Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for the ARC!

Chloe Dalton’s "Raising Hare" is a lovely, low-key piece of nature writing, and readers will have to decide for themselves if that’s enough.

The premise is every animal-loving child’s dream—finding a wild animal baby and caring for it. Across a brief 300-ish pages, the author describes her experience in doing just that, and the result is a warmhearted read with almost non-existent stakes. It feels safe, and I appreciated that.

Like many COVID-birthed projects, there’s an almost obsessive form of attention at play here. Dalton poured herself into learning about hares, and while much of what she shares is fascinating, it isn’t exactly memoir—I didn’t know jackrabbits were American hares, but I also don’t know that it really matters without more context. Ultimately, we never get a sense of where the hare fit into Dalton’s life because, during lockdowns, it was the sum of her life. That's not a critique as much as a reflection of the headspace we were all in, but it does shape the scope of the book.

It’s a little silly that "Raising Hare" is marketed as some sort of philosophical “meditation.” It is very sweet and generally interesting, but it has very little to say about “our place as human beings in nature,” as Matt Haig puts it. I actually think it’s a disservice to Dalton’s work to burden it with such pretense. She keeps the scope of her book deliberately small, eschewing abstraction in favor of affectionate descriptions of, say, the mechanics of a leveret yawn. In fact, in moments where Dalton does reflect on what the hare “taught” her, the writing feels trite—we can’t truly own wild animals.

Despite those critiques, I really enjoyed my time learning more about these animals, and I think certain readers—like my veterinarian sister—would adore the book.

It felt like this book could have been about half the length and been just as enjoyable. Or perhaps this was just not the introspective internal monologue book interspersed with animal knowledge I was looking for.
This book does contain very many varied facts about hares. All were interesting to know.
I don’t want to give spoilers but if you need a true ending…this may not be your cup of tea.
I received a ARC of this title, all opinions are my own.

this digital copy was very difficult to read formatting wise, but the book was very good! loved reading about the bunnies

Ahoy there me mateys!  One of my favorite childhood books was Watership Down along with its scary animated movie (poor Bigwig!).  I did not know much about hares and have to admit that I thought they were more closely related to rabbits given hares' nickname of jackrabbits.  When I learned about this memoir of a woman raising a baby hare during the pandemic, I knew I had to read it.

Though it takes place during the pandemic, the focus is not at all on the pandemic itself.  The book is a mixture of memoir and naturalist guide.  The memoir side touches on how the hare helped change the author's perspectives on her home, the countryside it exists in, and her viewpoints of her job and sense of self.  The nature side gives animal facts about hares and the hare she raised in particular.   There are also quotes from historical writing about hares which I really enjoyed.  Just be aware that there are discussions about the history of hunting hares in parts of the book.

One of the interesting things about the author is that she owns up to her mistakes in dealing with the hare while not regretting the experience.  I enjoyed her personal reflections on the relationships between humans and wildlife and how they changed over time.  The writing was easy to follow and I read this book quickly.  I avidly followed the hare's life and all of the details about it living in the author's house and the accommodations she made for it.

My ebook copy did not showcase the illustrations very well so folks may want to get the physical copy for those if interested.  I am very glad to have read this one and learn more about the subject.  Arrrr!

4.5 rounded up

This book was a delightful surprise! I was captivated by the author's experience raising a hare. Charlotte Mason would describe this memoir as a living book because it can be used to learn a ton about hares without being a boring regurgitation of facts that you would find in a textbook. The writing is engaging and beautiful and made me feel very connected to the hare and the author's connection to it. This book will not be for everyone, but if you are looking for a comfort read and are a lover of the miracles of nature,specifically hares, I recommend this lovely story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this wonderful story in exchange for my honest thoughts.

This book was a delightful read. It's a beautifully written story that will make you look at nature in a whole new way.
I highly recommend this heartwarming book.
I received a complimentary copy from Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor via NetGalley and was not required to write a review. All opinions expressed are my own.

What a treasure!! This book is on the longlist for the Women's Nonfiction Prize this year, and the honor is well deserved. I was fascinated by the story of this hare, and also the woman who raised her. The descriptions of the natural world are so beautiful, and I learned so much. I highly recommend this lovely book!!

Such a beautiful story! I learned so much about hares I never knew. Dalton has a way of writing that keeps you interested and engaged. It's a heart-warming tale that will make you look and care about the natural world in a new and profound way.

Raising Hare was a beautiful tale of a woman who ends up cohabitating with a wild hare. By taking care of this leveret, she is able to glimpse much about the lifespan/lifestyle of wild hares. This was a well-written reflection that touched on topics of nature, conservation, isolation, and the pace of life. I loved Dalton’s writing and the sprinkled drawings of hares were such a nice touch.

