Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Hare House

Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe defines itself as a horror. Lead by a nameless protagonist in first person writing, we are brought into her life as she decides to up and move to Scotland, hiding away in a tiny village where connection to the outside world is limited. We are lead into the story through a strange subplot, a mystery during which when she was a teacher at an all-girls school, the whole classroom of children fainted like dominos. It is assumed that this strange event is the reason she up and left, and now finds herself in the strange lands surrounding the titular Hare House.

She soon gets wrapped up in the lives of those living within Hare House - renting a small cottage on their land next door to a strange, gossipy neighbour named Janet - feeling herself entranced by both Cass and Grant, siblings, who have a tragic past but a way of getting to the protagonist and making her feel enchanted by them. The story follows as more and more strangely unexplainable and seemingly supernatural events take place around the house, whilst jumping back and forth to this ever-growing subplot of what really lead to all those girls fainting during that classroom.

Every time horror is within the picture, when tensions are ramping, and strange events are occurring, are some of the best parts of the work. Careful descriptions reveal the right amount to keep the reader guessing until each reveal, and a decent series of clues are smattered throughout to act as puzzle pieces for them to work on whilst reading through. This is also helpful, because most of the rest of the book is, quite honestly, difficult to get through.

The protagonist is unlikeable at best, seemingly always choosing to say or do the wrong thing whilst having seemingly no personality apart from liking a cup of tea. Everything interesting about her comes through how other people perceive her, which is never explained. The aforementioned siblings seem drawn to her, taking her under their wing, but every three pages they also are suddenly irritated with her, yet continued to invite her into their lives inexplicitly. She is constantly bombarding others with questions, and yet never in her own thoughts - that the readers are privy to - does she try to piece together what is happening around her; every exciting and potentially supernatural event is dismissed or attempted to be forgotten about all the way to the end of the book.

There is also a strange one-sided romance taking place between the protagonist and Grant, and yet every single one of their scenes that are supposed to depict why she is attracted to him - beyond what he looks like - are written as short asides like, "we made small talk." The only times they ever interacted and the reader saw the whole scene Grant seemed to flash back and forth between being irritated with her, to smiling at her softly or sadly. There was no chemistry between the two of them at all.

The blurb of the novel also promises that every building tension comes to a fever pitch within the novel when all the conflicting characters get snowed in to the titular house, and yet, it takes until the last 60 or so pages until they do get 'snowed in' and trapped in Hare House. Except, they don't get trapped in, the characters waltz in and out of the doors over and over again, out into the snow, breaking any chance of the promised tension building.

Another qualm I developed was with the writing style. Long stretching paragraphs would often overexplain things - describing how the protagonist was cold and wanted to light the fireplace in her cottage, and she remembered the last time she did that, and gosh it was so long ago - whilst simultaneously saying nothing. Yet, somehow, every interesting scene felt rushed, and ended once again with our protagonist dismissing it and moving along swiftly. At no point does anyone except Cass seem effected by anything that takes place, there is no growing fear, or trauma response, or even a curiosity to understand. It felt as though the book was dragging in all the wrong places, and rushing through what could have been much more developed. From a reader and a budding writer's perspective, the book could have done with losing 100 pages, forcing Hinchcliffe to focus on which parts felt more important to keep, which hopefully would have been the horror, and not the millions of cups of tea.

And, to spoil the ending:

It was extremely disappointing. The building tension of the subplot, repeating at the beginning of each new 'part' of the book, fell apart completely. Its leading mystery had been growing more and more intriguing as the novel went on, turning the head on the protagonist and leading the reader to believe perhaps all the supernatural events were stemming from her - and maybe that's why she barely reacts to any of it. Instead, the reason all those girls fainted, was out of revenge for one of the pupils being groomed by one of the other teaches that the protagonist was also sleeping with. The protagonist, to make herself even more unlikable, decided she would hate the child who was being groomed by a predator instead of disgust at the man she'd been sleeping with for going after a literal child. The book explains, in a muddled way, that when the protagonist was younger there was a game she would play at school where you could make yourself almost faint with a strange breathing technique, and so by breathing at this groomed child in this way, the child began to copy her, and fainted, and then all the other students were apparently also doing the same breathing so fainted too. It is as ridiculous as it sounds, and, despite all the supernatural elements, the most unbelievable part of the book.

