It’s just a little too open-ended, a little too conventional and a little too culturally conservative for my taste. The owners of Hare House, the Hendersons, have been unlucky – perhaps even, as is later suggested, cursed. Not a book I am trying to claim is objectively perfect, but a book that is perfect to me, that feels precisely calibrated for me. A little too much meandering and not enough plot for me and I think I'd have liked a bit more folk lore threaded through it too. I liked it and can recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of a gothic-style, atmospheric mystery – in this case one which is set among the countryside and winding lanes of southern Scotland.

Everything about the story, how it’s told, how it’s written, the strength of the voice, the momentum of the plot. It is set in the modern day, there are planes and computers but it reads as if it is a long past era.It wasn’t there, I tripped back over the earlier chapters I’d just read to see if I had missed anything or been distracted from my thoughts. It was crudely done, the letters crammed in towards the end, the paint running, but it was still clear. There's clearly something mysterious going on with the narrator, and having more focus on that might have answered some of those questions I was left with. This book very much leaves you on edge, questioning your own thoughts and feelings and seeing shadows where there are none. The bewitching prose brilliantly evokes the bleak glories of a remote Scottish landscape, while the subtle shifts of plot and perspective lure the reader towards an unsettling denouement where nothing is quite what it seems.

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). The mystery, the setting, the atmosphere… I thought something along the way might be a let down, and I’d fall into the same group of people that hadn’t loved it - I was absolutely wrong, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it; so much more than I thought I would. Overall, Hare House is an engaging read with elements of the Gothic and folk horror woven subtly throughout. There are moments in this book that comfort and console me, and others that leave me chilled to the bone – not in a ‘spooky’ way, but existentially. 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.She relates her experiences solely from her own perspective and gives every appearance of being an unreliable narrator. I’ve seen a lot of other reviews, ranging anywhere from 3 to 5 stars, and there has been a lot of praise for it.

I really enjoyed the Scottish setting, and the occasional oblique references to myths and fairytales (the mysterious lady with the dogs, for example). The main character, a woman trying to leave her past behind as a mysterious event led to her losing her job in London, had all the cards to be an interesting, complex character but ended up being quite flat for me. I was willing to endure a certain amount of ambiguity in the hopes of seeing how everything came together at the end, but it just didn’t? 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. There’s no explanation for the mysterious happenings and the book is so heavy-handed with the overall “takeaway” at the end.It‘s a pity, because I think this book for one could have made very satisfying reading if it had stuck to its guns. 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 don’t need my books to promote good morals and I usually enjoy an unreliable narrator, but I at least was hoping she would be challenged on her extremely problematic views in some way by anyone at all in the text and she really wasn’t. As her attitude towards the narrator becomes increasingly hostile, tensions rise to an unbearable level.

I’m ok with a few things not being explained but the whole book and how it ended was just super vague. Striking up a friendship with her landlord, Grant, and his younger sister, Cass, she begins to suspect that all might not be quite as it seems at Hare House. Gothic Scottish countryside, witchcraft, elements of mystery and building tension but there is a lack of a satisifying pay off. It feels like a whole lot of nothing really happens and it puts me in mind of a similarly executed book, Pine.It seems for a while she’s to be a positive influence but dangerous secrets and an impending snow storm will soon complicate things.