Review — Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
I discovered Riley Sager through Book of the Month a few years ago, and I have looked forward to his books every year since. Sager is a phenomenal writer. His novels are incredibly haunting and breathtaking. No really. They are so shocking they’ll take your breath away.
I think I’ve been waiting for Home Before Dark for about a year now, and it was worth every second of waiting. Like his other novels, HBD begins on a high note. “Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share.” The entire opening page gave me goosebumps and set me up for what I knew would be quite a ride. Sager is great at inserting twists at just the right time. He also seems to have just the right number of twists — not so many that it becomes confusing, and not so few that it’s predictable. Actually, Sager is everything but predictable. (I’d like to take this time to note that I did guess the end of Lock Every Door because the subject matter was, coincidentally, a plot point in a show I was watching at the time. Had I not been watching that show, I never would have guessed the end.) HBD reminded me of Stephen King’s Rose Red and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It was so effectively creepy that I was actually scared and nervous as I went to sleep after my first night of reading. I can also tell you that I will never hear “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” the same way ever again.
Not only did Sager write a fantastic thriller novel, he wrote a book WITHIN the book. Yeah, you read that right. As we read the chapters of House of Horrors (the book within), our protagonist Maggie is finding that what she thought was fiction is (partially) fact. As Maggie unveils the truth behind a past she has no memory of, I was pulled in with context clues, attempting to piece together what I thought was the truth. PLOT TWIST: I was wrong. And I’m glad I was. The weaving of both stories is expertly done. I was so enthralled by both stories and how, as one thing was uncovered in the book within, Maggie discovered the same thing or had the same experience. This had me constantly on the edge of my seat. I was anxious and full of nervous energy with every page turn. At what I thought was the end, I found myself questioning how there could possibly be more left to read. At one point I was hit with a plot twist so shocking, I had to tell someone. I went to tell my roommate, and his response was “oh, so that’s why you screamed earlier.” It was why I’d screamed earlier. He’d heard me from rooms away.
What Sager does so well is create a satisfying ending that leaves you content with the journey the protagonist has just presumably ended. He then drops a last minute twist that rocks everything you thought to be true. This has happened with each of his novels. He knows just when to deliver that final punch. I read Home Before Dark in three days. I ate it up and did not want to put it down. It’s creepy, so well-written, and kept me guessing. Sager is a fantastic author who knows his audience well. I absolutely loved Home Before Dark, and I cannot wait to see what he writes next.
