Alix E. Harrow’s novel Starling House wouldn’t necessarily be a book I would choose to read, even with Reese Witherspoon’s (annoying) endorsement on the cover. (I don’t mind the endorsement, but couldn’t it be a easily removed decal?) I needed to choose a book for my book club, and I needed it to be readily available and even though we have a huge Indigo where I live, its selection of awesome backlist titles seems to be shrinking. Whatever. I read some reviews about this book and I thought, sure. Let’s give it a whirl.
Twenty-something Opal lives in Eden, Kentucky with her sixteen-year-old brother Jasper. Opal works at Tractor Supply, a job she hates but does because her whole raison d’etre is to get Jasper out of Eden and into a Stonewood Academy where he can be afforded the opportunity to make something more of his talents.
The siblings live at the Garden of Eden motel where, Bev, the owner is “obligated to let [them] live in room 12 rent-free because of some shady deal she cut with [their] Mom.” Opal and Jasper’s mother died in a car accident over a decade ago; Opal survived that same crash. Life hasn’t been especially good since then, and it certainly doesn’t get any better when Opal takes a job at Starling House, a creepy mansion on the outskirts of town.
Starling House has a long, mysterious history in Eden. It’s connected to E. Starling, author of the children’s book The Underland, a woman who never wrote another book, or gave a single interview. “the only thing she left behind other than The Underland was that house, hidden in the trees.
The house is inhabited by Arthur Starling, “a Boo Radley-ish creature who was damned first by his pretentious name (Alistair or Alfred, no one can ever agree which), second by his haircut (unkempt enough to imply unfortunate politics, when last seen), and third by the dark rumor that his parents died strangely, and strangely young.”
These two are drawn to each other, despite the strangeness of their first meeting. As Arthur admits, “The house wants her, and the House is stubborn.”
I think Starling House is what as known as urban fantasy, a story that takes place in the modern world with fantastical elements. And that is certainly the case here. Starling House is sentient, there are magical beasts and a rich and complicated history connected to E. Starling’s book. It wasn’t really my cup of tea and even with all that going on, it took me a long time to read it. The writing was good, the secondary characters were interesting, Opal was a likeable protagonist…but at the end of the day, I just never felt all that invested in the story. At our book club discussion last night we all agreed that there was just too much going on, and that we would have been just as happy if there had been no beasts at all.