4 stars
Starling House was an enjoyable read for me. I finished it quickly and found few faults in the characters or the overall story. The thing that interested me most was Starling House itself and its history, which we get teased with throughout the book. We would get snippets of stories from townspeople, and they wouldn’t be quite right, but they were a puzzle piece to the actual history. Having the true story revealed in the end was very satisfying.
Opal’s character is the generic, poor, gutsy girl caring for her sickly but intelligent little brother. She steals, lies, and does all the wrong things for the right reasons. She gets a job as a housekeeper at Starling House and then starts to spy on the Warden, Arthur Starling, because she’s being blackmailed into doing so. So many times, I just wanted to shout at her stupidity. Simple communication could have solved a lot of problems, and the book still would have been good.
I also found the romance between Arthur and Opal a bit underdeveloped. A long time passes as Opal cleans up the derelict House. Still, there isn’t much interaction that explains their feelings for each other. Again, there is also a need for more communication between Arthur and Opal, which could have solved many problems.
As I said earlier, I liked the history of the House. I liked that it became sentient and searched out new Wardens as previous ones died. I liked the Beasts and the slow unraveling of their origins. I also found the footnotes a nice touch because they showed that Opal wasn’t a reliable narrator. Things are misremembered and then clarified by the footnotes. Some things could have been edited out or simplified, like too many elements were thrown in, but it mostly worked. I found the ending anti-climactic. There was a lot of build-up, and it fell flat. I wanted a little more from it. Despite some of the flaws, Harrow’s writing was able to suck me into the story and made it hard to put down.
Spellbound Reviewer 