Starling House by Alix E Harrow

Publisher – Tor

Published – Out Now

Price – £9.99 paperback £0.99p currently ebook

Opal is a lot of things – orphan, high-school dropout, full-time cynic. Most of all, she’s determined to find a better life for her younger brother. One that gets them both out of Eden, a town renowned for bad luck. So when Opal gets the chance to earn a good wage at Starling House, Eden’s very own haunted mansion, she can’t resist.

Her new workplace is uncanny and full of secrets ­­– just like Arthur, its brooding heir. It also feels strangely, dangerously, like something Opal never had: a home. As sinister forces converge on Eden, Opal realizes she might finally have found a reason to stick around. But now she’ll have to fight for it . . .

I think every community has a house that attracts some form of mystery and danger to it. The one that we think someone lives in but clearly does not like to look after it or appear in daylight. The real reasons for this are often sad and a reminder of how fragile our welfare systems are but human imagination being what it is no doubt we create stories about the lives and secrets we think those walls are seeing. Strange houses abound in fiction from hill House to Manderley and now Alix E Harrow adds in their fantasy novel Starling House a new one to the fantasy estate agent’s directory but ultimately, I found this very disappointing.

In the Kentucky town of Eden lies Starling House, built by a reclusive author of a infamous children’s book who also is suspected of involvement in her husband’s death. It lies locked off from the public. Opal is a twenty-something sometimes shop-worker and occasional thief and fraudster, trying desperately to pay for her brother’s education. She is though fascinated by Starling House and an encounter with the young and disturbing Arthur Starling - the house’s current owner leads to a job offer. But agendas are at work. Arthur knows the house wants Opal, the mysterious industrial giant that owns and pollutes the town is also interested and Opal is finding her own past is getting tied to Starling House.

I love the idea of Starling House. It is tying into the Gothic romances into the modern day. It ties into the dark side of portal fantasies where we have dark worlds that we must enter and wonder as adults. It looks at the idea of a town being corrupted by the dark corporation that sits inside it and is a tale of many families over generations and their secrets. Unfortunately, it is also feeling a curious mix of overcooked on plot and undercooked on delivery.

A huge problem I have here is the voice Harrow has opted for. It’s a curious mix of Opal’s voice telling her sections, Arthur’s scenes in third person and interspersed with book excerpts or stories related by other characters plus some interesting footnotes explaining or challenging the facts we hear. But Opal’s actual speech and thoughts don’t match the writing sand all these various narrators sound the same. Character voices that all sound the same really take me out of the story and you start to feel the artifice of the plotting. There are lines here that perhaps aim for the gothic, but I sense feel more like in certain classroom when teachers would say a phrase, stop and make us all note that this was an interesting character or plot point. Again, I feel like a book that is trying hard to create a certain style, but it is not breathing naturally. The gothic should cast a spell with narration and not make me see the framework the scenery is all hanging off.

The other major issue I have is pacing. As I’ve alluded this book has lots of ideas and it seems uncomfortable exploring anything in detail we jump from one to the other very fast and for me it doesn’t come together very well at all. Its very jumpy and feels unusually like a few hundred pages could really have been useful to make the town of Eden, its characters and history come alive and we feel this dark tortured place in need of help. I can see things I enjoy - a nice beauty and the beast parallel here, a touch of modern folklore there, a trip to a strange fantasy land and a cute magical house but its not gelling for me as a story to fall into.

Regularly throughout Starling House as one of those important points we are told can you have a horror story and a romance at the same time – of course the answer is yes. But unfortunately for me this book fails at being any of those. It clearly loves the subject matter but feels reluctant to stay true to the delivery of these stories. I sadly cannot recommend it.