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.

I loved this book--literally could not put it down, since Chloe Dalton's story of how she found a baby leveret while on a country walk near her home in England during COVID and what happened when she brought it into her home to raise is absolutely fascinating. Comparisons can, of course, be made to Helen Macdonald's bestseller "H is for Hawk" (which I also loved), but the thing that really drew me into Dalton's story is that she had no conscious plan or intention to raise the leveret and no idea at all how to go about it, as there is no tradition of hares being raised in captivity or as pets--neither of which, it's important to note, Dalton has any intention of doing. Given her complete lack of knowledge, Dalton spends the isolating days of COVID researching hares and sending for any hare-adjacent books she can find, a search that eventually leads her, for example, to the 18th century poet Willam Cowper, from whose poems and essays she gleans suggestions for what to feed the leveret. Through similar trial-and-error research and experiences, Dalton and the leveret grope toward a harmonious co-existence that feels hard won and yet somehow still organic and beautiful. There's so much else to this book--discussions of sustainable farming methods, the environment and climate change; the role of the hare in literature throughout the ages; a very particular home/work balance struggle--but at its heart, this book is about one woman's willingness to accept the hare and all its wildness (especially all its wildness!) and adapt her life to its rhythms, rather than the other way around. I will recommend this book to absolutely everyone.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Pantheon Books for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

I absolutely loved this book. I learned so much about hares, a species I originally knew nothing about. And as I learned, I grew to love the hare in this book as much as someone can love something they've never actually met.

The author shows such respect and love for wild things, you can't help but want to find the wild things by you to love.

"Raising Hare" is the story a woman unexpectedly caring for a newborn hare, The story is lyrical and engaging and the insights on trust, attachment, and letting go resonate without being trite or preachy. This is a good story for readers who love animals, and taming tales, but also for anyone struggling with transition or letting go, it may be just the balm you need. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. Pub Date: March 4, 2025.

#RaisingHare

I was completely enchanted by this nonfiction telling of how author, Chloe Dalton, came across a leveret and in an effort to rescue the infant she took it home. She took dutiful care to maintain wildness for the animal, yet provide milk and basic necessities. Over time a beautiful relationship was formed between human and hare. Daltons intent was to not have the hare be a pet. She therefore never named it.

I felt as if I was in the room with Chloe and the hare as little discoveries were found. Her interest in botany and finding grasses and foods that the hare would need and want I found endearing at this sweet goodness for an animal.

I am a sucker for animal stories. It's a micro niche that I fully claim. There's something about animal stories and their connection to nature and humans that I find fascinating to watch and read about.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for the gifted e-ARC.

Most importantly, a huge thank you to NetGalley, Chloe Dalton and Pantheon Books for providing me with a copy of this publication in exchange for an honest review.

“Despite having spent thousands of hours asleep in the house, the only trace the hare has left are shallow, almost imperceptible indentation in the carpet across the doorway to my office, where her warm, long body has worn the surface smooth with its minute daily adjustments; six of her whiskers, scattered over the years; and a few weightless tufts of fur. The damp footprints she leaves on the floor on wet or dewy mornings evaporate within minutes. The emotional impact she has left, by contrast, is immense."

Let me begin by being upfront: I'm a bit biased when it comes to lagomorphs. I currently share my home with a 2 year old English Lop rabbit and when I say "share my home", I really mean it's his house and he just tolerates me. That being said, I jumped (hopped?) at the chance to read this book.

I'm of full understanding that rabbits and hares are drastically different. I just didn't know /how/ different they were until Ms. Dalton shared her achingly beautiful story. She, having been self quarantined during the infamous COVID-19 pandemic in her English countryside home, isn't exactly the poster image of animal loving nature girl until one fateful day she stumbles upon a solitary leveret during a walk. Plagued with the inner turmoil of what to do (if anything), she finally decides upon rescuing it by taking it back home and nursing it back to full strength. Little did she know this small gesture would change her life and her heart forever.

Told with candid vulnerability and an almost lyrical quality, the author lets us peer into the window of her home as it changes with each passing day, learning more and more about not only nature but herself as well as she little by little alters her lifestyle in order to merely understand this mystical creature more. If I could give this book 10 stars I would. Until then, you can have 5 solid ones, Ms. Dalton. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking me along on this magical journey with you and Hare.

This is one of my favorite books of 2024. "Raising Hare: A Memoir" by Chloe Dalton is a breathtaking and touching reflection on what it means to connect not just with nature but with ourselves. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Dalton finds herself tucked away in her English countryside home, away from the busy London lifestyle she was accustomed to and thrived in, and where she would travel all over the world at a moment's notice for her job.

While living in the countryside, she stumbles upon a newborn wild hare (a leveret). She leaves the leveret for several hours, hoping the mother hare will reconnect with it, but it still has not moved when she returns. Since it's in the middle of a dirt road, she worries for its safety with its exposure to tractors and predators, so she carries it inside the safety of the stone wall of her gardens and into her home. This begins a wild adventure of bottled milk feedings and deep research to provide this tiny leveret the best possible chance for survival and release back into the wild.

Dalton never cages the hare, nor does she name it or cuddle it, as one would a pet. She is always careful to allow the animal full autonomy and the ability to come and go from her home as it pleases. As a result, it trusts her completely and will sleep beside her.

This unlikely friendship and touching narrative explores trust, freedom, and the delicate balance of companionship with a wild animal and what's in their best interest.

Dalton's writing is vivid and immersive; you can practically feel the fresh air and the wind and see the collection of wildflowers and plants in her garden. Hear the tractors across the fields, the leveret tapping on the glass to come into the house and see the hares hopping around the gardens and surrounding fields as the sun begins to set. Her ups and downs with the leveret—filled with uncertainty and happiness—are so heartfelt. You find yourself cheering for both her and her the hare as they figure out their unique bond and love for one another. It is truly beautiful to read!

Even more interesting is how Dalton weaves in fascinating facts about hares and their history in art and folklore, adding depth to her story. It’s a beautiful reminder that sometimes the best experiences come from the most unexpected places. And it was incredibly inspiring to see how this hare changed her in so many unique ways. "Raising Hare" is definitely worth a read if you’re looking for something that’s both captivating and heartwarming. Five stars all the way!

Thank you #NetGalley, #ChloeDalton, #Pantheon for the ARC in exchange for my honest review of #RaisingHare.

I found this book interesting and informative, as well as delightful. It was nothing like I had ever read. The insights Chloe Dalton brought to light, regarding nature and its inhabitants, were eye opening. I am not an animal lover per se, but I am concerned with doing no harm to living creatures. Having stated that, I really found the story fascinating. You will too. Thank you NetGalley and Pantheon for granting this book to me for review consideration. All opinions are my own. #RaisingHare, #Pantheon, #Goodreads, #NetGalley.