, but it clearly has a lot of horror elements and I was wondering the whole time whether it would turn into a full blown horror story. 

The story is told in both the present and past, including excerpts from the father's book. This is quite interesting because the past storyline doesn't inlude an objective account of what transpired, but a romanced account of the short time the family spent in the house. Therefore, it is impossible to know what is real or not. All her life, Maggie has wondered why her parents ruined her life by making her "the girl from the haunted house" and has struggled with relationships. The "book within a book" setup worked really well because the dad's book was so well-written and felt quite realistic, so I was questioning whether any of the story had actually happened, whether the parents actually believed in the fact that the house was haunted. 

I was not able to guess the ending and there were a few instances in which I thought I finally knew what had happened, but I never realized why the dad had written the book before it was revealed, and it was quite a good twist. 

Overall it was my least favorite of Sager's novels, but it is still very solid and I really enjoyed the ride

Home Before Dark

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