Wow. What a great read this was. Dark, moody, perfect. This was a unique find and will be talked about for years.

Set in Ireland, The Temple House Vanishing is a dark story of a teacher and his student who went missing 25 years ago mysteriously from their private, Catholic school. This story is told in alternating POV and timelines, from present day with a journalist and 25 years ago with Louisa, the student who went missing. At times the switching timelines and POVs was confusing, but for the most part it was easy to follow once it was clear what was happening.

I desperately love private school, dark academia mysteries. Something about the boarding school/private school vibes just sit well with me. This book was appropriately dark and twisty. However, a lot of it fell a bit flat for me and it wasn't hard to figure out what the ending would be. For a mystery it wasn't exactly... mysterious. It had all the elements of unreliable narrators, paranoia, unrequited love, etc but lacked a deep mystery that would keep me enthralled.

I do like some nuances that the author threw in, like the epilogue and it's POV, the beginning part that sets the tone of the story, and the main villain. There are definite positive qualities to this point, so if you are a dark academia, mystery buff I would recommend giving it a try.

**Thank you to Algonquin and Netgalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review**

Although the author used eloquent and sometimes lyrical language, this novel lacked coherence and engagement.

I’ve seen lots of comparisons to The Secret History with this one. Totally fair. The writing style of The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue feels a bit more akin to maybe Emily St. John Mandel or Charlotte McConaghy to me.

That said, the prose is lush. It’s a gothic, atmospheric novel that dives into the lives of a scholarship girl and her vivacious, rich friend, a charismatic teacher, and a journalist years later still captivated by the two who went missing.

It’s a book for lovers of language and character study. It’s a slow burn novel and one that’s not full of unpredictable twists. So, if you are looking for a fast-paced thriller, this might not be the one for you.

I could see this being a book club pick for those ISO a literary thriller with some heft in a small package.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

There are two types of girls who go to Temple House. The legacies who come from prominent families and the scholarship students whose talents shine bright enough to get them noticed. Victoria is part of a long line of women who have attended the school. When Louisa arrives she is drawn not just to this charismatic teacher that a lot of the girls have a crush on but also to Victoria. She revels in being noticed by her, being chosen to take part in Victoria and Mr. Lavelle's excursions.

When both Louisa and Mr. Lavelle disappear at the same time rumour has it that they have run off together. But Temple House is closed mouthed and its familes and have circled their wagons. It is now 25 years later and a journalist who grew up in the shadow of Louisa's disappearance has decided to dig for clues into this life-long mystery. She visits the school, talks to former students and staff as well as the police who investigated the case. She scours the internet for clues and direction. A new picture starts taking shape. The vision of Mr. Lavelle as a charming fellow who could break anyone out of their shell starts to fade as people who knew him describe a man with a darker side with many secrets to hide. Was he capable of harming Louisa? Is it possible that both he and Louisa are dead? Did Victoria or oneof the other girls act out in a fit of jealousy? To what extent is Temple House complicit?

The Temple House Vanishing is written in dual timelines. The present is narrated by the journalist and the past by Louisa. I found the journalist chapters more intriguing as they dealt directly with unravelling the mystery. Overall the book is well written, but the pacing was very slow. I can see the parallels between this book and Kate Elizabeth Russell's My Dark Vanessa. Atmospheric and brooding, I would recommend this book to people who like gothic novels.

🏰The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue is thrilling but not a typical thriller. A dual narrative, present day and past begins in the present with the suicide of a character from the past and builds to the reveal of what really happened 25 years ago between two girls attending a Catholic boarding school run by nuns and their somewhat bohemian young male art teacher.

It's hard for me to realize that 25 years ago would have been the 1990s because in some ways the past narrative feels like it was from a time longer ago.

If you are a fan of dark academia with Irish gothic vibes you may enjoy this title. I especially appreciated that I didn't figure out what happened early on, and that while a lot of questions are answered, in the end there are some loose ends that kept me thinking.

The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue is a poetically-written gothic novel set at a girls' boarding school in Ireland that centers on the mystery of what happened to a student and teacher who went missing years before and were never found. The dual timeline story starts in 1990, following Louisa, a girl on academic scholarship from a working class family during her first year at the Temple House School. The second timeline is set 25 years later, following a journalist who is investigating what happened to Louisa and her teacher at the school.

When Louisa starts at the boarding school, she quickly becomes enamored with enigmatic classmate, Victoria; and their young, bohemian art teacher, Mr. Lavelle. He is charismatic, without boundaries, and soaks up attention of his female students. The girls
play games at being adults, not realizing the possible repercussions. The setting is gorgeously described and atmospheric and there are intriguing religious and philosophical ruminations. We're kept guessing up until near the end about what happened to Louisa and Mr. Lavelle. I loved the exceptionally creepy epilogue and learning what has become of Louisa, Mr. Lavelle, and Victoria.

