Thank you @netgalley @torbooks for the #gifted e-arc of this book.

Ladies and gentleman can we take a moment to observe this cover which is a masterpiece. I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but I certainly do and this one is…muah! Perfect! 🤌🏻

Small town Kentucky, in a dead end town there once was an author who wrote “The Underland” and then poof…vanished. The Starling House appeared before she disappeared but now sits there falling apart in the hands and ownership of Arthur Starling.

Opal, a jaded homeless woman gets a job working at the Starling House in hopes it will be her ticket out of this doomed town. As soon as she moves in the house feels like home and then odd, dark things begin to happen. Arthur and Opal must fight the demons of their past and present if they want to make it out of this town!

This book is ultimately a very atmospheric gothic tale that you 💯need on your shelf this October. It’s creepy and I just loved the dark secrets this house held. I don’t think there is a more perfect book for cool fall nights and the creepy crawly feeling of October! I would say this is more cozy horror book envelope the spooky vibes without the gore and blood. I cannot say enough great things about this book!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the Advanced Readers Copy of Starling House by Alix E. Harrow!

Starling House is the only haunted house story you'll ever need, friends. Alix Harrow has honed her craft to a knife's point: shredding us with a love story mangled with monstrous revenge. The story is hungry and layered, reflecting harsh truths about Eden's past, so we can't look away but dig our toes even deeper into the mud-coated river banks polluted with coal ash.

The town of Eden is broken, founded on an industry that has stripped it bare. Still, Opal clings to it like a roach, scavenging for the crumbs of any good left. The stories that fascinate us as children are the ones that never leave. Ones of fantastical worlds where the beasts have claws and of sentient houses that know who comes and goes. Starling House beckons the wide-eyed, half-starved, who will steal and maim for a chance to belong.

Harrow's is a story of belonging. Like any good ghost story, the past and present tangle like mist so the ghosts can reckon with the living. You will hold your breath until your face turns blue, waiting for the tension to drop. But remember, spirits have a long time and a very long memory.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an arc to review.

Alix Harrow's Starling House gets off to a somewhat slow start but once you get in, you're hooked. Opal has cared for her younger brother Jason in the small town of Eden, Kentucky since their mother's death in an accident. And Opal has cared for him to the best of her ability. Jobs were not plentiful in the coal town of Eden for anyone, much less a high school dropout. When Opal is offered the chance to work at Starling House, the big creepy house in town with only one resident, she is happy to walk away from her job at the hardware store.

But strange occurrences happen at the house and it's one occupant, Arthur, is ambivalent about having Opal around. Opal feels at home there and the house itself seems to welcome her. And, she certainly needs the money Arthur can afford to pay her. The original builder of the house, E. Starling, left behind a creepy novel titled The Underland. The Underland was one of Opal's favorite books as a child. Its tales of horrible creatures and dark happenings had a magnetic pull for Opal.

The Gravely family, owners of the coal mine in Eden, want to get their hands on the property. Arthur turns away all attempts to purchase or even enter the grounds. So, the would-be buyers turn to Opal and, with threats and promises, cajole her into giving them information about Starling House. Secrets about not only the house, but about Opal and her mother come out and the results are devastating.

Narrator Natalie Naudus provides a suitably matter of fact yet sinister reading of the book.

Those who enjoy mild horror, family drama, and a slight touch of romance will like this one. Especially young adult readers.

Note: I listened to an advance copy of the audio book provided by NetGalley.

This one started off extremely slow, and I was lamenting the fact that there will never be another Harrow book to rival The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I was actually considering possibly DNFing in the beginning. It took forever, but thankfully it picked up right around the 35% mark. And when it picked up, it picked up HARD!! If it weren’t for the extremely slow beginning, this absolutely would have been a 5 star book for me.