I’d highly recommend this novel to all readers! This stunning tale has something to teach us all.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for a copy of this work. All opinions are my own.

Chloe Dalton sounded like a workaholic before the COVID shutdown. She was the type of person who went outside during social gatherings to take work related cell phone calls. What really altered her life, however, was she found a motherless baby hare that she decided to take home and try to save. The wildlife person she contacted told her the chance of the hare surviving was slight, but she gave it a go and succeeded. The female hare would then be free to go outside and stay there when it was grown, but it decided to come and go, staying in the house whenever she wanted.

That did make her a semi-pet, even though the author repeatedly claimed she was not a pet, and that's why she didn't name her. She also didn't get into the matter of if the hare was housebroken, as well as the matter of fleas and ticks. Even litter box trained house rabbits aren't always totally housebroken. Plus, I've rescued baby bunnies from cats in the past and all had tiny ticks all over them. Instead, Ms. Dalton focuses on how profoundly the hare changed her life and made her appreciate nature in ways she never did before.

She starts to notice things in the outdoor world in a way a hare would notice things, from vegetation to field plowing to artificial light at night. Some readers will possibly think she goes too far in all of her observations and recommendations of ways humans can better coexist with the animal world. They may see her as becoming a nature workaholic. I personally found the book enjoyable and educational. I've had pet rabbits and have watched wild rabbits for decades. Hares aren't exactly the same as rabbits, but all lagomorphs are interesting, and very hard not to love and not to want to protect.

On a cold winter’s day in the English countryside, Chloe Dalton discovered a leveret (a hare in its first year of life) needing protection from the elements.  After waiting several hours to ensure its mother was not returning, Dalton gathered the wee leveret atop handfuls of grass so she did not touch it directly.

“Raising Hare: A Memoir” (Pantheon, 2025) is Dalton’s experience of raising the leveret beginning in 2021 during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns. Like many urban professionals, Dalton left London for her remodeled barn home as sheltering-in-place orders heightened.  A foreign policy advisor with over a decade working in the UK Parliament, if she “had an addiction, it was to the adrenaline rush of responding to events and crises…”

Although Dalton and a friend were both set up for remote work in the countryside, juxtaposing her work priorities with feeding a leveret with a pipette, for example, is one of my favorite parts of the book. Pets, children, and nature inherently interfere with the finer details of work and travel schedules. The combination of COVID-19 and the leveret in Dalton’s household permits a gentleness, a slower pace, to her previously harried life of politics.

The other part of “Raising Hare” that I found so compelling?  The serendipity! Dalton did not name the leveret, nor did she cage it. (I understand not caging it, but I practically named it while reading the book.) Her research skills aided tremendously in accumulating hare knowledge, which is not as readily available for as their domesticated cousins: rabbits. Also, her home encircles a small garden, which offers a safe place for the leveret to explore. 

For readers of Helen McDonald’s “H is for Hawk,” Catherine Raven’s “Fox and I,” and Carl Safina’s “Alfie and Me.”

Thank you to Chloe Dalton, Pantheon, and NetGalley for the eARC.

In February 2021, during the Pandemic in the UK, author Chloe Dalton comes across a newborn hare, a leveret and can't seem to find a mother for this little one. What would you do? Walk away and leave it to the mother to find her baby, leave it alone and let "nature" take it's course, or take it home and nurse it to health, making it a pet?

I am surprised how quickly I was drawn into this story, my interest in the leveret and the desire of Chloe Dalton to do the right thing by this creature. We humans (myself for sure!) want to make everything a pet without respecting the animal and its wants and desires as God created it and it's environment to be.

We follow Chloe and the leveret for several years and despite being an animal lover who loved this book, I can still highly recommend this story! I learned a few things from the author quotes she shared from authors through the centuries (yes some quite old quotes!)

My thanks to Net Galley and Pantheon for an advanced copy of this e-book.

When the Covid pandemic resulted in a lockdown in Britain, Chloe Dalton, a political advisor and frequent international traveler, decided to leave her place in London and go to the farm she had in the country, nothing fancy but a place she vacationed. Little did she know that this was to be a life altering experience in unexpected ways.

One day, while walking near her home, she happened upon a very small animal that appeared to be a hare, a baby hare, alone. Concerned about this susceptible creature, but also wary of interfering in a wild animal’s life, she waited to see if the mother would return. When she didn’t, Dalton’s adventure began and the seed of this delightful, insightful, often profound memoir was born.

The beauty of this book is watching as Dalton begins her experience of aiding a hare’s survival while trying not to interfere with its life as a hare. She uses instinct, book learning, the local vet. Instinct often seems the best. Her thoughts on coexistence of species continue to develop over time.

