If you love books that are full of twists and suspense that keeps you guessing, Riley Sager is your man. His stories are the kind that when you read them, you could easily picture them as a movie.
It seems like Sony Pictures felt the same way. Rileys’ upcoming release Home Before Dark has been picked up for adaptation by Sony Pictures, with Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps attached to produce.
I personally wasn’t familiar with Riley’s work until 2018 when I read his book Final Girls. Man, was that book a doozy, and I lost sleep because I could not put it down. The whole time I read it I kept thinking it would make a great movie. Riley knows how to bring the suspense, and his book was by far one of the best thrillers I had read in a long time.
Home Before Dark, his new book doesn’t come out until June 30th, and it’s already being turned into a film. I was excited for this book since he announced the release, and now that I know it’s being turned into a movie, I’m even more excited.
Let’s talk the book. What is it about?
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?
“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.
Sounds creepy right? Well, we cannot wait. What has us even more excited about this adaptation is 21 Laps being involved in the production. For those of you that don’t know, 21 Laps is the production company behind Stranger Things. We love our Stranger Things here at Fangirlish, so it’s safe to say we’ve got some pretty high hopes for this movie.
Home Before Dark comes from Dutton Books, and will be available in bookstores June 30th.
