Published By: Mantle
Pages: 320
Released On: 06/01/2022
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 withcraft, clay figures and young men sent mad.
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. And as autumn turns to winter, and a heavy snowfall traps the inhabitants of the estate within its walls, tensions rise to fever pitch.
*****
Thanks to Mantle for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Hare House has been on my radar for a while and I was excited to be given an early copy of it to review. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations.
I really hate giving less than positive reviews, but I have to be honest.
I expect a book – even one billed as a psychological thriller – to have some kind of build up in the first chapter or so, but I got 1/4 of the way through and felt nothing had actually happened. There’s the odd tease and the odd flashback, but none of it really built up to anything and just seemed a tad repetitive.
The main character was untrustworthy and didn’t seem like the right narrator for this story. Her, and the rest of the characters were, for me, a little too predictable, too much like cookie-cutter characters. 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.
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. But sadly, this just didn’t hit the mark for me.
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