The white hare

Review by Booklist Review

In 1954, Mila, along with her mother, Magda, and Mila's young daughter, Jane, move to the coast of Cornwall, hoping to restore the house at White Cove to its former glory as a party venue. Mila is still stinging from a bad breakup, but Magda is determined to make it work, and Jane is enchanted by the magic of the nature around her. They meet Jack Lord, a man seemingly without a past, who helps them navigate their relationship with the local contractor and pitches in on the renovations. But White Cove is full of secrets, and some locals, including the sanctimonious local vicar, think the house should be left alone. As Magda and Mila butt heads, Jane starts acting strangely, insisting her stuffed rabbit is alive. And who is the mysterious White Lady locals warned them of? A home renovation story with a Gothic flair, Johnson's latest (after The Sea Gate, 2020) offers suspense, historical drama, and a hint of romance. Fans of Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden (2009) will be drawn in here.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Johnson (The Sea Gate) delivers an engrossing gothic tale of family secrets, scandals, and ancient mysteries in a small Cornish village in 1954. When Londoner Mila Prusik, 26, discovers her husband's betrayal, her mother, Magda, pressures Mila to leave him. The two women move with Mila's five-year-old daughter, Janey, to a weathered beach house in White Cove. Though once a setting for posh gatherings before WWII, the house took on a reputation of harboring an evil force after the previous owners disappeared. Magda, vain and manipulative, torments Mila for her failed marriage; later, Magda reveals secrets from her past to Mila, which explains some of her hostility. Magda is also cruel to Janey, a clever child, whose toy rabbit is a proxy for Janey's fanciful visions. With the help of handyman Jack Lord, Magda begins returning the house to its former opulence, and invites the village to its grand opening on New Year's Eve. Johnson uses the party to revisit another New Year's Eve when a tragedy occurred in Jack's childhood, just as Mila and Jack are beginning a relationship. Though the supernatural elements involving Janey feel a bit overdone, there are plenty of savory atmospheric details, and Magda's and Jack's confessions hit hard. For the most part, Johnson gets the job done. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

Johnson's (The Tenth Gift; The Sea Gate) writing is deliberate and lyrical in this novel about mothers and daughters that also speaks to readers yearning for connection and struggling with feelings of displacement. It's 1954, and Mila and her five-year-old daughter Janey are looking for a fresh start. After a disastrous and humiliating breakup with Janey's father, Mila, her mother Magdalena, and Janey relocate from London to the western reaches of Cornwall in the White Valley, where a large house, abandoned since the war, will be their new project. Magda has her heart set on turning it into a grand guest house by the sea, no matter the unsettling local rumors about the property. Mila feels trapped between her mother's increasing demands and her inclination to nurture her daughter's growing sense of self as well as her own. Janey's vivid imagination, her connection to her stuffed rabbit, and local lore about the power of the natural world all coalesce to illuminate the power of place and history. VERDICT A refreshing and comforting read for fans of Alice Hoffman and V. E. Schwab. Gorgeous eco-supernatural elements make hauntings attractive.--Julie Kane

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Chapter 1 1 The body lies in the surf, lapped by the edges of the incoming waves. Each time the water falls back, little rills and whirlpools burgeon around the head and feet, making the pebbles rattle and the figure's long red hair undulate like seaweed. A gull swoops in to examine the scene; it is not unknown for a seal or even a dolphin to wash up on this treacherous stretch of coast. The instinctive curiosity of the perpetual scavenger combined with communal memory compels it to fly low to investigate. But the dead thing is neither a seal nor a dolphin. It gives off no smell at all as the blackback glides over it, and so the gull flies on, catching an updraft at the western arm of the cove, which takes it soaring over the dark woods on the hillside. Out on the eastern horizon, pale sun breaks through the mist, melding sea and distant headland into a single hazy shape, a fata morgana from which fortresses may rise and fall or ghost ships break free under tattered sail in search of their lost crews. It could be any time, or no time. And still the body lies there, larger waves lifting one pale hand as if the figure is making a feeble attempt to summon help, but no one comes. Oystercatchers fly past, skimming the surface of the ocean, their plaintive cries piercing the cool air. In the woods, rooks rise cawing in a sudden clatter of wings that echoes in the valley's dark cleft. Sandflies buzz over the seaweed stranded further up the beach by the tide and drift lazily over the body as the waves gradually fall back towards the ocean. A small grey-green crab scuttles out of a rock pool and runs sideways over the sea-foamed stones and across the corpse's foot, pausing briefly to register the unfamiliar texture, then resuming its path, picking up speed as if disturbed by its discovery. The sun climbs higher. The body now lies fully exposed, a clear landmark on the shore. It lies like a person in repose, on its side, one arm flung up above the head, face turned from the land as if spurning human interaction. The soles of its feet are white as lilies and beginning to wrinkle. One knee is drawn up, lending the figure a dancer's poise. The stains on the body's clothing contrasting with the muted colours of the natural world punctuate the scene like a shout. Bruises have flowered like dark roses upon the pale limbs. There are many submerged rocks along this stretch of coast. It is a place where mariners thrown from storm-wrecked vessels think to save themselves by swimming to the apparently welcoming shore, only to find the currents fiendishly working against them. Few, if any, survive a shipwreck here. But this body is not the victim of a shipwreck. It is told in these parts that for a short time a corpse's eyes may retain the ghostly image of the killer, or killers, their gaze last fixed upon. But maybe those who found the body arrived too late, for the only reflection in its clear blue eyes is of empty sky. Excerpted from The White Hare by Jane Johnson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---