
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.
My Rating:
Home Before Dark Spoilers:
There was a hidden door that led from the garden to Maggie’s room, specifically the armoire. In present day, Hannah Ditmer was sneaking in to scare Maggie and to steal things to sell online in order to pay for her mother’s healthcare. Dane used to use the entrance to sneak in to see Petra. Maggie’s parents thought she killed Petra, which is why they left and never came back. When they said the house wasn’t safe for Maggie, they meant because they never wanted her to find out. Her dad created the book to hide the fact that they left at the same time that Petra disappeared. It really was Marta Carver that killed her–she was Mrs. Pennyface, and used to sneak in to watch Maggie sleep. She pushed Petra down the stairs when Petra caught her.
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