Hi friends! I’m so excited to be doing this book review, as Starling House was a 5-star read for me. Let’s hop in!
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Quick Synopsis
A grim and gothic new tale from author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can’t stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.
Perfect for readers who want:
- “Let’s rot in this haunted house together”
- Reluctant allies to lovers
- Gothic fairytales
About Starling House
Title: Starling House
Author: Alix E. Harrow
Rating: 5 Stars
Genre: Horror, Paranormal, Fantasy
Content Warnings: Parental death, gore, monsters
Pages: 320
Age Range: 17+
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Published: 3 October 2023
Goodreads Description: Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.
Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.
As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.
If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.
I received a review copy from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Purchase Links
Starling House Review
I don’t even know what to say about this book. I wasn’t going to read. I knew it was coming out soon, but I hadn’t heard the description and I didn’t enjoy Once and Future Witches. Then I heard a booktuber talk about it, and since I’m easily influenced, I decided to get it on Netgalley.
Best decision of the month.
This book crawled under my skin and stayed there. I will be thinking about it for a long, long time. It was well-written and atmospheric, and I found myself rooting for the characters from the very beginning.
Our setting is a supposedly haunted house, and our protagonists are Opal, resident criminal just trying to survive, and Arthur, heir to said haunted house. I loved both of them from the very beginning, even if their motives and actions were questionable. The romance gave me so many feelings. At its core, it’s about two lonely people finally finding their home and it made me want to sob. It’s so beautiful and was so beautifully written, you can’t help but fall in love with them. And it’s not just Arthur and Opal, but their entire found family consisting of Opal’s brother, and their lesbian aunts (seriously goals).
This book is more of a fairytale crossed with some horror and mythology elements, but I absolutely adored it. You have to read it.
Check out this 5-star review of Starling House!
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Love this review and this book!!! So happy to see others appreciate it.
Ooh, okay, this may be the Harrow book for me! I also didn’t care for the first Harrow book I picked up (The Ten Thousand Doors of January) so had kind of written off the author for myself… but I do love a haunted house tale.
I didn’t care for the Witches book (I forget the name) but this book was definitely it for me 😀