Thank you Algonquin Books for providing this ARC.

When I read some descriptions of The Temple House Vanishing, they had me immediately sucked in with sentences like: "In 1987, a sixteen year old girl and her 25-year-old teacher disappeared from an Irish boarding school that sat on a cliff overlooking the sea, and haven't been seen since." As a former '80s teen who had a massive crush on my young English teacher and as a reader who loves a twisty mystery, I was IN.

Rachel Donohoe's debut novel, told from several different character perspectives centers around Louisa, a brilliant high school on scholarship at an elite Catholic high school tucked deep atop the Irish coast. She's struggling to fit in here, much like at her old public school she's always felt like an outsider, unseen and misunderstood. Then she meets the aloof cool girl Victoria and dashing young art teacher Mr Lavelle, who draw her into their private world and she finds herself involved at last in a friendship - one that confuses her, awakens certain passions in her and exposes her to the often bizarre world of the ultra rich. But still, she's finally got what she's been craving - people who make her feel seen and heard.

The book starts in the present day, with the unsolved mystery of what happened to Louisa and Mr. Lavelle who both vanished from campus together on the same day and haven't been seen or heard from since. The book goes back and forth from what did happen at the school in the '80s and to the now, with a journalist who is reinvestigating the cold case on its 25th anniversary to try and find new clues to the highly publicized case in which most people are torn between theories that Mr Lavelle killed Louisa and went underground or that the two were romantically involved and ran away together to some far flung location.

The book is haunting , absorbing and provides just enough twists (and a few breadcrumbs) to keep us engrossed and guessing until finally, at the end - we are rewarded with what really happened. It reminded me a little of two books I read (and loved) last year, My Dark Vanessa and Catherine House. It's kind of like if those two books had an Irish baby. So if you liked those two books, my guess is you (like me) will be into this one as well.

I read this book (thank you #netgalley) in about three days, and I know Louisa will haunt me a bit for days to come when I'm still thinking about this book. Five out of five stars.

It’s been twenty five years since the art teacher and a student at Temple House went missing and a new journalist is covering the story again for its anniversary. No one knows what really happened the night they went missing. Determined to discover new information on the scandal, the journalist talks to everyone they can involved with he school and discovers what really happened that dark mysterious night.

At first the way the book was written was kind of annoying to me, but soon I realized it made the book really interesting and had me turning the pages even faster. Just when you thought you were going to get a key bit of information the point of view would change and you’d be left wondering what was going to happen next.

I really enjoyed this story and trying to figure everything out. I don’t usually read adult mystery novels but after this one I will definitely be checking out more books in this genre.

I was really not expecting the ending I got from this book and how surprised I was. This book was such a great read. I’m really glad I had the chance to read this book and be part of the blog tour.

Thank you, Algonquin Books and NetGalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Disclaimer: I received this arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: The Temple House Vanishing

Author: Rachel Donohue

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 4/5

Recommended For...: Mystery lovers

Genre: Mystery

Publication Date: February 6, 2020

Publisher: Algonquin Publisher

Pages: 336

Recommended Age: 16+ (sexual content, TW suicide, slight gore, child abuse TW)

Explanation of CWs: Suicide at the beginning of the novel and child abuse is present throughout the novel.

Synopsis: Twenty-five years ago, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and her charismatic teacher disappeared without trace...

In an elite Catholic girls' boarding-school the pupils live under the repressive, watchful gaze of the nuns. Seeking to break from the cloistered atmosphere two of the students - Louisa and Victoria - quickly become infatuated with their young, bohemian art teacher, and act out passionately as a result. That is, until he and Louisa suddenly disappear.

Years later, a journalist uncovers the troubled past of the school and determines to resolve the mystery of the missing pair. The search for the truth will uncover a tragic, mercurial tale of suppressed desire and long-buried secrets. It will shatter lives and lay a lost soul to rest.

The Temple House Vanishing is a stunning, intensely atmospheric novel of unrequited longing, dark obsession and uneasy consequences.

Review: This book was pretty good. I liked the plot and I thought the writing was well done. I also liked the character development overall.

However, I did think that the opening was rather off-putting. It was really similar to other books like it. I also felt like the world building wasn't as well done as possible. The pacing was also a little too slow for me.

Verdict: It was great!

