Will I love Starling House?

This is the absolute ideal fall read, if you ask me! This book has one of the most fresh, distinctive voices I've ever come across. Its eerie atmosphere grabs you from the very first page, wrapping you in shadows and mystery before you even realize it. The story feels refreshingly original, bending gothic tropes into something strange and wonderful. Harrow's unique writing style pulls you in like a spell... you won't want to find your way out. This was a 6-star read for me.

This book weaves a slow-burning romance between two rough-around-the-edges characters drawn together by their investment in a crumbling, haunted mansion and the weight of all its secrets. The tension between them simmers beneath every interaction, and I found it undeniably magnetic.

Harrow balances a ghost story, survival in the face of financial insecurity, and unchecked capitalism in a small Kentucky town. I enjoyed the blending of gothic atmosphere in a modern setting and crafting a love story that grows slowly over time instead of an insta-romance. 

Just like everything Alix E. Harrow writes, this book is filled with magic, torment, struggle, redemption, and a keen love of books and the written word. Although Starling House is not as immersively wonderful as her other books, it’s still an absorbing read that brings you into a rough, real, and very strange place. Basically it’s a haunted house story, but the ghosts have history and impact and the main characters, while fated to be where they are, fight and learn and stuggle and come out better in the end.

The titular character in this book is, in fact, a house, and it has quite the personality! With hidden passages, winding halls, and secrets beneath the floorboards, this mansion is the perfect backdrop to a haunting tale about magic and legacy.

I loved the tales within tales that Alix E. Harrow wove inside the narrative: this book is a Southern Gothic classic for the 21st century.

First of all, I love all of Alix E. Harrow’s books. They have strong female protagonists who push back against the hands that they’re dealt.

This book is, at its core, the tale of a haunted house, but it’s so much more than that. There is love and death and class warfare and sentiment and harsh reality, all intertwined in the breathing soul of a house with something to prove, someone to protect, a lineage to honor.

Like all of Harrow’s works, there’s magic in the mundane, and she brings the dead-end town in Appalachia to pulsing life despite the… show more.