Description
As Opal settles into her new life, she encounters the enigmatic Starling House, a place shrouded in mystery and secrets. Drawn to its dark allure, she begins to uncover the rich tapestry of stories woven into its very walls. Each revelation pulls her deeper into a realm where past and present blur, and she is forced to confront not only the history of the house but also her own unresolved grief.
With every twist and turn, Opal's journey becomes one of self-discovery and transformation. In the shadows of Starling House, she learns that family can come in unexpected forms, and healing may be found in the most unlikely places. Her story unfolds against a backdrop of magic and heartache, ultimately leading her toward a future she never imagined possible.
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good god, I loved this book. Stayed up way too late reading the second half all in one go.
Opal has had dreams about the Starling House, a local house with a mysterious family and haunting history, since she was young. Accepting a job at the house, Opal soon discovers shocking secrets and learns the truth behind the house. Arthur, the current warden of Starling house, is willing to lose everything to guarantee that he is the LAST warden… but he wasn’t planning on Opal. Together, they learn about trust, dreams, and the true definition of home. I really liked this story- from the literal formatting of the text with the footnotes and the pictures throughout the book to the plot and lore of this gothic haunted house fairy tale. The house itself is the best character. It gave me House of Leaves meets Stephen King’s Fairy Tale vibes with its labyrinth of a house and a hidden pit to an underworld. There’s some heavy Stranger Things vibes in there too with the corporate villians of the big power plant in town searching for the underworld entrance and the beasts that come topside from under. If those are your vibe, I think you’ll really like this book! “I didn’t want you to follow me…. Thank God you did.” -Arthur Starling“You want to know more. You want every miserable, gruesome, ordinary detail. But surely you can imagine the sorts of sins that hide under the word ‘bad’, like grubs beneath a stone. Surely the precise shape of the wounds doesn’t matter as how much they hurt, and whose hands dealt them.”
A grim and gothic new tale from author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can't stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all. Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck 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, Starling House appeared. 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. If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.