Spoilers!
I’m always down for some proper Scooby-Doo ghost fun! That’s my favorite kind of ghost story, where you get the fun haunting elements, but in the end, it’s just bad people behind it all. And if it wasn’t for those meddling kids … Riley Sager’s 2020 book, Home Before Dark captures this Scooby-Doo fun with a meta conceit, and an unreliable narrator structure to keep you guessing at what’s haunted and what’s real, what’s fiction and what’s truth.
Maggie (funny since my last book, the main character I most loved was also named Maggie!) is an interior designer, but that’s the least interesting thing about her. What’s interesting is that she’s part of the Holt family, who famously experienced the haunting horrors at the Baneberry Hall estate, as chronicled in the father, Ewan’s, best-selling book, House of Horrors. Maggie was only five at the time, and doesn’t remember anything. In fact, she thinks the entire book is fiction, despite being purported as a true story and believed as such by scores of fans. When her father dies, she inherits Baneberry Hall — she was shocked to learn he owned it, albeit, most states and counties have online estate records, where you can see who the owner is; it’s weird that none of the fans of the book ever unearthed this tidbit — and decides she’s going to ostensibly renovate and sell the troubling house, but in reality, she wants to ascertain the truth of her time there.
Sager’s book intersperses between Maggie’s present day machinations at the house and Ewan’s House of Horrors book, and it makes for a compelling dynamic, as often what Ewan is describing in his book mirrors what Maggie is uncovering and finding out in the present. The main thing we know is that July 15 is the date upon which the Holts fled the house and the book came thereafter. I find it amusing that I’m finishing Sager’s book the day before the infamous date! What I also find amusing is that Maggie notes how critics derided House of Horrors, making its success perplexing, but then, obviously, Sager is having us read a book critically lambasted! But the book is where we get the hauntings and the horrific tragedies that have occurred at Baneberry Hall. The first owner in the 1800s seemingly killed his daughter to prevent her from eloping at 16. A smattering of tragedies occurred in the near 100 years thereafter leading up to the Carvers, where the father killed his 16-year-old daughter and then himself. A year later, the Holts buy the place. As told in the book, Maggie is haunted by Mister Shadow and Miss Pennyface, who tell her she will die there.
Back in the present, Maggie starts to doubt her confidence that her father’s book was fiction because of characters, events, and items that seem to match up with the book she uncovers. Similarly eerie things, like bells ringing, shadowy figures, thuds, music playing, lights turning on, items disappearing, etc. also make her doubt her confidence. My assumption at that point: Unbeknownst to Maggie (and maybe Ewan, if he truly believed he was besieged by ghosts), there was a secret tunnel or passageway into Baneberry Hall, and the human or humans behind it were terrorizing the occupants. I turned out to be essentially correct! The generation of housemaids, first in Ewan’s time, and then later with the housemaid’s daughter, were sneaking into the house, scaring Maggie as a child, and then making her think the hauntings could be real as an adult.
Early on in Maggie’s timeline, she uncovers that the oldest of the housemaid’s daughters, Petra, was found dead at Baneberry Hall; she didn’t runaway like the police surmised 25 years ago. So, who killed her? Suspicion goes to Ewan, to where even Maggie doubts him. Then she thinks it might be the handyman, who loved Petra as a teenager. Finally, when Maggie’s mom comes to Baneberry Hall, she gives Maggie a letter written to her by Ewan. This letter explains why Maggie’s parents have been rather awful to her in terms of concealing truths and not talking about what took place at Baneberry Hall 25 years ago. They think Maggie killed Petra by pushing her down the stairs. Rather than Maggie face the police, Ewan and his wife covered up the body and then covered up that cover-up with the ghost story that became the House of Horrors. Again, unknown to Ewan, there was a secret passageway to the estate, and Marta Carver, the wife/mother in the previous ordeal, was visiting Maggie to watch her sleep. Which sounds creepy, but in Marta’s grief-addled brain, it was a way of remembering her dead daughter, Katie. When Petra intruded, Marta and Petra fought, causing Petra to fall to her death down the stairs. Obviously, Marta then fled and Maggie’s parents thought it was her.
After Maggie’s mother leaves, Marta confronts Maggie with all of this, now intending to kill Maggie, worried that her secret will come out, and Maggie is ripe for the taking after eating Marta’s pie laced with poisonous baneberries. Why Maggie started eating a random pie she found in the kitchen, I don’t know! Nonetheless, the old housemaid, Petra’s mother, intervenes and shoves Marta to her death down the stairs, thus saving Maggie.
So, now knowing that Ewan thought Maggie killed Petra, and everything they did thereafter, while obviously misguided and poor judgment, was to protect her, and given his last words to Maggie were to stay away from the house, why did Ewan give Maggie the house in his will?! I don’t get that aspect of the story.
Also, having read Sager’s 2023 book, The Only One Left, prior to this one, Sager sure does love his gothic, spooky houses, with long-serving housemaids, maintenance men, and family secrets! Literally, because Maggie writes a follow-up book to her father’s titled, House of Secrets. But I did like this one more than The Only One Left, primarily because Sager didn’t get too twisty, and the handful of twists within Home Before Dark had purpose and made sense for the story.
If you like a ghost story, with fun lore and gothic elements, then you’ll enjoy Sager’s effort here.
Milam's Musings 