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Starling House, or In Support of Ugly Protagonists

Title: Starling House
Author: Alix Harrow
Genre: Horror/Gothic
Age Range: Adult
Rep:

Alix Harrow wows me again.

She's one of my insta-buy authors and I've yet to be disappointed in a work by her. Starling House was no exception.

This isn't your typical Southern Gothic fairytale, although it has all the elements. Starling House is set in Eden, a fictional, dying coal town whose secrets are buried even deeper than the stripped mines beneath it. At the center of these dark secrets is a kudzu and honeysuckle-covered house whose doors and hallways never lead to the same place twice, and the generations of mismatched Starlings who protect it as much as it protects them.

Red-haired Opal is in her early twenties and has been living in a motel room with her teenaged brother as his sole guardian since the tragic and suspicious death of her wildcard mother a decade prior. She doesn't have dreams or aspirations of her own; she has one list with one item on it: taking care of her brother, Jasper and getting him the fuck out of Eden. She doesn't have the spare time or spoons for dreams.
But Opal has been dreaming of Starling House.
Her dreams lead her to the house, creaking and nearly abandoned, except for its young, reclusive heir, Arthur. When she shows up on his doorstop twice, he offers her a job cleaning the creepy, dilapidated house, and things start to get weird.
Eerie Victorian fairytales and local folklore twist together, each telling a different version of the same story, each containing pieces of the truth. The only constants are the strange woman who built the house, the coal-barons that have run the town for centuries, and the strange mists that bring misfortune every time they rise.

I loved this book.

And as the title of this post suggest, one of the things that charmed me most was the repeated affirmation that the protagonists are not perfect, beautiful idolatry-worthy heroes. They're regular people. In fact, the author is quick to assure us that they're not even simply "plain," but actually ugly. Opal's smile is even more crooked than her teeth, sharp and nasty. Arthur is craggy-faced and question-mark-shaped, shoulders glued to his ears, back hunched.
Their ugliness isn't softened by glowing, therapist-approved personalities, either. They're both hardened by grief and struggle, with edges as sharp as a honed blade. Opal is a bare-faced, unapologetic liar, and Arthur will resort to cruelty to keep people away from Starling House.
As the layers of these two characters are peeled back, their vulnerabilities exposed, Arthur and Opal grow close in spite of their mutual prickliness. Deep down, they have good, noble intentions, and the grit and bitter determination to achieve those intentions by any means necessary.

I fucking love them.

They are ugly, unrepentant, unstoppable, and unforgettable.

The sentient house is what caught my attention, but the characters are what drew me in. Harrow excels in this, and yet again blows my mind.

Have you read Starling House? Tell me what you think of it!

Triggers:

**There is a cat, and it does not die, nor does anything bad happen to it.
You can find out more about Starling House and author Alix E. Harrow on their website, or by following them on BlueSky. If you’re interested in purchasing Starling House, please consider buying directly from the author’s website, from your local independent bookseller, or online bookstores that support independent booksellers such as Bookshop.org.

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