Starling House

If you're into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Locke and Key and Mexican Gothic then this book is for you.

A mysterious house with an even more mysterious owner, and the burgeoning dark secrets underneath threatening to swallow a town whole. This book was such a fun read!

Unfortunate Opal, not much of a family or history to speak of, she did her best to provide for her little brother, Jasper, and send him to greener pastures. The oppressive small town have bothered her and her kin long ago and would rather have them gone.

Opal somehow keeps her curiosity and wonder alive partially in part to her favorite book, The Underland, a Lewis Carroll-esque written by a previous owner of Starling House.

Then, Opal meets the current young legacy owner of Starling House and breadcrumbs turn into life or death decisions. Trust is earned and easily dashed.

I loved how all these storylines intersect as the characters get to know themselves and each other, all while they fight an even greater evil. Yet, The Big Bad is not painted in black or white but in satisfying shades of grey. The final hurrah, as characters dash forward to fulfill their purposes, felt earned and satisfying. Great book.

You know a book is good when your rear is asleep because you have sat and read the whole day! Got this because I love-loved 10,000 Doors of January. While that book can't be touched, this one gives it a run for the money! One more to go, unless the author releases something new very soon, I hope.

I don't remember the exact page count, but Opal (the main character l, I think that's her name) was grating on my nerves. She was just rude and jealous all the time. If it was occasionally, I would ignore it. But any time I got comfortable, she complained about something that just as much out of said characters control as her life circumstances. 

My breaking point was when she was talking about the family that her brother went to stay with when she came home late. They seemed to comfortable, my bet would be middle class. The mom is a county clerk and the dad puts up roofs. That's my reasoning. And she hates them because they're better off than her? They're letting her brother stay the night. Their son is his friend, so I'd assume they at least like her and her brother. And she hates them? I'm sorry but I'm done.

I wish this was scarier, and I think it could have been better if it was a bit longer.
But it was one of the most page-turning things I've read in a while and I did not want to put it down.

Eleanor was so angry she made demons of her own that wanted to end her because she wanted to destroy everything else.

I think she has all the right to but it's not the right thing to do.

4.5 stars

A beautiful angsty (in my favorite way) Beauty and the Beast southern Gothic retelling with themes of family / chosen family, environmentalism, and the charm and terror of small towns. I loooooved it.

“a little girl who loves a place that doesn't love her back, a child making a home when she was never given one.”
I loved this. Messy found family and a creepy house that takes care of its caretakers, and the struggle of how to figure out how to let yourself be happy when that was never something you expected to be able to focus on.... this is good.

two people with martyr complexes as big as houses stubbornly rescue each other repeatedly. maybe its a little too repeated, maybe it drags, maybe the moments of emphasis on the beauty and the beast of it all missed for me. but there's just no world where a book that has a two for the price of one sale on fucked up ppl w martyr complexes doesn't hit like hell for me. bonus points for raising a sibling in the absence of a parent, that's a lovely delicacy that i have such a taste for!

“Starling House” is the best gothic noveI I have read in a long time. Which feels funny to say because the main action of the book is set in current times and my brain assumes gothic novels should be set in the distant past, full of rotting castles and maidens fair.

The book is packed with rich, loamy writing that was a pleasure to dive into like a pile of autumn leaves. The characters are well-drawn; more than that, their voices breathe through the page.

Despite the dark and horrific events of the novel, there's quite a bit of humor woven throughout. Many of the characters made me laugh out loud, which was totally unexpected.

Some reviewers have complained about the ending, but I liked the idea of deciding to recognize and conquer fear as the solution. That some ghosts are our own creation.

Now onto tropes.

Sometimes, you think certain tropes in literature are just annoying and not for you. Right before reading “ Starling House,” I read Abby Jimenez's “Just for the Summer.” Although the books come from different genres, they do have similarities. Alternating points of view between two main characters who develop a love interest. A seemingly independent and strong female main character who doesn't like help, but needs it. A male main character who goes out of his way to support and help the female main character. Orphans who think they have little to no extended family. Found family.

“Just for the Summer” was intensely stupid and hit the reader over the head with psychobabble and performative trauma unpacking. The characters in “Sterling House“ are introduced to the reader as carrying a heavy load, but they're don't whine about it; they fight. The found family in JFTS is family because the author says so. Whereas the relationships in SH feel real and solid and never come off as overly perfect.

So, maybe what I'm saying is that tropes work just fine in a skillful author's hands. An earlier book of Alix Harrow's has been on my to-read list for awhile, so I'll be moving that up in priority.

3.75 rounded up

I found this novel very atmospheric. I felt like I was in the town, in the house. It did a great job setting a whole vibe, that was creepy yet inviting.

