Starling House

A Reese's Book Club Pick

By: Alix E. Harrow

Narrated by: Natalie Naudus

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

“This book has everything you could possibly want this fall...a cursed town, a haunted house, a vivid & eerie setting—plus, characters willing to risk everything.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club October ’23 Pick)

“The moody prose and atmospheric setting are brought to vivid life by Naudus’ lyrical rendition. This gothic horror novel keeps listeners guessing whether the monsters are real or crafted from the depravities of the unequal power dynamics of class, gender, and race.” — Booklist

Starling House is a gorgeous, modern gothic fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January.

I dream sometimes about a house I’ve never seen….

Opal is a lot of things—orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier—but above all, she's determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago.

All she left behind were dark rumors—and her home. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. Almost everyone, anyway.

I should be scared, but in the dream I don’t hesitate.

Opal has been obsessed with The Underland since she was a child. When she gets the chance to step inside Starling House—and make some extra cash for her brother's escape fund—she can't resist.

But sinister forces are digging deeper into the buried secrets of Starling House, and Arthur’s own nightmares have become far too real. As Eden itself seems to be drowning in its own ghosts, Opal realizes that she might finally have found a reason to stick around.

In my dream, I’m home.

And now she’ll have to fight.

Welcome to Starling House: enter, if you dare.

A Book of the Month Club Pick
An October 2023 Indie Next Pick
A LibraryReads October 2023 Hall of Fame Pick
Apple, Best Books of October
EW.com, Fall Book Must Reads 2023
Washington Post, Noteworthy Books for October
Paste Magazine, The Must-Read Fantasy Books of Fall 2023
PopSugar Best New Fantasy Books of 2023
BookPage, Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2023
Observer, Must-Read Books of Fall 2023
Polygon, 12 Best New SFF for the Fall
LitHub, October’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
Bookish, October’s Most-Anticipated Books
Gizmodo, October's Huge List of New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.

Boring

I found this book boring, long and slow. It was not spooky or intriguing. I am not a fan not sure why everyone else thinks it is great. I can not recommend this book.

Monster House: A Love Story

An engaging gothic fantasy horror! Although, I tend to enjoy more horror elements in my horror books, I found this book, perfectly lovely, and found myself unable to put it down. 

I mostly loved this book.

Beautifully written, but at times I was ready for the story to move along before it moved along.

Narrator was awful!

The story isn't terrible but the narrator made it sound much worse. She always played the main character as an aggressive screamer, very weird choice of voice acting. This made the main character sound like she had no depth to her personality, one tone only - yelling and screaming!!!

Perfect

Loved this book so much! A love story & woman rising from the ashes with some supernatural thrown in