It’s just a little too open-ended, a little too conventional and a little too culturally conservative for my taste. We follow a woman who moves into a cottage on the estate of a formally grand Scottish manor and begins to get to know the inhabitants of the main house. She’s of an indeterminate age, but the hint is that she could still (just about) have children but feels she’s wasted her best years on the wrong person. The story is filled with suspense and the possibility of discovering at least one manslaughter under the influence of alcohol and am answer to whether Janet is a witch and what happened to make her so bitchy and cold.

I wanted more explanation about Ann and Janet; and /especially/ their relationship to the hares, if there was any at all. There are moments of metalepsis, when the narrator’s future self adds commentary: what would turn out to be the last time… or words to that effect. This is one of those books I find difficult to rate, I raced through it but at the same time I don’t think I really enjoyed it. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. In the end I don't think I would really recommend this to anyone, but it's a quick read for anyone who has picked it up.

The settings are vivid and the tension is palpable, which is the main reason I didn’t abandon this halfway through, because for the rest I was fairly disappointed.

Add to that, the main character's view on other females (in particular teenage girls) and I found myself growing wary of her, distrustful. I started Book for Thought in 2014 as a space to record my thoughts on books I read and be a part of the wonderful online book community. After completing an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, her first novel, Out of a Clear Sky, was published in 2008. Such a shame, because the ideas were clearly there and the writing itself was actually good, but I was left very unsatisfied overall.An unnamed narrator arrives at a remote cottage in Scotland, one that is attached to the titular House. Sally Hinchcliffe was born in London but grew up all over the world in the wake of her father’s diplomatic career. As her attitude towards the narrator becomes increasingly hostile, tensions rise to an unbearable level. The wind here was wild and gusting, the tops of the trees tossing violently, and for the first time it struck me that walking through forests in a gale wasn’t that sensible an idea. There’s an interesting mix of horror and beach read chick thriller going on here but for the most part it’s pretty boring.

The writing itself the author did a great job, but, it left me confused and wondering what I’d just read. I didn’t sympathize with any of the main characters and the side characters were hard to tell apart. Witchy, mystical and intriguing, this book was a quick read that had a lot more to it than I was expecting. A woman, about whom details are scant (she is never given a name; her age is only ever approximate; her appearance is never described) leaves London to ‘start a new life’ in rural Scotland.So, I think it’s likely I just wasn’t a good fit for Hare House and I imagine that readers who enjoy these kinds of stories - rather than get trapped in them against their better judgement - will find it well worth their time. If I hadn’t laughed before, I might have then, except that we had reached the churchyard gates and were standing staring at them. Gothic Scottish countryside, witchcraft, elements of mystery and building tension but there is a lack of a satisifying pay off. Almost from the off, nothing is what it seems (not even the name of the house) and a series of disturbing events follow, interspersed with the narrator’s explanation of the incident that led to the end of her teaching career. There is also an unreliable narrator, a single woman, approaching middle age, who has left teaching following an “incident”, some “mass hysteria” in the classroom.

I have, if you will forgive me, kept names to a minimum here, for reasons that will become understandable.

The blurb in the back mentions “a deeply unsettling modern-day tale of witchcraft” - it never got there.