Wow! I'm baffled, I'm bewildered, I loved it!

Starling house really hit me unprepared. Beauty and the Beast Retelling with a magic house? No that's not it! Starling house is like a calm gothic horror movie. Like the Watership Down series which the bunnies who tried to run away and most of them die. It's a horrific Alice in Wonderland where the Cheshire Cat tries to eat you and the white bunny is telling you you're out of time while bleeding on the carpet. And then you turn the page the vision disappears and you're standing in your normal life, but you are shaken and your clothes are all ruined.

The narrator did a crazy good job. Like a spider catching you in the net and trapping you in a cokon. Sometimes I wish for more voices for more povs, but that was not the case here. I was so trapped I couldn't stop listening. Natalie did go all out with whispering and panting and screaming and laughing and sobbing You can hear the smiles and the voice catching in Opal throat, you can hear the surprise and the anger and sometimes the softness, the love. Marvelous work!

It's a book so full of eary and scary pictures but our main character Opal is used to being scared, she refuses to be scared out of spite and out of necessity. Because when you grew up as an orphan trying to provide for your little brother, living in a cheap motel room in the nowhere of Kentucky, you sometimes don't have the luxury to choose. You have to walk home at night alone. You can't effort the sleeping pills. So you endure the nightmares and the looks of pity. And when they heir of the wealthy gothic mansion in town offers you a well paid job, do you have the luxury to refuse? Even if the house is possibly haunted? Even if he looks like the shadow of a man? Even if everybody in town gossips about this house and the people living there? Even if you had nightmares of being inside the house before you ever were? Even if the floorboards creak and the cupboards open by themselves? Even if you saw a strange shape moving behind the tree line? Why would you make that hold you back from the money you need and the home you never had?

The mistery is very well done and got me intrigued. Opal is a character I grew to liking so fast. In every tight spot I wished everything would end well for her and I could never predict what would happen next. Starling House had me on the edge of my seat, always ready to jump. And as a hobby writer I wish I will one day write a book that gets under the skin and into the dreams of people like Starling House did to me.

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