I highly recommend this book for its capture of the lives of the author and hare in an unusual co-existence, the descriptions of the natural world around Dalton’s farm, the life and activities of hares. I had no idea about hares!

Thanks to the author, NetGalley, and Pantheon for an eARC of this book. This review is my own

This memoir was in my top 10 reads of 2024 and I have not gone a week without thinking of the leverets and this magical story. Raising Hare is a moving encounter of human-animal connection chocked full of lessons which changed my brain. I especially appreciate that the hares this book center around were never held in captivity, a rarity when reading non-fiction about wildlife.

I cannot recommend Raising Hare highly enough, this fascinating memoir will enlighten you, give you all the cozy vibes and warm your heart.

Thank you, Chloe Dalton, for writing this beautiful story that I did not know I needed. I will love and cherish it forever.

As an owner of a rabbit, hares have always had a special place in my heart. Over the summer they are in my backyard hopping around with their families and it's literally better than any tv show on the air. You're wondering about their lives and what they do to survive our crazy planet. So when this book came out I knew it was one I wanted to read. It did not diappoint and made me love these mystical creature even more. The memoir is about the author'd experience of finding an abandoned baby hare which she brings home and starts to feed and nurture it. She knows she has to eventually let it go becuase it's a wild animal even though there are tons of predators to end it's life and imagine all of this happending during lockdown. A time when you were looking for something to connect with besides making bread or making pickles! The journey of how she finds it and the lessons we learn about hares is just spectacular. It's a happy but also a sad book about who we are and the creatures that share the world with us and how fragile we all are. This is a perfect book to enjoy a peaceful Saturday or Sunday and then have that book stay with you for a very long time and have you think about the next time you see a hare what it's life has been. I was so sad when this book ended. Diving into this the author's world was just magical. Thank you to Netgalley and Pantheon books for this lovely book.

The prose for this memoir was very strange. I liked the topic because I am an animal lover, but I just couldn’t get into the overall story because of wonky writing style.

During the Covid lockdowns, Chloe Dalton retreats to the English countryside and one day finds an abandoned leveret (baby hare) and rescues it, only to discover that most rescued hares do not survive. But the hare does live and Raising Hare is a delightful, thoughtful meditation on nature and the impact humans have on the natural world. This book is an utter delight and I slowly savored it in small chunks,

In early lockdown during the pandemic, Chloe Dalton was living in and English countryside and discovered a baby hare (leveret) in a worrisome place. After much internal debate, she brought the critter inside and started a crash course on raising a leveret, an uncommon thing to do. (She’s very respectful about the whole thing and works hard to cater to the animal’s needs, rather than her own.) Thus begins an odyssey for her that she has developed into a marvelous story for us. This is such a lovely, thoughtful, delightful read and will absolutely be one of my favorites of the year.

Chloe Dalton is a political advisor and speech writer who during the Covid lockdown retreated to a family home in the English countryside. Not long after arriving she came across a leveret, or baby Hare. She left it, but returned a while later and saw that it hadn’t moved, and concerned of what could happen to it, against her better judgment she brought the hare into her house.

What starts as an attempt to merely keep the small creature alive expands into a truly life changing event that opens her eyes to the natural world around us and how would might better live among our fellow creatures instead of just eradicating them for our own various gains.

I also listened to this on audio in nearly one trip between LA and Palm Springs and found myself falling in love with the hare she refused to name, lest she become more attached to the creature. Wonderfully read by actress Louise Brealey, it’s not only an education into the hare as a species, but a story of how the simplest of creature can change our lives, and the absolute beauty we can find in the natural world when we’re not distracted by the crush of the every day.I would highly recommend this, especially if you need your spirits lifted, and would also add that Dalton’s instagram is the greatest visual accompaniment to this lovely, special story. #RaisingHare will be out March 4th

Wow! I never thought I would read a whole book about hares (which are different than rabbits, I learned), but here I am. This is a book about Dalton’s experience starting to raise a wild hare in the English countryside during the pandemic. You follow Dalton’s journey with the hare, figuring out how to care for it while maintaining its freedom to be a wild animal. As she learns about the hare's needs and habits, she encounters writing about hares in poems, novels, folktales, and oral traditions. She gains an appreciation for wild animals and the natural world. If you love learning about animals and nature, this book is for you. It gave me a lot to think about in terms of how we humans impact nature and wildlife. I became invested in the hare’s story and kept turning the page to find out what happened next. I’m giving this book 5 stars because it executes what it set out to do flawlessly. As I said, if you’re not an animal person, this might be a boring read. If you’re interested in animals, nature, and science, check it out.