Home Before Dark

Home Before Dark is split into two timelines. One is Maggie’s timeline as an adult. The other is Ewan’s point of view from his book House of Horrors, which allegedly chronicles their fateful two weeks at Baneberry Hall. Given that the text of House of Horrors is largely fictional, why do you think the author decided to include it? Would the story work as well without it? Why or why not?

Throughout the novel, Maggie alternates between rage and exasperation with her parents and her memories of them. Given that they lied to her, is her anger justified? Should she have treated them with more trust? Discuss your reasoning.

The novel interrogates the nature of truth itself, which is often based on memories. Literal truths about events require that the events happened, but people remember events in different ways. How does this make it harder to determine what’s actually true or whether the truth is possible to find?