I was initially put off by Starling House because of the “Reese’s Book Club” decal on the cover¹. However, I kept seeing this book on different websites with good reviews, and it is described as a gothic novel – a genre that is like catnip to me – so I knew I had to read it. Although this book did not turn out to be as creepily gothic as I hoped, I found Starling House to be an entertaining read.

Starling House is about a twenty-six-year-old woman named Opal who lives in the small dead-end Kentucky town of Eden. She was orphaned at age sixteen when her mother was killed in a car crash, and afterwards she forged documents to get custody of her much younger half-brother named Jasper. Opal and Jasper live rent free in a local motel. Opal works part-time and resorts to petty theft to help keep herself and her brother fed, as well as to save up enough money for private school tuition so that she can get her brother the hell out of Eden. Opal is a cynical woman with a snappy wit who keeps people at arm’s length. Not that she has much of a choice because the people of Eden do not care much for her or her mixed-race brother.

Eden is the kind of town that does not have much going for it besides its one main industry, a coal plant owned by the infamous Gravely family. The town’s residents are narrow-minded religious types who turn a blind eye towards mighty monstrous evildoings in order to maintain the illusion of respectability. Eden is also known for being cursed as bad things keep happening there; it is also known for Starling House, which was owned by a reclusive author named E. Starling who disappeared over a century ago.

Opal is drawn to Starling House despite its creepiness and its strange, misanthropic owner, Arthur, who is only a couple of years older than Opal. She has been dreaming about Starling House since she was a child. When Arthur offers her a job as a housekeeper, she accepts not only because he is willing to pay the ridiculously high wage she demands, but because it gives her the opportunity to see inside Starling House. It is immediately clear that Starling House, although rundown, is not as creepy as it appears. The house is a character of its own, eager as a puppy to make friends with Opal and protect the people who live inside its walls. But what do these people need protecting from? It turns out Arthur, like all the other people who lived in Starling House before him, is the Warden of Starling House and his job is to protect the residents of Eden from monsters who appear out of the mist and are the cause of the bad things that happen in Eden.

Although a fantasy novel populated by the kind of monsters that haunt our nightmares, Starling House is also a commentary on real-life monsters, such as the corporate henchmen who resort to extortion and other crimes to get what they want, or the powerful white men who use people to satisfy their greed and lust. It is a rather predictable novel in that Opal and Arthur are two ornery people who learn to open up to each other, and as much as Opal hates Eden, she inevitably feels the need to save it from the curse. But I found Starling House to be an engrossing read and the characters to be compelling. I also appreciate how Harrow included footnotes in the novel to give some factuality to the story. For a second there I believed that E. Starling was based on an actual person and that there really was a Starling House.

1. _{I do not trust Reese Witherspoon. Many years ago, I was perusing the book selection at Costco, and I came across In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. Right on the front cover was a quote attributed to Reese Witherspoon: “Prepare to be scared…really scared!” I love scary shit, so of course I bought the book. It was not scary. It was not even that good of a book. Reese Witherspoon seriously misled me.} ↩︎