It was the first time where I've read a book that described main characters as ugly, but I didn't hate that.

The theme of found family was strong, and although the chapters weren't all likeable, you wanted to know their story and see them succeed.

After doing on again off again reading with this one and trying to dredge past the annoying footnotes towards the end made this worth a four star read. I loved opal and just overall loved the way the storytelling is done in this book. But alix girl you can do without the footnotes. When reading along with the audiobook it just really ruins the flow of the book at the beginning but it makes sense what is being done and i appreciate the story as a whole to say you need to read this book.

The mood was everything but I didn't vibe with the pacing. It was like a weird feverdream with every chapter a different pacing and shift in tone.

I liked the plot and idea but the execution was not for me.

I liked it. It was a little spooky, a little romantic, and a little convoluted. Solid narration.

Oh man, okay. Where do I start with this one? Starling House has me baffled. By all rights it should have been one of my favorite novels. All of the signs are there. A magical, sentient house. A dark underworld. A tenacious main character who sacrifices everything in order to care for those she loves. Alas, something here just didn't click. I'll do my best to explain.

Starling House suffers from pacing issues, and that's what really had me struggling. It has the main plot points of a novella length story, but attempts the character growth and world building of a much longer book. Opal and her brother are the products of a tragedy that shook their entire world. Their current living situation, all the people around them that they love, Opal's strength and maternal affection for her brother, all of that was born from that tragedy. Yet somehow it seems like that whole idea is never fully fleshed out. It's like the town has resigned itself to these mysterious deaths, and so should we as readers.

Opal and Arthur do get the main character treatment, which I appreciated. I felt like they had a decent amount of depth to them, even though I really craved to know more about Arthur's past. However our secondary characters barely get any love at all. Supporting characters don't always get a ton of backstory, I know. Still even the two people who help Opal the most in this story, and seem to love her as their own, get the thinnest amount of literary love possible.

Even the house, which in my opinion is one of the best characters in this book, doesn't feel like it receives the limelight it is so deserving of. Starling House is intriguing in that it requires inhabitants to sustain itself. It needs to be cared for, much like a child. As Arthur points out, it needs protector and it's very willing to take one who hasn't exactly signed up for the job. To me, that means this haunted home should be one of the main tenants of the storyline. Yet, it still never really gets to shine or be fully fleshed out.

In fact that's how a lot of this book feels. Like little strands of ideas that were carefully laid down into a tapestry and then snipped off before it was completed, for no discernible reason. Maybe the book needed to be longer? Maybe the many tropes that there are present here needed to be trimmed a bit? Either way the fact remains that this book, as it is now, just fees unfinished. And because of that it feels flat in a lot of ways. The ending especially just felt rushed and disappointing.

Now let me end with what I did love though, and explain why I gave this book a three star rating. At the heart of this story is the idea that history is written by the victors. That tragic things happen every day that are glossed over, and forgotten through the normal passage of time. Sadly, quite often, the real stories of those who are oppressed, enslaved and murdered never come to light. Eden is a town that is full of these stories, where people looked away and chose to believe what was the easiest to stomach rather than the truth. Starling House is a direct manifestation of that and I just thought that was beautiful. As Opal dug into the sordid history of the town, and brought to light the reasons why the curse on that house existed, I was fascinated. This is where the gothic vibes of this story really shine.

So, once again, super torn on this one. I'm sticking with my rating because I stand by my reading notes. Just still sad that this won't end up as one my favorites.

I love Alix Harrow's writing. This book had flawed and loveable characters and the house was one of them. Definitely worth a read!

this was so annoying i don't get the hype

I really enjoyed this, the characters and twists and turns were all delightfully intriguing. Surprising while still believable (magically and hauntingly believable). The historical and sociological aspects of the novel contribute so much to this believability and add that subcontextual commentary that I so enjoy discussing and ruminating on after the fact. Small towns and all the challenges that come with living within, with, outside, and despite the socioeconomic, class, racial, and other such structures that are so prevalent within them....especially when they are ancient and deep.