Anyway, from that point on, I was hooked!! I absolutely adored Starling House itself. It was sentient and had its own personality, and it was wonderful! I loved that it was sometimes petty and petulant toward Arthur, it cracked me up! It was adorable that it would rearrange itself for Opal, or do things to make her more comfortable. I need me a house like that haha!

I also adored hellcat and how the house seemed to love her as well! I love that she was super cranky, yet softened to Arthur; just like Arther softened to her as well! They were both prickly and broody, and the scenes where she’d be curled up in his lap melted my heart!

The romance between Opal and Arthur was super sweet and had that glorious slow burn that I love. It was also essentially enemies to lovers – they weren’t necessarily enemies, per se, but they definitely didn’t like each other much, or even want to be around each other in the beginning. It took almost the whole book to develop, and I love those kinds of romances! It also wasn’t overbearing – it took a backseat to the plot and action.

Harrow has a way of writing uncanny, atmospheric worlds. Her writing makes you want to crawl into the pages and live there! The world is eerie and dark, and the monsters were delightfully creepy. I loved the tale of Underland, and the Wardens of Starling House that stood bastion against its monsters. The air of mystery gave the story a driving intrigue, because you didn’t really know what was going on for a good chunk of the story. It kept me wanting more! I thoroughly enjoyed how the story played out, and the background of how Underland was born and the history of the House and the previous Wardens.

As soon as I finished this book, I already wanted to re-read it! I can’t wait until the audiobook comes out so I can listen for my second read! If this book isn’t on your radar, you should definitely pre-order it! Thank me later. ;)

It looks like I'm in the minority on this one. This book took me over a month to read. I was looking forward to reading a spooky gothic tale, but it took too long (in my opinion) for the book to deliver. I found the beginning to be super confusing and I had no idea where the story was headed (and not in a suspenseful, I need to keep reading to find out, way). There are a lot of footnotes scattered throughout the book, and maybe it was because I was reading it on a kindle, but it was confusing to read the footnotes a few pages later and be like 'what was this referring to??' Someone else on here described them as disruptive, which is exactly how I felt. About halfway through the story finally started cooking, and I found the second half of the book to be much more engaging. Overall, I personally was disappointed, but I do think a lot of people will enjoy it.

I loved this gorgeously moody gothic suspense novel. I loved watching the relationship develop between Opal and Arthur. I thought the characterizations in general were particularly great. The story unfolded at a good pace, keeping my interest and keeping me wanting more. I'm sad that it's over.

STARLING HOUSE is a gothic mystery where houses are main characters and plot twists are a given. I really enjoyed the world-building here, and the budding relationship between Opal and Arthur is also an engaging addition to the overall story.

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.*

I requested this book because <i>spooky vibes</i>. The premise kind of reminded me of Mexican Gothic (minus the mushrooms), and it's been a while since I've read a spooky book, so I thought I would give this a chance.

I pretty much went in with zero expectations and only a vague idea of what this book was about. And boy did it take me by surprise.

So to start off...

1. Spooky House duh
2. Grumpy warden of said Spooky House who is mysterious and lonely and no he doesn't need anyone and the mc is annoying and she needs to leave him alone but also 👀
3. And a cat who likes to bite and scratch and hates everyone except a certain grumpy man

So pretty much, a recipe for a great book.

I was not expecting to feel so many feelings. Opal, our mc, is the kind of character you can't help root for. She's very abrasive, speaks her mind, and is always willing to put up a fight for the things she wants to protect. You feel so much for her and her story, both the past and present. Her motivations are very relatable and understandable, and she's overall a very captivating character.

I laughed out loud so many times in this book thanks to Opal, but also thanks to Arthur. There's something about a lonely, tortured, self-sacrificing man that just gets to me. <s>Definitely don't see myself in that at all.</s> He's constantly fighting himself and denying his feelings, and while usually this trope annoys me, this was done really well, and Opal was a good counterbalance to his moodiness, so I fell in love with the two of them instead. Their back and forth is just so good, and the yearning is so <i>yearning</i> I ended up having to scream about it on my Instagram stories.

