By Riley Sager

“Every house has a story. Ours is a ghost story. It’s also a lie. And now that yet another person has died within these walls, it’s finally time to tell the truth.”

I’m sorry, but I like my ghost stories to be scary. It was still good though. There were some very surprising twists at the end that I didn’t see coming, which is always a good thing. Some things did not hang together, and some mysterious happenings that were part of Maggie’s story did not make sense and were not explained. Specifically, the book supernaturally opened to a clue, supposedly to lead Maggie toward the truth, but, oops, it was a false lead. The supernatural or ghosts don’t lie for no reason.

Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after the death of her father. 25 years earlier, when Maggie was 5 years old, Her family fled in terror from the house never to return. Her father wrote a bestselling “non-fiction” book about the haunted house which screwed up Maggie’s life. She returns to try to learn the truth for herself, because, to her anger, her parents never would tell her the whole story. Was it all lies? Was it mostly lies? Or was it mostly the truth? Mysterious things start to happen in real life to Maggie which echoes what her father wrote about in the book.

The truth is revealed pretty satisfactorily (and shockingly) except for a few unanswered questions. Since I listened to it on Audible, I couldn’t go back to see if I was played fair with. For the most part, except for my previous small example above, I think I was. One thing that did interfere with my enjoyment was the bitter hostile tone of the narrator who played Maggie. I guess it made sense, but it was overdone and her constant stubborn belief that the whole book was “bullshit” despite all evidence to the contrary was annoying. All in all, a great concept and well done.

July 7, 2021