Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
SYNOPSIS
I dream sometimes about a house I’ve never seen…
Opal is a lot of things - orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic, and part-time cashier - but above all, she’s determined to find a better life for her younger brother, Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago.
All she left behind were dark rumors - and her home. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. Almost everyone, anyway.
I should be scared, but in the dream I don’t hesitate.
Opal has been obsessed with The Underland since she was a child. When she gets a chance to step inside Starling House - and make some extra cash for her brother’s escape fund - she can’t resist.
But sinister forces are digging deeper into the buried secrets of Starling House, and Arthur’s own nightmares have become far too real. As Eden itself seems to be drowning in its own ghosts, Opal realizes that she might finally have found a reason to stick around.
In my dream, I’m home.
And now she’ll have to fight.
~~~~~
A slow haunting chill mixed with the comfort of familiarity crept up on me throughout this entire read. The same feelings I had during The Haunting of Hill House and Gallant mixed with something entirely new, this was the best spooky read to save for Halloween. Harrow exceeded all of my wildest expectations with this book. In 300 short pages I went through a thoroughly compelling mystery and mourned when the journey was over. Opal, Arthur, Jasper, the House, every single character was so rich and nuanced and I loved each one. The setting in a desolate southern town gave the perfect southern gothic vibes. The characters and setting along with the mystery of this unknown house, where it came from, why it has such a reputation, and who lives there, made for such a brilliant Halloween read. I wish it were longer so I could have spent more time in this world.
We follow Opal, our main character, as she struggles in this desolate town that she can’t decide whether she hates or loves. Her and her brother Jasper live in a motel and have never really had a “home”. Throughout this story we follow Opal as she fights to create one for herself. Eden is a small Kentucky town with VERY southern roots and a dark past and is full of bigots and gossips who aren’t very welcoming to anyone who can’t trace their roots back to the founding days of the town. Starling House haunts the town, a big mansion house in disrepair that has been the site of many a grisly murder and whose occupants never mingle with the town. Opal gets a job at Starling House and begins to uncover the mystery of the place that has fascinated her her entire life. With various accounts and horror stories from around the town, what is the truth? We also watch the relationship between her and Arthur, the last Starling living in the house, grow as they both fight to find a place where they belong.
My absolute favourite part of this book was the setting. We’re set in this old southern town that SHOULD by all accounts be a boring place to have a story take place but the dark and horrifying history of the town immediately sets the correct town for the entire novel. The town was built on Power… literally. The “oldest” family who were, in fact, slave owners, also ran mines where they caused rampant death and environmental hazards, what a surprise. The mines are abandoned but the Power company is still going strong and people are said to have gone missing by those mines. The mists rise quite frequently from the river that’s deemed unsafe for swimming and almost everything in this town seems bleak and horrible, yet Opal has history here and feels a connection to it. All these old southern small town horror stories mixing with those of the supernatural create the most atmospheric read.
As a character-driven reader I was not disappointed. Opal was tough and soft and smart and so frustrating but I was with her every step of the way. I felt like she was so layered and nuanced yet also just ambiguous enough for her to be relatable to all. All she wanted was a place or people to be able to call home. To put down roots and she fought like hell to achieve that. Arthur was a mystery to me and I loved that. We got so many aspects of his character through short chapters from his point of view yet not enough to know his character fully. We mostly rely on Opal’s unreliable narrative of him which made him all the more interesting. Do we trust him? Is he honest? His determination and his gentleness were exactly what Opal needed as a rock and support in her turbulent life. The house may have been my favourite character even though it wasn’t really a character at all. It was just a house. But a house that had stood throughout time, throughout horror after horror and family after family, and was as reliable as its occupant. It has some sentience throughout the novel but overall, those descriptions just gave me the impression of what someone feels like when they’re in a place that feels like home. When you’re in the house you grew up in and the kitchen light feels “warm and inviting”. It gave a sense of familiarity in this otherwise bleak and haunting atmosphere of the book.
The mystery of the plot was so fun to figure out and there were various twists and turns throughout the novel that kept me guessing, kept me excited, kept me frustrated, and kept me from putting this book down. I read it in one day and it was too short for my liking, I’d have preferred to live in this world for 100 more pages. I gave this book 5 stars because Harrow absolutely knocked it out of the park. It was such an enjoyable read and PERFECT for this time of year.
Happy Hauntings everyone!!