I think what carries this book is the narrative style and Opal. She has such a unique voice, that without it, I don't think I would have enjoyed this book as much. I think it would listen quite well as an audiobook. The vibes are spooky and creepy, but if you scare easy like me, Opal and Arthur make it more digestible and funny.

This book reads fast and is kind of an "edge of your seat" read, which fulfills all my expectations when it comes to spooky books. There is more depth and history to the storyline than I was expecting, and I really appreciated the mystery behind it and watching Opal try to figure out the truth among all the different stories surrounding Starling House.

The ending wrapped things up nicely, though it wasn't as action-heavy as I was hoping for.

Overall, I highly recommend if you're trying to figure out a tbr for October and want a book that is a bit creepy, but won't give you nightmares!

There aren't enough stars for this book. I truly want to make that statement my whole review. I absolutely loved this book with every fiber of my being. I simultaneously could not put it down and at the same time didn't want it to end. So, I pretty much forced myself to go slow and make it last. This book is perfect magic.

When you grow up in a place that has taken everything from you, you might want to take something back. This is the case with Opal, who lives in a hotel room with Jasper, her astonishingly creative, asthmatic high school brother. Opal scrapes by as best as a young person can, working for and thieving from Tractor Supply, saving any money she can to get to make sure Jasper doesn’t get stuck in Eden. Eden is the place dreams seem to die – their mothers’ certainly did when she drowned after her car swerved to avoid a creature and landed in the Mud River. Eden is a dead-end coal-mining town in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky – the industry and the Gravely men who run it found personal success by running it into the ground, the cost being the health of the people, the community, and the land itself.

Dreams are what get Opal into worse trouble than getting caught writing bad checks or stealing from the local Dollar Store. She’s dreamt of Starling House since she was twelve or thirteen years old, of the light she can sometimes see from the upstairs window, of walking up the drive and entering, of crooked hallways and dark rooms. The Starlings are an odd family who rarely leave the confines of their property. Rumors abound: the first Starling, a young woman by the name of E. Starling, gained fame as the notorious widow of the original middle Gravely boy. She took the money gained by his untimely and bizarre death to build a giant, creeping home on the land across the Mud River from the power station. She also wrote and illustrated a children’s book, The Underland, about a little girl, Nora Lee, who escapes the clutches of a fox by travelling underground to the Underland, where she meets and befriends a menagerie of grotesque creatures. They save Nora by killing off the fox. The book did not do well then, but over time developed the following of a cult classic, and Opal’s grew up reading the battered old copy her mom gifted her one birthday. The rest of the Starlings are a mismatched, disparate group – all seeming to take over Starling House when the latest occupant dies, often horribly.

On a cold February night, after a shift at Tractor Supply, Opal is drawn to Starling house. She grips the gate, staring at the square of light in an upstairs window, and swears when the iron bites into her hand and draws blood. And now there is someone standing on the other side of the gate…it could only be one person, the latest Starling, a scarecrow of a figure with a haunted appearance.

I’ll leave it at that, because there’s nothing worse than a review that gives too much away.

One of my favorite’s of 2023. I absolutely loved Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January and appreciated The Once and Future Witches, so when I saw a new book was coming out, I jumped at the chance to read it. This is my new #1 of her books.

I love the way Harrow built this story, from the untrustworthy narrator whose narrative is pickled with footnotes, to the untrustworthy Arthur Stirling. I love that Harrow’s characters are unlovely, difficult to love. I can hear a Kentucky accent in the way Opal muses unapologetically on her circumstances and the bad choices she’s forced to make. This is a Pride and Prejudice kind of story–lots of pride, lots of prejudice (no ballrooms), and a fantastically awful set of villains who use their influence in the worst ways.

For those who plan on reading, I recommend that you stop and find the lyrics to John Prine’s “Paradise” as soon as Opal mentions it. Better yet, listen to it.

