Hare House: An Atmospheric Modern-day Tale of Witchcraft – the Perfect Autumn Read

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She rents a cottage from Grant, but also manages to ingratiate herself into the family's inner circle, becoming something akin to a friend or confidante to both Grant and his much younger, teenage sister, Cass. Quite a few mysterious happenings occur throughout, which may or may not amount to witchcraft, but I became increasingly frustrated as it felt as though the story wasn’t really going anywhere. It was crudely done, the letters crammed in towards the end, the paint running, but it was still clear.

While I understand that this goes hand in hand with an unreliable narrator, it just really fell flat. It is set in the modern day, there are planes and computers but it reads as if it is a long past era. But I can’t help but feel the author intended the protagonist to be more sympathetic than she is, as I was like, “why are you inviting this woman into your home? I have always loved hares – they carry a sense of wildness and an other intelligence that rabbits lack and it is no wonder that they have been connected to witchcraft and shapeshifting through folk lore. At the same time, the major events, when they come, have been so far telegraphed in advance that they don’t really have much impact.As I see it, there are two ways to read this story; one is the simple, straightforward, taking everything at face value way, the other is questioning absolutely everything. 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.

As a snow storm closes in in the novel’s final chapters, trapping everyone in the big house, things come to a head as emotions and the atmosphere runs riot. the slow unfolding, the macabre details, the setting, the beautiful writing about landscape, the expression of both freedom and isolation, the ways in which the ending is delicious and unsettling at once. In terms of the characters, I found the main character very hard to like and she thoroughly annoyed me. What a lovely change to read a book that takes the reader on a gentle journey around a beautiful part of the world.

And overall, the story is extremely depressing - nothing good happens to anyone, everyone is selfish, nobody is happy. The words Exod 22:18 appear in inscriptions throughout the setting – Exodus Chapter 22, verse 18 reading “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. There’s an interesting mix of horror and beach read chick thriller going on here but for the most part it’s pretty boring.

I didn’t find the story as tense or as thrilling or as spooky as I thought it would be, and I felt it was almost a bit too timid and conservative for me. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. It seems for a while she’s to be a positive influence but dangerous secrets and an impending snow storm will soon complicate things. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. There’s the odd tease and the odd flashback, but none of it really built up to anything and just seemed a tad repetitive.

A creepy, atmospheric read full of gothic imagery, Hare House captured me and stayed long after the last page. And yet, when I finished it, I found myself disappointed and left wanting, although I couldn’t really articulate why. An unnamed narrator arrives at a remote cottage in Scotland, one that is attached to the titular House.

The male characters have little depth (though I quite liked Davey and the ghost of Rory), Cass is a shrill hysteric, and the other women are either poorly sketched out (Helen, Kirsty) or tedious (the malevolent Janet). I finished this book feeling short-changed and that's not a good way for a reader to feel at the end of a 5 day investment. Gothic Scottish countryside, witchcraft, elements of mystery and building tension but there is a lack of a satisifying pay off. I just wanted to get the feel of other peoples thoughts on this as I loved the journey, just not the destination while reading this. Nothing is really explained, a lot of things just fall into the void, and what is implied to have happened would contrast with everything we’ve read up to that point, making the whole thing even more confusing.Witchy, mystical and intriguing, this book was a quick read that had a lot more to it than I was expecting. Grant and Cass's home, 'Hare House', is a gloomy place, decorated with multiple stuffed hares in human costume.