I have so much to say about this book and not all of it is actually about this book.Before we get started, a little disclaimer:I did not choose this book for myself. I subscribed to something called ‘just the right book' and this was the first book they sent me that had been ‘personally chosen for me'. I would have never chosen this book for myself to read because:A) I tried another book by Harrow and was not liking her writing style. This book is much the same; lots of verbose wordy-words in the descriptions and pretty much a violent version of purple prose.B) I do not usually like so called sub-genre ‘contemporary fantasy' of which the most well known of is urban fantasy. It's basically taking things that suit a fantasy setting and dropping them into the real world.C) I do not like first person perspectives. Sometimes the character is likable enough that I can get over this preference. Though not often. I also loathe the stylistic choice some authors make of having parts of a story in first person following one character and having other parts in third person, following another character.So, that's all to say that not only would I have never chosen this book for myself but if for some totally out there reason I had, I probably would have DNF'd it by about page 30.If these are things you like, this might be the book for you because this is one of those one star reads for me that I can see a person liking as it wasn't a horrible book. It was, however, a horrible book for me. That, to be fair, gets progressively worse over time.I do like the idea for the story with a magical house that grabs people that have no place else to go and makes them Warden's for the beasts of hell that come up through the basement. (And as someone that has no interest in horror, this book is not scary at all, which was an odd bonus.)However, the main message of the story seemed to be that people are generally shit and life sucks. Because the people in this book are, generally, shit people.Look, I have to like the characters to like a book. And Opal, it's been quite a while since I have hated a main character in a book as much as I hate her. Probably Cassa from [b:Beneath the Citadel 36430924 Beneath the Citadel Destiny Soria https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518016956l/36430924.SX50.jpg 58130626] and if not her, then Tash from [b:Tash Hearts Tolstoy 29414576 Tash Hearts Tolstoy Kathryn Ormsbee https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1495481600l/29414576.SY75.jpg 49672494] so, you know, if you liked them, you'll probably like Opal, too. But Opal is just the type of character I find so hard to even care what happens to - and, ultimately, I didn't. She's selfish and cruel, surly and violent.She is supposed to be 26 years old (Arthur's supposed to be 28) and she acts like a bratty teenager (so does he). She mopes and never thinks about what anyone else actually wants. She's a controlling, mean sister who doesn't even really care what her brother wants, as long as she is needed by him.Arthur is mopey and violent and, it's safe to say, suffering from a cross between touch starvation and an odd form of Stockholm Syndrome where he's being held captive not by Opal, but by - literally - the house (and the one single positive personality trait that anyone that isn't Bev has) and he still develops feelings for Opal - as far as I can tell because she is literally the only human contact that he has had since he was 16. (Which, to a degree, also explains why his emotional growth was stunted 12 years ago. I don't like him, either, but he is a grain of sand better than Opal, so I will give him the benefit of saying that what he needs more than anything else is copious amounts of therapy.)Therapy wouldn't do Opal any good because she would only sneer at the the therapist and claim this isn't something she wants and there's only one thing on her needs list. (Though, with the way Opal and Arthur go from disinterested to wanting to lock lips, and quickly being the reason for everything the other person does... Did I mention that the ‘romance' in this book strikes me as being super unhealthy and gave me the creeps? Because it does.)Really, with their personalities, if they had been teenagers, the book would have been a little easier to take - I expect teens to be selfish brats (which is also why I no longer read much YA fiction) and obsessed with lust (ditto) - instead of ostensibly being adults. Only one thing in the plot would have to change and it was just another reason for Opal to act like she knows what's better for her brother than he does and show, yet again, that she is self-absorbed.The plot is...borderline non-existent and, really, boils down to about twenty pages in the middle and another ten-fifteen at the end. The book is, more than anything else, a vehicle for the characters and their excuse for a ‘happy romance' - or whatever it was supposed to be - and thanks to how much I hated the characters... Well, I did give it one star.

I buddy read this book with Destiny. When Destiny suggested this as one of our buddy reads I jumped at the chance to read it because of the synopsis. I read the synopsis and it made me think it was going to be a haunted house story kind of like How to Sell a Haunted House. I went in thinking it was going to be like that book but that wasn't really the case. I was expecting some action which we do get but not until the end. This is totally my fault but because I went in with certain expectations it hampered my enjoyment just a bit. The first half was kind of slow for me but once things started happening my enjoyment of it picked up. I love reading books that are high stakes like this but characters are still able to find love. Yes there is a bit of a romance but don't let that deter you. It's weaved in seamlessly and it doesn't overtake the story. I will say by the end there were still some things I was a little confused about but overall I enjoyed it.

Did you like Coraline? How about the movie Monster House? This book is a creepy weird awkward heartbreaking hopeful realistic fiction masterpiece. Such an endearing read. While the buildup is slow & can sometimes seem arduous, the whimsy that Harrell spreads throughout her novel keep you hooked & hoping.

I've read every novel that Alix E. Harrow has written, and I can honestly say that I've loved them all. Starling House is no exception. Harrow can write. I don't know the last time that I've had the honor of reading such atmospheric prose - even her sentences about a dingy old hotel room seem absolutely beautiful.

Starling House is a horror novel, except not really. It's a southern gothic novel, if we want to be particular about things. There's definitely a layer of horror here, though, but the book itself is not particularly scary. It's the horror of history, the horror of horrible things that happened every day in the not-so-distant past. The horror of slavery, of child-marriage, of murder, of being trapped in a place you have no power to leave from.

