Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

 

 

Reviewed by Ambrea

Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt and her parents moved into an old Victorian estate called Baneberry Hall.  Less than three weeks later, they fled from their home in the dead of night and left everything behind.  Her father later penned a nonfiction book called The House of Horrors, chronicling their ordeal—and the hauntings that sent them running for their lives.

As an adult, Maggie has no time for her father’s lies and she’s not interested in rehashing her time at Baneberry Hall.  Not that she can remember any of it.  Instead, Maggie spends her days restoring old homes and flipping houses and avoiding her father’s book as much as she can—until, one day, after her father’s death, Maggie discovers she’s been left the keys to Baneberry Hall.

Now, she has the chance to return to her old home and figure out the truth behind the so-called “House of Horrors.”  When Maggie returns to Baneberry Hall, she soon discovers that her father’s book may have been more fact than fiction.

I don’t often read paranormal suspense.  Although I’ll dabble in lots of different genres, I’ve found I’m more drawn to rom-coms and fantasy novels, rather than thrillers and ghost stories.  However, I was intrigued by the premise of Riley Sager’s novel.  It promised to be interesting with the dueling narratives of father and daughter; likewise, it promised to be different—or, more accurately, it promised to be something entirely unexpected.

And I wasn’t disappointed.

Home Before Dark completely upended my expectations.  I found the story didn’t follow the path I imagined—and I think that’s actually a good thing.  One part ghost story, one part mystery, and one part family drama, Sager’s novel weaves together the stories of Maggie, her dad, and Baneberry Hall to create a twisty story full of tragedy, ghosts, secrets, and lies.  More than once, I found myself completely and utterly lost in the story, wondering what would happen next…and who was actually telling the truth about Baneberry Hall. 

Admittedly, I was a little apprehensive about beginning Home Before Dark.  It took me three separate checkouts to finally settle down and start listening to the book.  Ghost stories tend to turn me into a gibbering mess, so I was a little reluctant to dive into something that promised to frighten me—I mean, what if it was too scary?

Much to my relief, Home Before Dark is more suspenseful than scary.  Don’t get me wrong, I had a few moments where I had to pause the audiobook and take a breath or double check all the locks in my house.  (I am not a big fan of Mr. Shadow, okay?)  Sager builds a slow, ominous feeling of suspense—a creeping kind of fear that craws up your neck and makes your skin prickle, a tense kind of anticipation that leaves you hanging on every single word—but he never makes it outright terrifying. 

I loved the plot, but I also appreciated the skill and talent of the narrators, Cady McClain and Jon Lindstrom.  They do an excellent job of narrating both Maggie’s and her father’s stories, and they really bring Sager’s novel to life. 

Overall, Home Before Dark is a fantastic audiobook with a talented pair of narrators, a solid if tangled plot, and an eerie atmosphere that’s perfect for fans of both ghost stories and psychological thrillers.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Reviewed by Laura

            I began this book knowing that there was a movie involved that I might want to watch at a later date. I never dreamed I would end up liking the movie more than the book! Yes, I am one of THOSE people. The annoying ones who spout everything the movie got wrong and telling you how the book is SO much better! I even have a shirt that says, “Don’t Judge a Book by its Movie.”  And now here I am telling you to watch the movie. The world must truly be at an end. But first, let me tell you about the book.

            I loved the concept of the book, the story that it told. Bernadette is a wonderful mother with a teenage daughter who actually loves and confides in her. She is an intelligent woman, once an internationally known and respected architect, who is married to Elgie, a major player at Microsoft. Sounds like the perfect family, doesn’t it? These people must have it all together. Since she’s an award-winning architect, their house must be something worthy of a huge spread in a stylish magazine. Only their actual life is nothing like that. Bernadette no longer works, no longer uses her great talent to design amazing buildings. In fact, no longer goes out in the world at all unless it is an absolute necessity. Her home is falling down around her ears, with actual blackberry sprouts pushing through the floor boards. Her amazingly talented husband spends the majority of his time at work. Her extremely bright and personable daughter, Bee, attends private school and works toward being accepted to Choate, the boarding school of her choice. Bernadette hovers in her home using an online personal assistant for everything she doesn’t absolutely have to do herself. She sets an alarm to go and pick up her daughter from school, draping a scarf around her head and perching oversized sunglasses on her nose. She avoids contact with other parents at all cost and never volunteers for school functions as is expected. In fact, she and her husband have their emails removed from the school list so as not to be disturbed by the flotsam and jetsam that regularly arrives to annoy. Bernadette’s, oh so rare, interactions with her fellow parents are hilarious. She refers to them as gnats (annoying, swarming creatures). Interactions with a neighbor whose son also attends the school are some of the best passages in the book.

