Publisher: Dutton Books
Published: June 30, 2020
Source: Personal copy
Summary:
What was it like? Living in that house.
Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.
Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.
In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?
My thoughts:
I’m a big fan of Riley Sager’s books and even though I’ve read this one before, I reread it last month as part of a reading challenge I was participating in. And you know what…it still lives up to all the hype.
Even though I knew the overall gist of what happened, because I’ve read so many books since I read this one, I still managed to forget the little details and that is what I appreciated in this reread. The book still creeped me out like it did the first time – snakes coming out of the ceiling is definitely something I could do without! This book is filled with just the right amount of creepiness to keep you on edge without going overboard.
I really did enjoy this book and do love this author’s writing style. I’m always a fan of the whole book-within-a-book structure, so that just added an extra dimension to this already fun ghost story!