Our protagonist, Opal, lives a meager scrape of existence in tiny town called Eden. Horrible things have happened here, and they continue happening in the background of the novel. Eden feels like every minuscule town in the Southern US. We're introduced to the Starling House through Opal's dreams, and eventually through reality. At first, we're not sure if Starling House is haunted, sentient or both, but there's rumors upon rumors of the old place. Opal tracks them all down, and somewhere in the middle is the truth.

There's magic here. Magic, and dreams, and hopes, and longing. Starling House has it all.

I absolutely adored this novel. I think if obligations hadn't forced me to read this in chunks I could have read it all in one sitting. It is fantastic. I cannot recommend Harrow's work enough.

Really didn't enjoy this... by the time I was a quarter through the book, I was just hate-reading this lolol

Opal and her younger brother Jasper have grown up in a complacent Kentucky town built on, like the rest of America, a shameful bloody past swept under a whitewashed rug.

After their mom dies, the only thing that keeps Opal going is ensuring Jasper has a future to look forward to outside of this place. She also dreams constantly about a spooky house down the road. But that is fine and normal and don't worry about it.

Opal is stubborn, and finds herself caught in cycles of miscommunication with both Jasper and spooky house occupant Arthur. Some readers may consider that frustrating. I am personally sympathetic to control freak women who do not vocalize their priorities and try to think their way out of problems and assume they understand and moreover are responsible for their loved ones' happiness. Who knows why I would find that so compelling? Truly a mystery. Anyway I'm saying I did not mind that but I get it if you do.

I really liked the slow build of magic being real only for Opal to be too tired to react or care. It reminded me of when they tried to tell us all that aliens exist and we could not summon anything in response. I liked the way in which the house was sentient. It was a petulant moody annoyance that was trying its very best to help with an enormous undertaking.

I liked how irritable the love interests were about being horny. I liked that they matched each others' melodramatic martyr energy. I like that the book kept reiterating how ugly Opal's soulmate was, because it is true that sometimes ugly is the hottest thing.

I'm just waffling with the end. I didn't feel like a take-home point really landed for me. I was interested in these themes of home and family. What we do and do not owe our biological family. How names and family are things we can change and decide for ourselves. The idea of property - who owns a house? Who owns land? How does past pain and lack of closure map onto places that still exist to this day?

I felt like Opal was trying to say something about all of this at the end, but I didn't fully grasp its significance or feel like the ending culminated meaningfully. I think part of it, is that it feels like Opal went from her life revolving around Jasper to her life revolving around Arthur. And I guess home ownership? I mean, part of me gets it. I do be Zillowin. And I think a quaint quiet life is okay to be content in, especially after surviving chaos. But did the townsfolk just all get amnesia? Or are they really that disengaged? I'll have what they're having.

I don't know, it felt flat for me. Unrelatedly, the word “harassed” was repeated far too many times. I felt harassed. HA. Okay.

I did have tons of fun reading this, despite the ending. They should turn the cover artwork into wallpaper for me to buy. I'd recommend this to fans of [b:Rules for Vanishing|42872940|Rules for Vanishing|Kate Alice Marshall|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1552954687l/42872940.SX50.jpg|66663075], [b:We Have Always Lived in the Castle|89724|We Have Always Lived in the Castle|Shirley Jackson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1704229774l/89724.SX50.jpg|847007], [b:Pet|43568395|Pet (Pet, #1)|Akwaeke Emezi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548836225l/43568395.SX50.jpg|60224408], [b:The Perfectly Fine House|52294362|The Perfectly Fine House|Stephen Kozeniewski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1583945288l/52294362.SY75.jpg|77451566], [b:Through the Woods|18659623|Through the Woods|Emily Carroll|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414845473l/18659623.SX50.jpg|26477611] and [b:Book Lovers|58690308|Book Lovers|Emily Henry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1638867089l/58690308.SY75.jpg|92341790].

This book was great. It did not end up exactly where/how I thought it would, but not in an aggravating way. Thoroughly delightful read. Part Southern Gothic, part romance, part fairy tale maybe. Absolutely will be reading more Alix Harrow.

Rounded up from 3.5 stars.I had fun with this book, but I didn't find it terribly original (sorry).I enjoyed the plot and the writing style, but it reminded me a LOT of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's [b:Mexican Gothic 53152636 Mexican Gothic Silvia Moreno-Garcia https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1607462569l/53152636.SY75.jpg 73647361]. Maybe I need to read more in this genre and there's lots of books about haunted houses with “ugly” love interests bound to said houses, but I was expecting a far more original story from a book that's been as hyped as this one was.With that said, I did really enjoy the writing and the characters and would probably pick up another book by this author.