            Things come to a head, however, when Bee reminds her parents that they had promised to reward her history of perfect grades with a gift of her choice. Break is coming up and she has decided to choose a family trip to Antarctica. You heard that right; the family will travel to the ends of the earth while Bernadette struggles to travel to the end of the street. Naturally, this upsetting occurrence wreaks havoc with Bernadette’s already fragile psyche. Her personal assistant is called upon to work night and day ordering supplies as well as seasickness medications. Bernadette supplies all of her credit card numbers as well as personal information to ease the process, and yes, it turns out about as badly as you might expect. Then, Bernadette disappears. Exciting, right? Lots of intriguing plots and subplots, so why in the world did I not enjoy the book?! The story was fabulous and interesting, but almost the entire thing is told through a series of emails, letters, and reports from an amazing conglomeration of different people. I didn’t enjoy interpreting almost the entire story in this form. It became hard to read and sometimes confusing. It becomes apparent that all of this is information Bee has gathered to help her in the search for her mother, but the only part I really enjoyed was the daughter’s narrative, which was quite good. The entire time I was reading the book, I was thinking, “This would probably make a good movie.” I read all 352 pages because it was intriguing and I DID want to know how it all turned out. This book would have been awesome had it been told in a different format. A narrative from each of the main characters, relating their side of the story, or the daughter telling the complete story with a sidebar of the emails and the like added in, but not forming the main bulk of the story.  

       So there you have it, the reason I liked the movie better than the book was the writing style. The movie was fun and interesting and told the story in a much more enjoyable way. Yes, I was still annoyed waiting for incidents from the book to appear that never did. But overall, I found the story much more enjoyable as told through the visual presentation, rather than the verbal. And yes, it still pains me to say so.

Note:  We do have both book and movie at Bristol Public Library.

Don’t Go by Lisa Scottoline

Reviewed by Kristin

Bestselling author Lisa Scottoline is known for her strong female characters and gripping suspense stories.  In Don’t Go, Scottoline tackles a male protagonist, Dr. Mike Scanlon.  For the most part, I found the main character to be believable, although there were a few spots where I didn’t believe he would act in a particular manner.

On military duty in Afghanistan, Mike receives word that his wife Chloe has died in a household accident.  He is granted a very short leave to come home to arrange her funeral, and then must return to the frontlines, leaving his baby daughter with his wife’s sister and brother-in-law.  With an extreme shortage of doctors, Mike is asked to extend his service in Afghanistan.  Mike is pulled in both directions, feeling that he needs to be home for his daughter, but also feeling that military casualties will rise if he does not stay in Afghanistan to support his unit.  His remaining time overseas is fraught with danger, and he returns home with a whole new set of challenges.

His medical practice has been changed with the addition of new partners and he has trouble finding his place within the medical field as well as within his own family.  Because Mike has been away from his daughter Emily for an extended time, she does not recognize him and is scared of him.  Although Mike tries his best, he knows next to nothing about caring for a baby.  Additionally, many questions have popped up about Chloe’s death, although Mike seems to be the only one suspicious enough to investigate.  He goes blundering about like the proverbial bull in a china shop, risking his professional and family life.

In the end, Mike discovers many things about himself and about his co-workers and family.  The book takes a couple of twists and turns that I found hard to believe, and perhaps all the story lines are tied together a little too quickly and neatly at the end.  But overall, this was still a worthwhile story to read.

Lisa Scottoline is the author of twenty novels and also has a column entitled “Chick Wit” in The Philadelphia Inquirer, which she writes with her daughter, Francesca Serritella.  Their humorous stories have been turned into a series of non-fiction books entitled Best Friends, Occasional Enemies, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space and Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim.  These stories, which only take a couple of minutes to read, are laugh-out-loud funny.