Opal has been dreaming about Starling House for years. It turns out the house has been dreaming about her, too.
This is a modern dark fairytale with a protagonist who has no qualms about lying and stealing her way through life if it means providing a better one for her brother. After meeting the odd inhabitant of the creepy house in the neighborhood, she finds herself in a war to protect the residents of a Kentucky town that didn’t always protect her.
This tale is Gothic and mysterious. It features flawed characters, a sentient house, a hellmouth in a place called Eden, and it addresses whose narrative gets remembered and passed on in society. It reminded me a bit of Ragnar Tornquist’s Dreamfall game, in that (SPOILERS AHEAD) the dreams of a little girl in a dreamland are doing very real damage in the real world–except in the case of Nora Lee in Starling House, the harm is very intentional! (END SPOILERS)
There is a romance aspect to this story, and I got a kick out of how, unlike in most novels, the readers keeps being told how generally unattractive these two lovers are. (Of note, Opal is 26 years old, although the book and everyone in it seem to treat her much younger.) There are some footnotes in this book, which I usually find I really like in novels, but here it seemed kind of half-assed; the point winds up being because the entire account is supposed to be Opal making sure the “real” story gets told, but the book never fully committed to this device.
Jessica Crawford 