Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Hello.  I hope you're having a great day.

The holidays often make me think of the people I've lost, like my grandparents.  I was blessed to have fantastic, loving grandparents on both my maternal and paternal side.  My maternal grandfather was a very pious man, he also was extremely outgoing. He was modest but he was also a politician.  He was mayor and actually secured the land that later became the town's only mall. My grandparents traveled around the world going everywhere but Russia, where they wanted to go but never got the chance.  Every year they went to Hawaii for my birthday...without me...and called me from the pool, while I was in cold New York.  Being the way he was, my granddad knew the name of half the population of Hawaii, and they knew him.  My poor demure grandmother went along with it all.  She surprised me when I got married by giving me the advice to "train him (meaning my husband) right from the beginning".  That makes me think she ran the show more than she let on. Sadly, hubby has proven untrainable.

One time my grandparents moved to the boonies near my hometown.  They were near a swampy area, by a State Park.  When there, they became avid bird watchers. They had a tiny little book, which my sisters and I always fought over, that identified all kinds of birds.  It was so prized, it not only survived decades but was given to my niece when she was little.  For a while, my whole family knew the names of many birds, now sadly they are just known as the mean blue one, or the gray one with the yellow tail.

I recently read Starling House by Alix E. Harrow.  This is the story of Opal, a down on her luck, hard life kind of girl.  She lives in the town of Eden where everyone seems cursed.  She keeps having dreams of Starling House, a local mansion.  Starling House was the home of Elizabeth Starling, who, in the 1800s, wrote a book called The Underland and then disappeared.  Drawn to the house, because of her dreams, Opal meets the rude and brash current owner, Authur.  Opal tries to find the reason for her odd dreams of the elusive house, and why in the dreams the mansion feels like home.  As she does secrets become unraveled, some not only dangerous but life-threatening.

This book was lots of fun.  It was a fast pleasant read.  It is an odd bird (get it...bird...Starling), as it's kind of a gothic horror without being scary, it has a bit of romance, lots of mystery and suspense and a fair amount of thriller thrown in for good measure.  One thing about the way this is written, I usually hate, but is done so effectively here, that I loved it.  I dislike when things are said over and over, I feel like the author is trying to increase book length and is wasting my time.  In this case, it is on purpose and very useful.  We hear the story of Starling House from several points of view, from people with experience with the building, land and family.  The closer we get to the end, the closer we get to the truth.  So entertaining.  I literally could not put this down, reading until my vision was blurring.

I've been on a roll lately.  The last several books I've read have been so creative and fantastic.  Christmas has come early!