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A review by squids_can_read
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Opal's life could be going better. She's working a dead end job trying to make ends meet and keep her brother in school. The one thing that Opal shouldn't be doing is looking at the Starling House with it's mysterious caretaker. Now she has a new job, one that pays infinitely better but may bring some unwanted feelings to the surface.
The characters in this book were literally amazing. They were so rich and they were all extremely flawed people. I really enjoyed learning more about the characters and watching them grow. The actual plot of the book was really interesting and incredibly written. I literally think that this book owns my soul.
However, I also am going to fight Alix for how this book was written. The actual story is literally amazing. No notes. Absolute perfection. It was the addition of the footnotes that first put me off. Having a book written in first person with footnotes also written in first person but the people taking be different was a really terrible move. I actually stopped reading the footnotes because it was taking me out of the story so much. Moving to the end of the story, I didn't love the epilogue. It was slightly weirdly written but I was going to let it go and then I got to the fake bibliography. That's right a fake bibliography. With the epilogue it was obvious that this book was written as part of a history of the area book but the bibliography was fake. As someone who has had to make a bibliography for almost every single paper that I have written for school, it annoys me to no end that Alix wrote a fake bibliography. It just didn't make any sense with how the book was actually written.
If you can get over the parts detailed above(skip them), then this book is a beautiful read and I would definitely give it a read.
The characters in this book were literally amazing. They were so rich and they were all extremely flawed people. I really enjoyed learning more about the characters and watching them grow. The actual plot of the book was really interesting and incredibly written. I literally think that this book owns my soul.
However, I also am going to fight Alix for how this book was written. The actual story is literally amazing. No notes. Absolute perfection. It was the addition of the footnotes that first put me off. Having a book written in first person with footnotes also written in first person but the people taking be different was a really terrible move. I actually stopped reading the footnotes because it was taking me out of the story so much. Moving to the end of the story, I didn't love the epilogue. It was slightly weirdly written but I was going to let it go and then I got to the fake bibliography. That's right a fake bibliography. With the epilogue it was obvious that this book was written as part of a history of the area book but the bibliography was fake. As someone who has had to make a bibliography for almost every single paper that I have written for school, it annoys me to no end that Alix wrote a fake bibliography. It just didn't make any sense with how the book was actually written.
If you can get over the parts detailed above(skip them), then this book is a beautiful read and I would definitely give it a read.