For the main plot of the book, it ends with an attempted bang, but ends up being a whimper. Every other character, except our beloved protagonist, seems convinced that witchcraft is to blame for all the strange events occurring - especially surrounding the equally unlikeable character of Cass - and even to the end it is denied over and over. The ending is supposedly that Cass' mental health due to trauma has made her act the way she has, and assumedly the reader is meant to just accept that every strange event was all Cass orchestrating it. It's not as though it isn't a possibility within the world of the book, logically it can all lead back to Cass, but that feels like the most cheap cop-out version of the story that could have been told. If you're creating a book where the only tension is because of a potential supernatural threat lurking behind everything, don't then throw away your supernatural threat within the last 10 pages. It's not an exciting twist, it's a betrayal to your audience and their suspended disbelief.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to others, unless they're trying to learn techniques that don't work in writing and storytelling.

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bookforthought's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I read this book in full spooky season because the blurb made it sound perfect: gothic atmosphere, a remote estate, secrets, witchcraft... basically spooky gold. And yet, when I finished it, I found myself disappointed and left wanting, although I couldn't really articulate why. I gave myself some time to process (a little longer in truth than I'd planned to be honest), trying to get some clarity but several weeks on I'm still no further in this.

Starting off with the positives, the atmosphere is spot on. The author does a great job with the settings and captures the dark, cold weather particularly well. I could almost feel the cold seeping through the page (and my headphones for the parts I listened to on audiobook). The settings are vivid and the tension is palpable, which is the main reason I didn't abandon this halfway through, because for the rest I was fairly disappointed.

The characters were profoundly unlikeable, and not in a good, interesting way. 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. The rest of the cast is entirely forgettable, and I actually mixed them up pretty frequently aside from the mansion owner, his sister and the MC's neighbour, who came across as very one-dimensional.

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. Eventually, I was just bored and the ending felt completely anticlimactic. 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.

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. Such a shame, because the ideas were clearly there and the writing itself was actually good, but I was left very unsatisfied overall.

I received an advanced review copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

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enyltiak's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Incredibly atmospheric, there's a quiet, tranquil beauty of the setting enmeshed throughout the novel. The what and how and why of everything that happens is deeply intriguing and keeps you turning the page, especially as the tension ramps up in the last third of the book, but it all dissolves into... nothing? There's a climactic bang that is followed up by a sense of serenity, followed by an ominous, discordant ending note. Ultimately, there are so many unanswered questions that it feels less mysterious than unsatisfying. The main character is horrible (I do love an unreliable/unlikeable narrator) and she almost herself doesn't seem to understand her motivations, which makes it all that much trickier. I really enjoyed what there was, but it seemed like the end was missing.

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kristenreads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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aish_'s review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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ohennui's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

inthearchives's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I think this book did the things it did well very well. It had an interesting premise & it was atmospheric. If the main character is meant to repulse the reader intentionally, then that was also something done well, because she is an absolute creep. She made my skin crawl when her inner monologue turned to her thoughts and recollections of interacting with her teenaged students.

As others have mentioned, it doesn’t conclude well. You progress thinking several characters will develop into an interesting part of the plot, only to never hear about them again. A lot of wasted opportunity.

Odd book. Really can’t tell if the dated attitudes to women, mental health & food were intentional to be reflective of the setting, or if the author didn’t feel the need to be thoughtful about these themes. I even double checked to see if Sally Hinchcliffe wasn’t a pen name for a man, that’s how off the vibes in this book are.

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