Reader’s Advisory: language, sexual references, one consensual sexual act described very obliquely - The characters’ ages are mid- to late-twenties, so keep that in mind! Some violence and gore, but with brief and limited descriptions. Nothing gratuitous: everything in line with the setting, character, themes, plot.

Thank you, Tor and NetGalley, for granting me a copy of this book for review. Any opinions are my own; I’m not receiving any kind of douceur for my write-up.

Arthur is Warden of the mysterious Starling House, and Opal is a local liar and thief doing she best she can to help her younger brother after the death of their mother. Together, they find out how to overcome the past and turn nightmares into dreams. Opal especially is a wonderfully complex character. Great combination of Southern Gothic, fantasy, and a realistic depiction of life in a bleak rural Kentucky town.

Opal is absolutely determined to stick out her lucrative new job as housekeeper for Starling House, despite the fact that the house is filthy beyond reason and her boss, Arthur Starling, is kind of a rude jerkface. Arthur's ancestor wrote a children's book called The Underland that has since haunted generations of kids, Opal among them. As she starts to poke around the house hoping to share in its secrets, Opal will discover far more than she ever intended, and she'll have to make decisions about her loyalties that frighten even her brave soul.

This book is so perfectly CREEPY and I absolutely loved it!! A wonderful spooky season read for sure, and I cannot wait to see artists' renderings of the monsters described in this book. Opal is a great character, I definitely connected with her and though the romance aspect wasn't super believable for me, it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the story. The ending is just flawless in my mind, I love the way this book wrapped up.

Definitely pick this up if you're looking for spooky fantasy vibes this fall!! Thank you to Alix E. Harrow, Tor Books, and NetGalley for my advance digital copy.

Alix E. Harrow has created a story that will stay with me for a long time. I love this book so much.

Starling House is a Southern gothic tale about a haunted house in a small town with a dark history. The main character Opal is a 26 yr old doing her best to survive. She works at a supply store to support herself and her younger brother, saving as much as she can to send him off to school. Opal keeps dreaming of the Starling House, the uncanny house everyone considers to be bad luck. When the lone heir of Starling House, Arthur, offers Opal a job to work as a housekeeper there, she takes the job for her brother.

Opal is a jaded and prickly character who mistrusts everyone. She's a liar and a thief and not your typical 'likable' character while Arthur is your typical brooding recluse. The book is mainly written in Opal's POV with some sections written in Arthur's. I love the characters in this book. Alix E. Harrow gave voice to their humanity in a way that feels real, true, and heartwrenching.

This is a story about people growing up too soon, a story of dreams buried, of loneliness and lies we tell ourselves and others, of longings for a home and family you could have had. But more than that, it's a story about choosing your own family, being your own person, and creating a home.

Endless thanks to Tor and NetGalley for my review copy! All opinions my own.

Starling House by Alix Harrow

I first heard of Alix Harrow when her short story “A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” was nominated for a Hugo Award. I read it, and I loved it. When her first novel came out, The Ten Thousand Door of January, I read it right away, and was a little disappointed. The book felt disjointed, and I didn’t care for the protagonist or her struggles very much. I felt like the author didn’t successfully make the leap from short story to novel. I read Ms. harrows, two fractured fairytale Novelas when they were nominated for the Hugos and I enjoyed them, although they felt a bit glib.I think I’m part because I’m getting a little tired of the hard-drinking, Devil-May-care protagonist trope. But they were entertaining, if not exactly treading new ground, and I enjoyed them more than her first novel, so I was intrigued when I read the blurb for her newest book, Starling House. I was excited when the publisher and NetGalley granted me an eARC and wow. Just wow. Was this book ever a leveling up!

I’m not a huge horror fan, but after reading some T. Kingfisher novels over the last couple of years, I find myself enjoying it more. And this book was an excellent book of the “creepy house” variety.

