• Starling House

  • A Reese's Book Club Pick
  • By: Alix E. Harrow
  • Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
  • Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (1,205 ratings)

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Starling House  By  cover art

Starling House

By: Alix E. Harrow
Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
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Publisher's summary

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)

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.

©2023 Alix E. Harrow (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"As knife-edged and sharp as its protagonist...A smart, spectacular contemporary Gothic that will leave its roots in you and linger in your dreams."—Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians

"Alix E. Harrow is an exceptional, undeniable talent, and Starling House, with its gentle reassurances of the homes we make and the love we deserve, is more than satisfying. It’s pure loveliness in book form."—Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

"Gorgeous, poignant, and honest—an unforgettable read."—Andrea Stewart, author of The Bone Shard Daughter

What listeners say about Starling House

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
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Loved the story and performance

I finished this book in a day because I couldn’t stop listening. Love Alix E. Harrow so it was a great treat when I saw she came out with a new book.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful!!!

Definitely read this book! Especially if you love Alice in Wonderland! More importantly it kept my attention all the way through and I was on the edge of my seat at times, as well as, swooning over a love story, and ready to take up a sword to fight the beasts along side the defiantly lovable main character

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Dreams are what you make of them…

An enticing tale about dreams, history and truth between the two. I enjoyed seeing similarities between Rebecca by Daphne DuMuir, and Shirley Jackson’s haunting houses, but was most pleased with the mixture of mythology and fae lore. This story is well written and enjoyable to all.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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LOVE IT

This book has everything you could want in a book, romance, mystery, magic, sibling love, found family. You name it! It’s absolutely everything I wanted and more!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it

This was an awesome! Need a movie now! A very unique twist on the story of a haunted house.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

It was ok

Not something I normally read. It just wasn’t for me. It felt like it was dragging and no excitement in the story.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Beautifully written.

I loved the imagery and the prose. Loved the emphasis was on the writing and not overly on the mystic. Although the mystic world played so well.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Poetic and beautiful

What an amazing narrator, story, author and just everything. I was enthralled from the beginning and so grateful to have stumbled upon this hidden gem.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Good not great

I didn’t love the narrator. The breathy cut off words of every sentence was disruptive to the story.
The story was creative and kept your interest. Like so many books, the ending felt a bit rushed and incomplete.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

It was ok

I listened because of how it was pitched on Reese’s book club. It was well written and I appreciate the environmental awareness and down with coal undertones but over all it was just weird. After listening, I felt like the author was pretty sure she made some incredibly thought provoking statement about society and our personal feelings of self worth but it just fell flat … except the author doesn’t know it.

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