In the end, it actually did remind me a bit of Andrew Michael Hurley – not Starve Acre, and definitely not The Loney (to which the publisher compares it), but rather his best and most underrated book, Devil’s Day, for the slow build of unease against a beautifully realised pastoral backdrop. 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. Someone also seems to be wandering about the place writing Exodus 22:18 (Thou shalt not permit a witch to live). She immediately insinuates herself into the household of the troubled teen girl and her handsome older brother. 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.

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.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. I have, if you will forgive me, kept names to a minimum here, for reasons that will become understandable . 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. I just wanted to get the feel of other peoples thoughts on this as I loved the journey, just not the destination while reading this. Moving into of one the old, slightly run down yet quaint cottages on the estate of Hare House, exploration beckons towards it’s beautiful and wild surroundings but as the nights get colder and darker, it’s not just shadows that are looming as it becomes apparent there is a very good reason this place seems so abandoned and isolated.

And Cass, initially friendly, soon reveals herself to be volatile and manipulative - and to be convinced that she is being targeted by a witch. The subplot involving Rory is underdeveloped, there's insufficient back story about his family, Cass's fits of hysteria get repetitive and the ending is confused - and feels unlikely, bearing in mind what has happened in the previous scene.The narrator thinks little of the remark, but it will prove to be far more significant than she realises. 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. I didn’t sympathize with any of the main characters and the side characters were hard to tell apart. After the death of their parents and brother, only two now remain: Grant, the relatively young (‘not yet thirty’) master of the house, and Cass, his capricious teenage sister.