By: Alix E. Harrow
“I wonder if the feeling will fade. If the memory of a single season will be buried beneath the weight of ordinary years, until it is just a story, just another little lie. If I will learn to be content with enough, and forget that I was ever foolish enough to want more.”
Alix E. Harrow, Starling House
*This post contains spoilers for Starling House
Starling House was not a book that I selected for myself. I don’t know if this happens to everyone who is really into reading but I am constantly handed books to read from my friends. Honestly, more often than not, the books miss the mark on what I enjoy.
This same friend gave me The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and you can read in the linked post that it was not my cup of tea.
Alas, I will still continue to read the books that are passed along as I am too polite to decline.
Overview:
Opal lives in her small hometown of Eden, Kentucky. Well, lives is a bit of an overstatement as she is barely surviving. Following the death of her mother, Opal has taken up as the caregiver to her brother Jasper. Struggling is however, not new to her and grew up learning how to steal and swindle from her mother.
Eden is also barely surviving. A dark past looms over the town. A legend that no one can seem to agree upon the details. The consistent story revolves around the wealthy family that owns the power plant (the only source of jobs but also the environmental and health problems for the residents), the Graverlys and the Starlings. The Starlings built a mysterious mansion that accepts no visitors. There family is not built by blood but rather those that the house chooses.
Opal finds herself drawn to Starling House and the last remaining member of the family. When she is offered a job as the house’s cleaner, Opal sees no other way than to work for the wealthy family in order to secure her brother’s future.
Quickly, Opal learns that the stories she’s heard about the house are no exaggeration and that something sinister is surrounding it.
As she learns more about the house and herself, Opal must decide what is worth fighting for and who she is meant to become.
My Thoughts
The second half of the book is much stronger than the first half. I almost think that the author would have been better off bulking up the first half and splitting the book into two.
Once you hit the halfway point, you finally get some character development and relationships between the characters start to take off.
The relationship between Arthur and Opal is not thoroughly cultivated. There is no slow build and there is no immediate cosmic attachment. Eventually, the attachment is obvious but neither Arthur nor Opal talk about their attraction to one another until they kiss. I don’t know if the author didn’t want to take away from the story but not exploring Arthur or Opal’s feelings towards one another and then just making them act upon them is not satisfying as a reader. At no point in the first half of the story was I invested in seeing these two together or felt emotionally attached to their relationship. Once we hit that point, Harrow did do a good job of getting these emotions across to the reader and we finally get those high stakes that I was looking for.
Honestly, until they kissed I just assumed that they were actually related which brings me to my next point…
I don’t know if Harrow is a fan of YA Fantasy but if not then it is a crazy coincidence that Starling House has parallels to The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. The main characters in Clare’s series believe that they are related for some time and I stand as the reader that Harrow alludes to it being a possibility that Opal and Arthur are.
The physical characteristics of Opal and Arthur mimic the main characters from Clare. Both women have read hair and the men are covered in tattoos that aid in battles with their various demons.
The Beasts are creatures who the Starlings are tasked with battling so they can keep others safe, Only Starlings can see the Beasts. This is exactly how demons work in The Mortal Instruments.
I might be seeing these similarities more than the average person because I am currently working on a series of reviews where I find the literary references for A Series of Unfortunate Events. Because I’m in this mode I see connections everywhere and it took me out of the story a little bit but I was mostly able to ignore it.
What I Didn’t Like
Opal acts like she’s smarter than everyone else in the town and too good for them. I understand that it is a defense mechanism and I’m sure she had a very tough life growing up there but she acts as if everyone singles her out for their disgust. The author’s notes give insight on Opal and let us know that she does sometimes lie or misremember how certain things actually happened.
Another thing that I wasn’t very fond of was the predictability of the plot. Would you look at that, Starling and a Graverly have to ban together to destroy the evil that their past family history created. No way the poor destitute girl is actually related to the wealthiest family in town and the sole heir to their fortune. I was almost waiting for these things to come to fruition because it was so obvious where the story was leading to.
What I Did Like
I loved the place setting. A dying, small, southern town where everyone knows everyone’s business is always a crowd pleaser.
Also, the Starling mansion would be a dream to explore.
“Starling House makes me think of an underfed pet or a broken doll, a thing unloved by the person who promised to love it best.”
Alix E. Harrow, Starling House
I don’t know what it is with the fascination to explore old and abandoned places but I am just as interested as the next person. The house is almost Beauty and the Beast-like. The house is alive and is just as much of a character as any of the people in the town.
I also did enjoy the overall theme of finding family and making your own if you don’t have one. Both Opal and Arthur are orphans and by the final page, they become a family with a few choice friends from the town. Opal especially, thinks that she only has her brother but slowly finds out that she had a family all along with Bev and Charlotte.
Opal also finds out that she has a very large blood related family in the Graverlys. Even though these people are related to her, she knows that they will never be her family. Family is not DNA its the people that you can rely on and that you choose to have in your life.
Overall,
I went into this read with a more critical mindset because I received the book from someone whose reading styles don’t align with mine. However, I was surprised that even though I was looking for a reason to not like it, I did enjoy it and it was a quick weekend read.
Ultimately, I wanted more twists and turns. If Harrow had set it up so we thought we knew where it was going and then it took a sharp left, I would have marked it much higher.
Entertaining but not enthralling.
Rating: 3/5 stars
FableStoryNovel 
2 thoughts on “Starling House”