If you are looking for a beach read–especially one during a pandemic–HOME BEFORE DARK fits the bill. Maggie Holt grew up in the shadow of Baneberry Hall — a haunted house she lived in briefly as a five-year-old child and has defined her life so far. Now a house flipper and designer, Maggie inherits the place where she and her family lived the fateful summer that inspired her father’s non-fiction memoir and overnight bestseller, HOUSE OF HORRORS. The “book within the book” detailed the time that Maggie and her parents, Ewan and Jess Holt, moved into a grand gothic home in Vermont and the tragedy that befell not only them, but all the former residents who contributed to the dark history of the house.
Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death and decides to get it ready to sell. However, she ignores her father’s deathbed warning when he told her, “It’s not safe there, Not for you.” Her mother similarly pleads with Maggie to sell the house without setting foot in it. Maggie knew to never discuss “the Book” with her mother, even though neither one believed the stories contained within the bestseller–Jess even refused to take a dime from the book that she thought destroyed her family. But, Maggie needs to find out the real story, especially since she has no memories of the real-life HOUSE OF HORRORS and what happened within those walls.
Sager’s book goes back and forth between “the Book” written by Ewan and Maggie’s present day point of view. She is determined to figure out if the house was truly haunted and, if not, what actually happened to Maggie and her family that forced them to flee the house decades earlier. And why doesn’t she have any recollection of the terrifying events that affected her entire life?
