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. At first she seems to be on holiday, but then she just offers to rent on a more long-term basis, and she’s in.

It was billed as a modern gothic novel about an unnamed British woman who rents a cottage in Scotland after a mysterious incident causes her to lose her longtime teaching job.

Yet the cold left me feeling alive, as if we were indeed the only things out there that were still living, the only things moving in the whole landscape. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Downgraded to 2 stars for stereotyping a single childless woman as desperate and manipulative, and random/irrelevant episode just for the purpose of shaming emotional eaters. As the story progresses the lines aren't so clear and the forces that are taking effect seem to be surrounding, if not coming from her.

But among the tiny roads, wild moorland, and scattered houses, something more sinister lurks: local tales of witchcraft, clay figures and young men sent mad. A former London school teacher, forced to resign under mysterious circumstances, rents a house in the Scottish highlands where she meets an obstinate old woman and isolated, parentless siblings. I don’t like what the reveal suggested because it invalidates a lot of what the reader suspected was happening.Two and a half stars because at least it kept me reading till the end, but I can’t say I really enjoyed this book. Hinchcliffe doesn't seem to be able to make up her mind whether she's writing a supernatural thriller, or a book about mental illness, and whether there really IS a witch, and if so, if it is the narrator, Janet, Cass or the enigmatic Ann (if she actually exists). She develops a prickly relationship with her neighbour, Janet, and a growing friendship with her landlord, Grant, and his somewhat flighty sister, Cass.

The themes are typical of this genre; mental illness, symbols of witchcraft, hares (inevitably), clay dolls, sprigs of Rowan, ancestral curses and the like. I’m ok with a few things not being explained but the whole book and how it ended was just super vague. An unnamed narrator arrives at a remote cottage in Scotland, one that is attached to the titular House. What a lovely change to read a book that takes the reader on a gentle journey around a beautiful part of the world.

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. There’s a sense of creeping unease, and the narrator is careful to prime the reader for something major to go wrong. I really enjoyed the writing style, the beautiful descriptions of the Scottish setting and the tension that was created as odd, creepy things began to happen. Overall, Hare House is just a confusing and muddled book that barely provided any answers or explanation. As the story goes on, you learn more about what made the woman lose her job as well as the mysterious past of the people who own the property.

Essentially, this didn’t quite have enough plot for my taste, feeling to me more as directionless meandering, but also didn’t go deep enough in exploring its characters to read like a character study. 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.The blurb in the back mentions “a deeply unsettling modern-day tale of witchcraft” - it never got there. Striking up a friendship with her landlord and his younger sister, she begins to suspect that all might not be quite as it seems at Hare House. 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.