Well this was fantastic…

Perfect for a chilly Fall day… the atmosphere in this Southern gothic fairy tale was fire 🔥 of course you have Opal and Arthur but let’s not forget the main character the house!

The Starling house is dark and magical with an air of mystery yet deeply beautiful. A space that haunts your dreams luring you to it. Throw in a haunted Underland… cobwebs… teeth and bones and you have the perfect combination for a tale about a cursed town in Kentucky, from generational history.

Alix’s signature descriptive prose was hypnotizing. This one has a little bit of everything. I believe the less you know going into it the better. I knew very little and was completely surprised. Halloween is the perfect release day for this five star read!

This was one of my most anticipated reads for this year. I was not disappointed!

Starling House was beautifully written. The story was intricate and detailed, and the characters were complex and interesting.

Poverty stricken rural Kentucky isn't what you would think of as a fantastical setting, is it? Well, Alix E. Harrow somehow succeeded in creating a wonderfully dark and atmospheric modern fantasy story set in an old mining town. And our two main characters are not your cookie cutter hero and heroine. I really enjoyed that they were flawed and ugly in their own ways. It truly bothers me how often protagonists are super hot for no good reason! The house is also a charming character on its own.

I would probably recommend this book to lovers of V.E. Schwab, Leigh Bardugo, or even Seanan McGuire.

absolutely devoured the audiobook for this one today. i love the way that alix e. harrow creates settings with her lyrical prose, and 'starling house' was no exception. this book is a love story to the haunted house genre, where the house & the warden become one in the same the more that opal, our protagonist, begin to know them. taking a job at the house to make money to give her younger brother a better life, this story unfolds on the page as the reader and opal together begin to realize what's really happening in the starling house.

i highly recommend going into this book blind the way i did, because it truly is a beautiful homage to the southern-gothic novel, and the story will come to surprise you the way it did for me.

What if your rundown town had a magical house and an entrance to the underworld? And what if you were called to this house?

Oooh this one was such a great read. I loved the gothic fairy tale vibes. The story was beautifully done in its juxtaposition between the real world and the underworld (the Underland). I enjoyed learning how everything and everyone fit together into the story. There was a big bad corporation. There were monsters. There was a magical, meddling house. There were strong themes of triumph of good over evil, misunderstood history, and both found family as well as sibling relationships. There was a strong female lead. Basically, there was everything I look for in a gothic fairy tale.

My only complaint is that the love story was rushed.

Highly recommend this one if you're into gothic fairy tales.

A huge thank you to the author and the publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

Alix E. Harrow is one of my auto-read authors. While I don’t own any physical copies of her books, I always try my best to get my hands on a copy of her books as soon as possible through my library if I can’t get an ARC. And while NetGalley faked me out with a denial for the digital book, I was fortunate to get approved for the audiobook version. I honestly tried my best to wait to read this one until autumn, but … that was just beyond my control.

To start with, its narrated by Natalie Naudus, who was the perfect person to voice this story. She provides just the right jaded, sarcastic, exhausted with life tone of voice that you’d expect from Opal.

Opal is 26 years old, and stuck in the polluted, dying town of Eden, Kentucky, raising her younger brother after the death of their mother. He’s got asthma as a result of the pollution from the coal mining that’s been going on for decades, and she’s been focused on trying to get him out of the town for his health. But that’s hard to do working a dead-end minimum wage job, so when Opal is offered a high paying position cleaning the mysterious Starling House for the equally mysterious Arthur Starling, she doesn’t see any choice but to accept.

Once she starts working in Starling House, Opal discovers a lot more than she ever expected to find out. Living in a town full of secrets, belonging to a family full of secrets, learning about the secrets hiding within Starling House, and the dangers lurking within all kept me glued to this story. I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next. Just when I thought I had a handle on the story and where it was going, Harrow would take it in a completely different direction than I expected.

This is the kind of story where the lyrical and beautiful writing transports readers to a magical world where anything can happen. It’s peak Harrow, and I have the same feeling I always do when I finish one of her books—when can I start the next one? This is absolutely one to add to your TBR and it’s the perfect read for Halloween, even if my review is a bit early.

I like how the author sets an atmosphere for the story. The story has an odd gothic vibe. The first half of the story does seem to drag a bit and it takes a long time for anything to happen. I wish you got to spend more time with the house and saw a bit more of what it could do. But overall it was an enjoyable read.

I was thrilled to see that Alix E. Harrow had come out with a new novel but this fell a little bit flat for me. I wish it was creepier and the romance just didn't work for me. Overall I enjoyed listening to the book and the narrator was great but it wasn't a favorite.

Thank you, NetGalley and MacMillian Audio, for letting me listen to this book as an ARC.

If you love haunted houses and fairy tales, this book is for you!

“Starling House" is a mesmerizing story that took me on an enchanting journey. It grabbed me from the very beginning, and I couldn't stop listening to it. The narrator was amazing! Her voice really added to the atmosphere of the story for me.

One of the best aspects of this book to me was its prose. The author's writing style is nothing short of gorgeous, providing vivid and imaginative imagery throughout the story. The way Alix crafted the atmosphere makes it the perfect spooky season read. I will certainly be getting the hard copy of this book to do a re-read when it’s released. To me, the book’s overall story and atmosphere really add a fascinating, fairytale-like layer of otherworldly gothic appeal.

The characters, especially Opal, are written in a well-developed and relatable. Opal's determination and love for her family really resonated deeply with me. As the story continues to develop around Starling House, I found myself fully invested in the character’s journey and eager to unravel the secrets surrounding the house and the legends of the town.

