Blog Tour Sarling House

From Goodreads:

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.

Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.

As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.

If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.

I adore Alix E. Harrow’s writing with its flowery purple descriptions. I have enjoyed both all of her other works immensley and this book was no different. Her writing is always beautiful. I really liked the descriptions of the history and of Starling House itself. Despite being from Scotland I am familiar with the area of Kentucky and I could esily picture the old mining town, its inhabitants and the landscape surrounding it.

I liked Opal as a character is very well actualised. She is flawed, morally grey and has realistic reactions to her own emotional baggage. I could see a number of people not liking her due to the decisions she makes throughout the book but its this flawed tendancies just make her feel more realistic.She does however come across a little young at times. Yes, there are circumstances to it but I feel you could age her down to 15/16 and it wouldn’t actually change the story. One thing I need to highlight is the terrifically accurate portrail of depression that this book has and in particularly how Opal reacts to it.

One the oposite side Arthur Starling is your stereotypical quirky dark romanticly tortured recluse in the best possible way. This works so well for the story. The beautiful tortured sole hidden away in a world only he can lift the burden of just plays so nicely off of Opal’s character that I didn’t mind when he fell into the classic cliches.

Overall, I enjoyed the story but I didn’t find it as spooky or gothic as the description portrayed. I did find it incredibly slow. It had a lot of set up and a lot of the twists I could see building for a quite a while which is a little disappointing. I wanted something that would make my spine tingle and while the story kept me intregued this had a wee bit more YA romance feel to it that gothic horror. I jsut wanted a wee bit more from it, than beautiful descriptions and a well crafter main character.