April 15, 2020
Spectral danger and human evil stalk Sager's latest stalwart heroine. When Maggie Holt's father, Ewan, dies, she's shocked to discover that she has inherited Baneberry Hall. Ewan made his name as a writer--and ruined her life--by writing a supposedly nonfiction account of the terrors their family endured while living in this grand Victorian mansion with a dark history. Determined to find out the truth behind her father's sensational bestseller, Maggie returns to Baneberry Hall. Horror aficionados will feel quite cozy as they settle into this narrative, and Sager's fans will recognize a familiar formula. As he has in his previous three novels, the author makes contemporary fiction out of time-honored tropes. Final Girls (2017) remains his most fresh and inventive novel, but his latest is significantly more satisfying than the two novels that followed. Interspersing Maggie's story with chapters from her father's book, Sager delivers something like a cross between The Haunting of Hill House and The Amityville Horror with a tough female protagonist. Ewan and Maggie both behave with the dogged idiocy common among people who buy haunted houses, but doubt about the veracity of Ewan's book and Maggie's desperate need to understand her own past make them both compelling characters. The ghosts and poltergeist activity Sager conjures are truly chilling, and he does a masterful job of keeping readers guessing until the very end. As was the case with past novels, though--especially The Last Time I Lied (2018)--Sager sets his story in the present while he seems to be writing about the past. For example, when the Holt family moved into Baneberry Hall in 1995 or thereabouts, Ewan--a professional journalist--worked on a typewriter. When Maggie wants to learn more about the history of Baneberry Hall, she drives to the town library instead of going online. Sager is already asking readers to suspend disbelief, and he makes that more difficult because it's such a jolt when a character pulls out an iPhone or mentions eBay. This is, however, a minor complaint about what is a generally entertaining work of psychological suspense. A return to form for this popular author.
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Starred review from May 11, 2020
Interior designer Maggie Holt, the heroine of this outstanding supernatural thriller from bestseller Sager (Lock Every Door), is shocked to learn after the death of her father, Ewan, that he has left Baneberry Hall, near Bartleby, Vt., to her. She hadn’t realized that Ewan still owned the spooky mansion that Maggie, Ewan, and her mother moved into 25 years earlier. Maggie’s parents were able to buy the house cheaply, because of a recent tragedy there—the prior owner smothered his six-year-old daughter with a pillow before killing himself. The Holt family had their own traumatic episodes in Baneberry Hall, including Maggie’s visions of a ghostly figure, which led to their fleeing one night. Ewan later wrote a bestselling book about their experiences. Maggie, who still suffers from night terrors, decides to move into Baneberry Hall to get a better understanding of what happened to her and to determine how much of her father’s book was true. Sager, who makes the house a palpable, threatening presence, does a superb job of anticipating and undermining readers’ expectations. Haunted house fans will be in heaven. Agent: Michelle Brower, Aevitas Creative Management.
May 15, 2020
Maggie Holt's nearly lifelong nemesis is her father's best-seller, House of Horrors, the tell-all story of her family's haunting at Baneberry Hall. When Maggie was six, her family moved into the historical manor, unaware that the home's price was slashed because of a recent murder-suicide. After two weeks of supernatural events, including Maggie's alleged interactions with a malevolent spirit called Mister Shadow, serpents bursting from the walls, and the disappearance of the housekeeper's teenage daughter, the Holts fled, and Ewan Holt launched a writing career based on their haunting. But Maggie doesn't remember any of it, and she's convinced that House of Horrors is a complete lie. Despite her efforts to distance herself from the book, she remains the little girl tormented by Baneberry Hall's ghosts. So, when she unexpectedly inherits Baneberry Hall from her father, Maggie, now a house flipper, resolves to confront her buried past and prepare the house for sale herself. Another breathtaking hit from Sager, who's proven himself a master at crafting new twists on classic horror tales.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)