📕 Title: Starling House
✏️ Author:Alix E. Harrow
📖 Genre: Gothic Fantasy / Fiction
⭐ Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
📝 There’s a cat!🐈

BOOK BLURB

The story takes place in Eden, Kentucky, a small town known only for the legend of E. Starling, a nineteenth-century author and illustrator who left behind the mysterious Starling House. 

Opal works a retail job hoping to save enough money to send her younger brother to college, but a chance encounter with the reclusive Arthur Starling leads to an unexpected job offer.

Working in Starling House, Opal begins to uncover its secrets, becoming entangled in a mystery that threatens the entire town.

REVIEW

I loved the mysterious, gothic atmosphere of this book; it’s a slow pace but thoroughly captivating. The book explores themes of loneliness, home, and family. 

Unusually, the book includes first person narration by Opal along with chapters written in third person from Arthur’s POV. It might feel odd at first, but this is really Opal’s story and I think it makes sense to maintain some distance from Arthur’s perspective.

I enjoyed Opal’s narration and seeing the town and Starling House through her eyes; beautiful prose really set the scene and conjured a sense of uneasiness. 

There are great supporting characters and I especially loved Opal’s interactions with Arthur. Their relationship was a slow burn; two lonely people finding each other amidst their obligations.

This story feels like a nod to Belle in the Beast’s castle or Jane Eyre at Thornfield Hall, and I could hardly put the book down because I was so invested in uncovering the truth. Starling House itself is personified, serving as a character in its own right. Footnotes and a bibliography lend authenticity to the story, as though it’s a historical recording of events.