Starling House

Starling House
by Alix E. Harrow
Tor, 2023. 308 pages. Fantasy

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck mining town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland and disappeared. Before she vanished, she built Starling House. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house—and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling—go to rot.

Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she's never had: a home. As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice: to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.

Starling House is a great read for those who like contemporary novels that read like dark fairy tales. There are definite nods to Beauty and the Beast and Alice in Wonderland, with a bit of something menacing. This is also a haunted house tale, but the touch of magic and romance added by the fairy tale elements tempers the scare factor, while building the ambience and atmosphere of the story. Aside from the atmosphere, I also loved that this book contained two flawed, fiercely independent main characters who have to learn to work together in order to face their literal and personal demons. This is a book you'll want to get lost in.

If you like Starling House you might also like:

Roses and Rot
by Kat Howard
Saga Press, 2016. 307 pages. Fantasy

Sisters Imogen and Marin have both worked hard to overcome their abusive childhood. Their hard work seems to have paid off when they are both accepted to an elite post-grad arts program; Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there's more to the school than meets the eye; something a bit sinister. Imogen might be living in the escapist fairy tale she's dreamed about as a child, but it's one that will pit her against Marin if she decides to escape her past to find her heart's desire.

 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman
William Morrow, 2013. 181 pages. Fantasy

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed—within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three mysterious women living on a farm at the end of the lane, next to a duck pond that they claim is an ocean.

 

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library
by Hester Fox
Graydon House, 2023. 334 pages. Historical Fiction

In post–World War I England, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe is surprised to become Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate called Blackwood Abbey on the Yorkshire moors. The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own. As events grow more sinister, it will be up to Ivy to uncover the library's mysteries in order to reclaim her own story—before it vanishes forever. This book is darker than Starling House, but it's got some great gothic/haunted house vibes.

MB