Starling House

The pacing lagged in the middle, and there was a lot of exposition without letting the reader piece things together on their own, but aside from those aspects I enjoyed it. The prose is lovely, and the way both the characters and their relationships develop is masterful. I can't award this a full five stars, but I did enjoy my time with it and I'm glad I saw it through.

It's been a long time since a book had me turning pages and wanting to ignore life to read it. Starling House is also exactly the type of story I was looking to read for autumn/fall...creepy, mysterious and atmospheric. I'm not a big horror fan, but I do love stories that are unsettling and mix the supernatural, folklore and fairytales. Although never stated, I felt there was a bit of a play on Beauty and the Beast, but in Harlow's hand it becomes a different and unique story. Her lyrical writing gives everything an otherworldly feel, most especially in respect to the house itself, which becomes a character in its own right and one I thoroughly enjoyed and loved. The mystery aspect is what had me reading every chance I could get, but the heart of the story is really about family and home. Complicated, messy and often what you make it, not what you're born into. There's a bit of romance. I thought I was over the brooding types, but apparently Arthur proved me wrong. But it never becomes tropey or ridiculous. It's a bit gothic mystery, a bit dark modern fairytale, a bit ghost story and overall just a great read! So many elements I love and though I still hold Harlow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January above this one and an all-time favourite, Starling House is certainly up there and I highly recommend it!

The secret of the house isn't much of a secret, but the how to deal with it was what I wanted to discover. The way the secrets are unveiled and the layers are pulled back kept me listening to the audiobook. The sense of gothic darkness around the house definitely came through the audiobook as well. It is a great creepy book, but not as scary as I had hoped.

I have so much to say about this book and not all of it is actually about this book.Before we get started, a little disclaimer:I did not choose this book for myself. I subscribed to something called ‘just the right book' and this was the first book they sent me that had been ‘personally chosen for me'. I would have never chosen this book for myself to read because:A) I tried another book by Harrow and was not liking her writing style. This book is much the same; lots of verbose wordy-words in the descriptions and pretty much a violent version of purple prose.B) I do not usually like so called sub-genre ‘contemporary fantasy' of which the most well known of is urban fantasy. It's basically taking things that suit a fantasy setting and dropping them into the real world.C) I do not like first person perspectives. Sometimes the character is likable enough that I can get over this preference. Though not often. I also loathe the stylistic choice some authors make of having parts of a story in first person following one character and having other parts in third person, following another character.So, that's all to say that not only would I have never chosen this book for myself but if for some totally out there reason I had, I probably would have DNF'd it by about page 30.If these are things you like, this might be the book for you because this is one of those one star reads for me that I can see a person liking as it wasn't a horrible book. It was, however, a horrible book for me. That, to be fair, gets progressively worse over time.I do like the idea for the story with a magical house that grabs people that have no place else to go and makes them Warden's for the beasts of hell that come up through the basement. (And as someone that has no interest in horror, this book is not scary at all, which was an odd bonus.)However, the main message of the story seemed to be that people are generally shit and life sucks. Because the people in this book are, generally, shit people.Look, I have to like the characters to like a book. And Opal, it's been quite a while since I have hated a main character in a book as much as I hate her. Probably Cassa from [b:Beneath the Citadel 36430924 Beneath the Citadel Destiny Soria https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518016956l/36430924.SX50.jpg 58130626] and if not her, then Tash from [b:Tash Hearts Tolstoy 29414576 Tash Hearts Tolstoy Kathryn Ormsbee https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1495481600l/29414576.SY75.jpg 49672494] so, you know, if you liked them, you'll probably like Opal, too. But Opal is just the type of character I find so hard to even care what happens to - and, ultimately, I didn't. She's selfish and cruel, surly and violent.She is supposed to be 26 years old (Arthur's supposed to be 28) and she acts like a bratty teenager (so does he). She mopes and never thinks about what anyone else actually wants. She's a controlling, mean sister who doesn't even really care what her brother wants, as long as she is needed by him.Arthur is mopey and violent and, it's safe to say, suffering from a cross between touch starvation and an odd form of Stockholm Syndrome where he's being held captive not by Opal, but by - literally - the house (and the one single positive personality trait that anyone that isn't Bev has) and he still develops feelings for Opal - as far as I can tell because she is literally the only human contact that he has had since he was 16. (Which, to a degree, also explains why his emotional growth was stunted 12 years ago. I don't like him, either, but he is a grain of sand better than Opal, so I will give him the benefit of saying that what he needs more than anything else is copious amounts of therapy.)Therapy wouldn't do Opal any good because she would only sneer at the the therapist and claim this isn't something she wants and there's only one thing on her needs list. (Though, with the way Opal and Arthur go from disinterested to wanting to lock lips, and quickly being the reason for everything the other person does... Did I mention that the ‘romance' in this book strikes me as being super unhealthy and gave me the creeps? Because it does.)Really, with their personalities, if they had been teenagers, the book would have been a little easier to take - I expect teens to be selfish brats (which is also why I no longer read much YA fiction) and obsessed with lust (ditto) - instead of ostensibly being adults. Only one thing in the plot would have to change and it was just another reason for Opal to act like she knows what's better for her brother than he does and show, yet again, that she is self-absorbed.The plot is...borderline non-existent and, really, boils down to about twenty pages in the middle and another ten-fifteen at the end. The book is, more than anything else, a vehicle for the characters and their excuse for a ‘happy romance' - or whatever it was supposed to be - and thanks to how much I hated the characters... Well, I did give it one star.

Did you like Coraline? How about the movie Monster House? This book is a creepy weird awkward heartbreaking hopeful realistic fiction masterpiece. Such an endearing read. While the buildup is slow & can sometimes seem arduous, the whimsy that Harrell spreads throughout her novel keep you hooked & hoping.