The protagonist, Opal, felt very real and three dimensional. Her life and her struggles were rooted in reality and didn’t seem either overly glamorized or exaggerated. I loved the slow build and unfolding of the mystery and all of the secondary and tertiary characters. And it was creepy in just the right way. And I love the house! The titular Starling House is practically a character itself and I love it so.

This world felt real and lived in and shone a light on a part of the world (rural Kentucky) that I don’t often see in SFF books. The resolution of the novel was satisfying on several levels - in this type of book, it is essential to stick the landing, and this one does so in a very satisfying way.

I highly recommend this to anyone who likes horror, likes Alice Harrow, likes thoughtful, well written books that are a tad creepy.

This was my first Harrow but it will not be my last! This tale unfurled like a most dreamy fairytale. I’m thoroughly enchanted!

I really enjoyed this book. I expected the spooky house elements to be stronger — the House itself isn’t spooky, but it’s guarding something sinister. But once I adjusted my expectations and accepted that the House is more friendly than scary, I really enjoyed this read. I’ve only read one of Harrow’s novellas before, but I enjoy her writing and am interested in reading more of her work. The love story worked for me as I was invested in both Arthur and Opal as characters and the slow-burn romance was satisfying. I enjoyed how Opal and Arthur uncovered the mystery of the House and the fairytale qualities to this story. I also appreciated that Harrow, who is from Kentucky, set this in rural Kentucky and used environmental destruction as a plot point. Overall, a great read, especially for the approaching Spooky Season!

Thank you MacMillan Audio and Tor Publishing for copies of Alix E. Harrow's Starling House.
I actually think going in to this book as spoiler free as possible is the way to go, just let the story unfold.

I loved this story, it was magical but also so grounded in very real themes on sibling relationships, self love/resilience, and the impact of family history and identity. I also love a book that is about a book, the ability of an author to develop that secondary book world within the bigger story always impresses me and here it is so well done... the idea of darkness as a part of children's books is thoughtful and well executed. The pacing was excellent and the audiobook narration really captured the mood, mystery, and tension in the right way and with great tone and style. There is some romance in the story but I loved that it was placed within a slow burn tension progression and it was secondary to bigger themes for me about family, about feeling like you belong, all stood out within a story that has well developed themes on monsters and mysterious houses and related themes.

This is my first book from this author, I know a popular author who I just haven't gotten to, so this has been a great introduction to her style and themes.

Another winner from Harrow! I adored all the characters, especially Opal's dry wit and resiliency. This is a love letter to the orphans, the outcasts, the locals, and to home. The sense of place, in both the physical house, and in found families and comfort, is very strong. I wanted to climb inside Starling House and poke around all it's strange rooms. Imagery places a huge role, and Harrow never uses a cliched simile or metaphor.

"Starling house makes me think of an underfed pet or a broken doll, a thing unloved by the person who promised to love them best"

I really surprised myself with how much I enjoyed this book, while the synopsis attracted me I wasn't sure if I'd be gelling well with the writing because cozy horror can be a hit or a miss most of the times but when I first read the first few chapters, I got a feeling that I would enjoy this book. This is perfect October read when there is slight chill in the air, with medium spook factor and refreshing non typical characters I am sure many of the readers are going to pick up this book

I'd say this is a bit both character and plot driven but the characters are what took precedence for me and of course we can't forget the house itself. Starling house itself is a living, breathing entity in itself and honestly the house's character is also well fleshed up along with Opal's and Arthur's. I really enjoyed the author's writing and how it slowly unveiled the darkest past of the house, Opal character is chef's kiss, a lot prickly and a bit curious she ends up working at the alleged haunted house because she is determined to give the best to her brother. Her attitude to do anything to survive is strangely attractive and I reluctantly fell in love with her just as Arthur does, with an air of mystery and unexpectedly lovable characters-Starling house in its almost dead and forgotten city will be a memorable read this fall. Definitely recommend picking it up if you want to enjoy something moody and spooky but not too horrific