This book left an impression on me. With its captivating story, imaginative imagery, and memorable characters, it's definitely a journey worth taking.

4.5/5

Is there anyone better about writing fantastic breaking into the real world than Alice Harrow? Truly her skill of blending dark underworldly fantasy into beautiful prose and compelling narrative makes book an absolute delight. I feel like I’ve read a few people attached to a house that’s protecting the world from evil lately, and this is definitely my favorite.

Highly recommend checking it out.

Alix E. Harrow delivers another great gothic fantasy with her latest novel, Starling House. Perfect for fans of Melissa Albert's The Hazel Wood or Stephen King's Fairy Tale, Starling House tells the story of a house that guards a secret--a portal to the Underland, home to monsters beyond imagination.

Opal is inexplicably drawn to Starling House and its heir who fights to keep the citizens of their town safe from the horrors that lie beneath it. The house is old, and odd, and broken--but Opal is a broken thing herself, and she feels a kinship with it. There are various parties interested in what the house is hiding, and not all of them have good intentions.

This book felt like a modern fairy tale, both romantic and dark. Spanning generations, we learn about the guardians of the house, and the lasting effects of greed and pride. While definitely hitting on themes of racism and classism, slavery and abuse, Starling House doesn't get bogged down in politics or preaching. Instead, Harrow has woven a wonderful, haunting story that will stay with me for a long time.

Thank you, MacMillan Audio, for my advance listening copy!

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the advance copy for review.

I enjoyed this gothic horror by Alix Harrow. I had a hard time putting it down because I just needed to know what happened. The characters were engaging and the plot well paced. You get Beauty and the Beast vibes as well as nods to Haunting of Hill House.

I cannot adequately put into words how much I loved this book. It's filled with complicated and detailed characters whose actions sometimes really make it hard to root for them, but you can't help loving (many) of them anyway.

It would be so easy to lean too far into the cheesy aspects of a House that's somehow alive and monsters made of mist, but Harrow's talent instead creates an intricate world that's the perfect amount of gothic with a sprinkling of light horror and fantasy. I find myself thinking about it in the days since I finished. I want to get lost in the House and fall asleep on the lawn listening to the starlings sing.

I listened to the audio version and Natalie Naudus really does an amazing job. Her pacing and acting is so perfect that you really feel as if you're in Eden. I would listen to anything she narrates!

4.5 rounded up

I enjoyed this book a lot, but every now and then felt it missed the mark by just a hair. Additionally, I kept forgetting that Opal is nearly 30 years old - she felt like a much younger character. That said, Starling House is a book that was, in many ways, designed in a laboratory to appeal to me personally. It's got found family, a very cool librarian, an opinionated house, & Creatures. It also has a lot to say about how messy and difficult it is to love and care for other people and accept being loved and cared for in return, and the way that dark, ugly truths have a way of festering when they get kicked under rugs or shoved into the backs of closets.

Small-town Kentucky has nothing going for it, and neither does Opal. She knows she has to get her smart younger brother, whom she has raised in a one-room motel room, out of this town and will do whatever is necessary. She's lived with horrible nightmares since the day she held her mother's hand as she drown, but her nightmares lately have taken on a different timbre. When Arthur, the town's young recluse, offers Opal a job, her life turns into something totally different. The town is dying, in more ways than one, and Opal is somehow right in the middle of it.
This was the adult cross between the children's series Fablehaven, and the young adult series The Raven Cycle. I expected to like this book, as I've enjoyed Harrow's writing before, but I wasn't expecting to love it. This was a completely unexpected and engrossing tale. It had the feel of an old Poe novel, but with completely modern elements. Great characters with a great setting and twists. This has cemented Alix E. Harrow as a must-read author for me.

Starling House is the most perfect book to be released during Halloween season. Harrow always nails the spooky atmosphere right to the hinge of the haunted door. If you love old houses, you won’t want to miss this one, as our heroine discovers her true identity, her homely Prince and an enchanted castle complete with demons that they work to defeat together.
Loved this story which also gets points for a nice Librarian who breaks the rules for disadvantaged children. Thank you Ms. Harrow!

Wow, wow, wow. I really enjoyed this book. This gets a solid 5 star from me. I LOVED the "Once and Future Witches" by Harrow, but I have read other books of hers that just missed the mark for me. I wasn't sure where this one would land, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!

The characters are flawed, but still endearing. I love when an author is able to do that: give me flawed characters that I still really love and am rooting for. I really loved Opal and her brother, and while Arthur was *meh* to me, the siblings really sold the book. I loved Opal's love for her brother and her commitment to taking care of him. The townies were also delightful.

The atmosphere and intrigue were 100% what I am looking for when you tell me "Gothic Fairytale." Harrow nailed it. The creepy old house with a mysterious past? check. The ominous goings on about town? check. The intensely private and brooding homeowner? check. I LOVE a good gothic tale, and this one was absolutely a good gothic tale. No complaints from me!

Excellent audiobook. The narrator conveys the story well while giving good character inflection and pacing. This highlight the already stellar narrative and writing.

Opal is determined to find a way out of Eden, Kentucky, a town that has seen more than its fair share of tragedy. She wants a better life for herself and her little brother, Jasper. There’s only one thing in Eden that Opal wants to see, despite her own misgivings, and that’s Starling House, home of a reclusive author who disappeared long ago. So when she gets a chance to see the inside of the purportedly haunted mansion, she can’t resist. Eden finds herself drawn into the world of the house’s reclusive heir, Arthur, even though she should know better. Escape into a world of magic and treachery, romance and despair, in this lush gothic novel