Generally, the pictures look great in the marketing, but the house is not to the same standard as the advertising. It is the start of the year, the weather has chilled so far that the car needs de-icing in the morning and I am reliant on my head torch for my morning runs, and I am both driving to work in the dark, and coming home in the dark. And it is on days like these when my mind yearns for a good, dark chilling Gothic yarn.

The welcome gifts were very much appreciated and we had a fab week as it was very near to the care home we had booked for my mother. Plenty of pots and pans although couldn't find a cheese grater Note: As the postcode is used to identify the general area of the property, it may not always reflect its precise location, therefore please only use this map as a guide. Designed in the form of a country manor house in a Georgian style, the house features a reception hall with a marble staircase and solid oak floor. The is also a double aspect sitting room and a family room with Bi-fold doors onto the terrace. And the language! The writing! Crisp as fresh snow, sharp as broken glass, not a sentence wasted, not a word out of place.Relax in the peaceful surroundings in the covered hot tub andexplore the beautiful gardens which are a haven for wildlife

Please note there is a step on entry to the property and there are steps from the lounge to the kitchen area as well as stairs to the first floor 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. 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. She meets the family who owns the grounds and shortly after her arrival, strange things start happening at the cottage and the main estate house. 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. Sounds promising, right? Currently, an array of community groups meet at the house on a weekly basis, with a quarterly artisan market each season: We have an unnamed narrator; a woman whose teaching career came to an end after a seemingly innocuous incident involving her A-Level students. To retreat/escape/start again, she decides to take refuge within a remote Scottish town. 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. The family have suffered tragedies, but as our narrator spends more time there, she discovers that there are rumours and whisperings between the locals, suggestions of witches. It took ages to get into it as the story was very slow paced. I didn't particularly like any of the characters, they were unrelatable and odd. After finishing the book I had no idea what had actually happened. It wasn't clear if the narrator was a witch or not, or if the suspected neighbor was. Was the hare a hare or a witch in disguise?With over 10,000 sq. ft of flexible accommodation, the house was configured and built for family living and entertaining. Medium Exterior Rustic Peter Rabbit Hare Garden Wall House Gate Sign Hanging Metal Art Sculpture Gift Present I can’t wait to read this again. It’s going to become that special thing, a personal classic, I can just tell. Adored it, everything about it.

Outside is a small gravelled terrace area, but to be honest you are just as likely to pop up the street to one of the local cool cafes to save on your washing up!!Hare House is not its real name, of course. I have, if you will forgive me, kept names to a minimum here, for reasons that will become understandable . . . 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? When you finally find out why the narrator lost her job, the event itself and the investigation after were so improbable that I just don’t believe it would ever happen that way, even in fiction. There’s no explanation for the mysterious happenings and the book is so heavy-handed with the overall “takeaway” at the end. The ancient town of Chipping Norton, steeped in history and culture, is set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in the shadow of the Rollright Hills in this unspoilt area of Oxfordshire. Chipping Norton boasts a popular weekly market, numerous book and antique shops, many cafes, restaurants and pubs serving excellent food and local ales, art galleries, a museum and a thriving theatre. Chipping Norton is surrounded by the pretty limestone villages of the Cotswolds and offers many walks and cycle trails from the town centre, together with a Lido, perfect for a relaxing swim at the end of a busy day. Blenheim Palace, Rousham House and Gardens and numerous National Trust properties are close by, and a little further afield Stratford Upon Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare, and the magnificent university town of Oxford are a real delight. A wonderful holiday destination, perfect for exploring all this lovely area has to offer. Consciously or otherwise, the flame-haired beauty, who has all the loveliness that our narrator believes she has lost, sees through the older woman. “People are always drawn to Maggie’s Pool,” she jokes – or does she? “Especially those with a dark past and a history to hide.” When the ex-teacher loses her rag with the fragile girl over a prank with the stuffed hares in the hallway, we begin seriously to question her reliability as a narrator. This is one of those books I find difficult to rate, I raced through it but at the same time I don’t think I really enjoyed it. The experience reminded me a little of reading things like Gone Girl I just got caught up in wanting to know what was going on, even though I wasn’t expecting a satisfying denouement. Although it’s well-crafted in terms of prose style, atmospheric, and Sally Hinchcliffe’s highly effective at establishing a sense of place, the issues I had were with the story/plot and the portrayal of certain characters. The novel’s set in a remote area of rural Scotland where a rather enigmatic woman has retreated, after an unspecified incident ended her teaching career. She relates her experiences solely from her own perspective and gives every appearance of being an unreliable narrator. It’s difficult to go into too many details without spoilers but this falls somewhere between psychological and supernatural mystery – with a nod towards folk horror. The narrator becomes embroiled in a series of unsettling events related to the local community: hints of witchcraft, mysterious animal deaths, and disturbing effigies abound. However, it’s unclear what’s real and what’s imagined.