Home Before Dark is a mixed bag of mystery, a big old Gothic house with a history of deaths and disappearances, and sort of an homage to Amityville. If you're the type that yawns and says "but haunted houses and murder mysteries have been done to *death*", then I suggest you either give up now or accept that you haven't read Riley Sager's version and come enjoy the ambiance. I love a good old-school ghost story, myself. No buckets of gore or people picking which body part has to be stapled to a ceiling fan or somesuch.
Our heroine is one Maggie Holt, an interior designer who flips houses and who, by the way, fled her home in the middle of the night when she was five because her family was attacked by vicious ghosts. At least, that's what her dad's "I didn't make this #@*& up, I promise" tell-all book says, anyway. This infamous book has followed Maggie her whole life, though she can't remember anything from the few short weeks her family spent in Baneberry Manor.
What do you do when your parents try to one-up the Lutzes? Call them on their b.s., that's what. But all of Maggie's questions about her missing days and the supernatural smorgasbord of a novel go unanswered. Her parents divorced after the book came out. People followed her around, asking if she really saw ghosts, can she talk to ghosts, can she maybe get a message to Uncle Rick about their missing cat, ad nauseum.
Then her dad dies and Maggie gets a very disturbing inheritance: the home they abandoned all those years ago is still owned by her father. And he's been going back, every year on the anniversary of their "escape." Ignoring his final words of warning, she heads back to the house to start making it ready to sell. But the town is still pissed about the stain their father left on its reputation, her neighbors don't believe she's quite as amnesiac as she says and suddenly the strange events from her father's book are weaving into memories. The record player turning itself on upstairs. Servants' bells in the kitchen ringing on their own. And the creepiest thing - her armoire opening to eject ghosts, including Mister Shadow (I pictured a shorter Babadook), a ghost girl (presumably the former owner's daughter who died under mysterious circumstances) and most disturbingly, a dead woman whose eyes are nailed shut with coins placed over them.
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| Basically, stand this upright, make it mobile and tuck it into that pile of stuffed animals. |
Every time I thought I'd made up my mind that the answer to everything was right there, it turned up about six feet to the left and three miles away. I was constantly on edge reading her dad's chapters, even though I didn't know if he was just trying to make bank or if there really was some kind of DeFeo house level of crazy going on. The ending completely threw me, but it was nicely tied up (always appreciate that) and I can say this was the most interesting haunted house I've read about in a very long time. Climb in and see if you can figure out who's telling the truth - just make sure that closet's closed over there, would you?
