A book that left me with very mixed feelings. The writing is, without a doubt, superbly atmospheric and wonderfully descriptive throughout. However, despite a storyline that intrigued and swept me along easily, the strangely rushed climax of the mystery surrounding Hare House wnen it finally unfolded, followed by a decidedly incoherent ending, left me both cold and disappointed.

I was intrigued by the blurb of this book with the Gothic Scottish vibe yet I feel I have missed something along the way. It certainly is an intriguing page-turner and many times I had to stop reading at night because it got a little too spooky! I was certainly invested in the mystery all the way through but while I enjoy a book that makes you think, I found the ending quite quick and left many things unresolved. I am definitely going to read it again and look for the clues I may have over-looked.

SPOILERS

There a small sense of unease running through the whole of this book,the feeling that things aren't quite right.
I'm not just talking about the decor of the house here.
It build slowly,as the recent past in unveiled,and then gathers speed racing to the conclusion.
I was an the edge of my seat at one point as things really ramped up... but then felt a little deflated by the ending.
With talks of witchcraft,the book definitely took on a creepy turn.
A good read overall.

Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe

In the first brisk days of autumn, a woman arrives in Scotland having left her job at an all-girls school in London in mysterious circumstances. Moving into a cottage on the remote estate of Hare House, she begins to explore her new home – a patchwork of hills, moorland and forest. But among the tiny roads, dykes and scattered houses, something more sinister lurks: local tales of witchcraft, clay figures and young men sent mad.
I love books like this one where you can feel the atmosphere and the undertone of something not quite right happening . It had a creeping all encompassing dread about it . One definitely to be read on a dark and gloomy day , or at home alone at night.

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 experience reminded me a little of reading things like Gone Girl I just got caught up in wanting to know what was going on, even though I wasn’t expecting a satisfying denouement. Although it’s well-crafted in terms of prose style, atmospheric, and Sally Hinchcliffe’s highly effective at establishing a sense of place, the issues I had were with the story/plot and the representation of certain characters. The novel’s set in a remote area of rural Scotland where a rather enigmatic woman has retreated, after an unspecified incident ended her teaching career. She relates her experiences solely from her own perspective and gives every appearance of being an unreliable narrator. It’s difficult to go into too many details without spoilers but this falls somewhere between psychological and supernatural mystery – with a nod towards folk horror. The narrator becomes embroiled in a series of unsettling events related to the local community: hints of witchcraft, mysterious animal deaths, and disturbing effigies abound. However, it’s unclear what’s real and what’s imagined.

My difficulties with this were partly linked to the fact that the tension between the psychological and the supernatural wasn’t resolved in a way I found particularly convincing, and partly to the representation of older and/or single women which seemed quite stereotypical. Although, to be fair, none of the characters came off that well overall: the dog was quite endearing but unfortunately failed to make it to the end. The central female character was especially problematic, self-deluding and manipulative which seemed to be attributed to her being lonely, single and on the verge of middle age: she reminded me of a younger version of Barbara in Zoe Heller’s Notes of a Scandal a novel I found intensely annoying but a lot of other people seemed to enjoy. 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. It’s not at all a bad piece of writing, and it’s often quite a gripping and eerie one. It’s just a little too open-ended, a little too conventional and a little too culturally conservative for my taste.