I want to first thank Algonquin books for sending the ebook copy my way for an honest review. When I got the email, asking if I wanted to review this book for the blog tour, I immediately said yes. So many buzzwords within the synopsis. Boarding school, mystery, disappearances, set in Ireland. I was excited to start. Giving this one a 3.5 stars

The Temple House first belonged to a rich man. A collector. Who hung himself in the woods outside his house. Years later Nuns purchased the house and turned it into a school. For 50 years these ladies taught rich girls how to worship and be successful. Louisa our main character is an average teenager from a small town. She is the brightest the town has to offer and she soon learns she has been accepted into this elite school with a scholarship. She is excited to leave her boring life and her parents failed marriage.

On her first day she meets Victoria. A girl, otherworldly. She also meets the young and attractive art teacher Mr. Levalle. This is her fate.

'Temple House' has two POV's. One is in Louisa's POV as she is meanders her new Catholic School and the other is from the Journalist. I don't remember ever getting a name. The Journalist is about 10 years younger than Louisa and is writing a story about the school and the infamous disappearance. It's been 25 years later and the question still remains. What happened to Louisa and Mr. Levalle? Did they run away together (scandalous)? Did Mr. Levalle murder his former student (outrageous)? The Journalist is more interested in this story because she kind of knew Louisa. Louisa was her next door neighbor. She has an itch to find out what really happened. So begins the process of finding out.

I enjoyed this read. I was able to read it in two days. Very engrossing and kept you engaged. On the other hand I've heard this story before. So much so, it kept taking me out of the story. Maybe it's because teen dramas are always happening at boarding schools. There's always the clicks and mean girls. There is always a misunderstanding or better yet, they know exactly what is going on but lie to make themselves look angelic and perfect.

This book reminded me of 'The Lying Game' by Ruth Ware. A click of girls (duo in this case), they are untouchable to the outside. They make games and drink and smoke and are so old, but not. They find themselves with an artist and he draws pictures in the firelight. A letter, sketches emerge. The school is disrupted. There is a lie that is kept for decades. The ones involved confronted.

This book also reminded me of 'The Secret Place' by Tana French. Again we have a boarding school run by a rich powerful woman. There's a murder in that one, and its been covered up to keep the school open and running. Wouldn't want to lose those grants. There's two groups of girls the means girls and the weirdos. Neither group sees eye to eye and so they are always out for blood. The Secret Place unfolds slowly. The two POV's take turns revealing the mystery little by little. The cops think one thing, then the past is shown to us by the girls and they tell us the real story. The same thing happens in this book. We get Louisa's story about the school and then The Journalist's POV and what she is gleaning for her interviews with people from the school or who interacted with Louisa that last night. We get one small piece at a time.

Another reason I'm giving this book a 3.5 star is because it was kind of predictable. I'm not one to ever catch on to the antagonist. Always holding out hope that everyone is who they claim to be. But this one was kind of obvious. You could slowly see the deterioration of one of the characters and just know something was wrong.

There is a twist at the end of the book that reminded me of Japanese horror which I did enjoy. We never get that kind of twist with our (mainstream) endings. It definitely made up for the similarities of the books I talked about above.

I like what I like, and since my buzzwords are what they are there is bound to be some forms of repetition in my readings. So I won't fault Rachel the author. She wrote a great book that kept me turning the page or in my case, swiping right on my Kindle app.

If you like boarding school mysteries, I'd definitely pick up this debut book by Rachel Donohue.

I requested an ARC of this book based on the description: a mystery set in a Catholic boarding school. Twenty-five years before the opening, Louisa, a brilliant but lonely student, and Mr. Lavelle, a charismatic art teacher, have mysteriously disappeared. Victoria, who knew them both, has just committed suicide at the school itself. Why did she kill herself? What happened to Louisa and Mr. Lavelle? Did they elope together? Were they murdered or did they perish through an accident? Or were the disappearances unrelated? The atmosphere of an isolated Victorian mansion set on a cliff in Ireland added to the appeal.

Very early in the book, however, I became increasingly disappointed and frustrated. By the end, I was ready to throw the book across the room in disgust, except that I was reading it on my Kindle and I don’t treat my electronic devices so cavalierly. Based on the description, The Temple House Vanishing promised me a genre novel – YA, school story, and mystery, all in one – and yet it consistently violated the conventions of all three.

The opening point of view, a journalist who happened to live on the same street as Louisa and who is investigating the disappearance, was hard to relate to and never made any sense to me. She isn’t involved in the events, and her own life, irrelevant to the rest of the story, seemed remote and uninteresting. Then we get into Louisa’s story, narrated by herself. Therein lies the second hurdle, because Louisa doesn’t sound or act like a teen, even one who’s stuck in her head. Almost all teens, whether intellectual “brains” or not, center their lives around the fundamental issues of those years: independence from parents, confusion about who they are and what they want to become, desperate need for approval from peers, and so forth. Hormones saturate their bloodstreams, and the parts of their brains associated with executive functions, delayed gratification, and long-term planning, won’t mature until their mid-20s. It doesn’t matter how bright or academically gifted they are, they are still at the mercy of these internal storms. Louisa’s first-person narrative reads like the overly elitist pontifications of a writer with a very poor memory of her own teenaged years, or perhaps one seen through extremely adult-colored lenses, and with no understanding of the conventions of the genre. I cannot imagine a teen reader finding Louisa believable or interesting.

