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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Some
Gothic horror elements; monsters and some violence
Language
Some
Appalachian vernacular; some profanity
Sexual Content
Some
Slow-burn romantic tension; some intimate moments, not explicit
Substance Use
Barely any
Moderate drinking among working-class characters
Emotional Intensity
A lot
Generational poverty and entrapment, gothic dread, the cost of hope in a dying place
What this book is about
Opal is twenty-something and determined to get her younger brother out of their dying Kentucky coal town. When she takes a mysterious job at Starling House — a gothic mansion belonging to the strange, prickly Arthur Starling — she enters a world of secrets, monsters, and magic tied to the land itself. Alix E. Harrow writes a gothic romance seeped in Appalachian atmosphere, environmental grief, and the particular desperation of people with nowhere to go.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
gothic horror atmosphere
themes of poverty and hopelessness
monsters in the dark
Reader Verification
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