Then we meet Victoria, who becomes the object of Louisa’s bloodless passion. Both girls exhibit a disconnection between their intellectual philosophizing and their relationships so extreme as to verge into psychotic dissociation. I never perceived, through their speech or behavior, or through the inner voice of the narrative, any shred of genuine emotion until very near the end, when it became clear that Louisa was just as infatuated with Victoria as Victoria was with Mr. Lavelle. But for the most part, each experiences a pale, distant imitation of obsession, not the visceral stuff of teen suicide pacts or Romeo and Juliet. Not a hint of lesbian romance, requited or not, could I discern.

Despite these drawbacks, the mystery pulled me along. I skimmed long passages of more-of-the-same-airy-head-stuff, just to find out how it was that Louisa disappeared with Mr. Lavelle and not Victoria, who was convinced he was going to take her away to Europe. To get there, I had to wade through one unpleasant not-a-teenager after another. And to wonder what in the world the adults at the school were thinking to allow vicious rumor, bullying, and inappropriate teacher-student intimacy to continue unremarked. For heaven’s sake, this is a Catholic school; surely they would make a gesture at adult supervision.

Then came the big revelation and the death blow to any vestige of credibility the novel held for me: it turns out that Louisa died at the time of the disappearance, although her remains have never been found. Her voice has been narrating the story all along, but without any hint of her being a ghost. Did the author mean to indicate this by the peculiar and pervasive lack of emotional immediacy? Or did she just not understand that in genre fiction – in any good fiction – you simply cannot set a reader up for one kind of story and then pull a literary rabbit out of the hat with an entirely different one? In no way did the author establish that in this literary world, consciousness persists beyond death. As a reader who was trying hard to understand, and also as a writer of genre fiction myself, I felt betrayed. My time and care had been abused. If the novel weren’t so long, I’d recommend it to my writing students as an example of what not to do.

Fiction works along principles, and those principles are based on the human psyche. Good fiction of any kind engages the reader’s interest and sympathies in specific ways, shaping tension and release. The opening offers an implied contract between author and reader. In essence, the author says, “Place yourself in my hands and this is the kind of experience you will have.” To begin a story with shoot-‘em-up action and end with sappy romance, for example, or to begin with a mystery set in a boarding school and then go, “Surprise! The narrator is really dead!” ("And it was all dream!") is to violate that contract and lose the reader’s trust. I’ve detailed above how the author repeatedly lost my confidence. I don’t think I’ll give her work a second chance.

I loved Temple House Vanishing! Slow, creeping dread and well-realized characters make this a real standout from other recent thrillers. Great conversations on paradoxical relationships and the ethics of true crime built in, this was a great read!

One night in late December in Ireland, a highly intelligent 16-year old student, Louisa, and her 25-year old art teacher, Mr. Lavelle, disappear. Rumors swirl around the disappearance. Was there foul play or did they run off together? On the 25th anniversary of the disappearance, a journalist, who once lived across the street from Louisa, takes on their story in The Temple House Vanishing, an atmospheric novel by Rachel Donohue that is part mystery and part ghost story.

The Temple House Vanishing is told in two narratives, the first is The Journalist’s and the second Louisa’s. The writing was excellent, frequently giving the reader the feeling of being there.

I read The Temple House Vanishing in one day and was never bored nor distracted. This is a very impressive debut novel, filled with lyrical language and keen observations about human nature:

“And I thought, shouldn’t you know better? Didn’t he know that we Temple House girls lived for these things, a glance that might stop the world?

And isn’t that at the heart of all romantic teenaged girls, to be forever searching for that one glance?

I did feel that the characterization could have been stronger as the story took on the feel of plot-driven rather than character-driven. I could not account for Louisa’s behavior later in the novel. It was like a switch had been flicked, although perhaps this was due to desperation on her part as she saw events moving out of her control. Not that she, or any of them, had any control over the situation once it began to intensify.

Victoria, Louisa’s best friend, who is enamored with Mr. Lavelle is never quite as believable as she could be. How did she become successful throughout her adult years? The idea of her achieving any kind of rational success seems unfeasible.

While this is a novel that completely transfixed me, I felt disappointed at the ending not because it was unexpected, but because some of it seemed purposefully confusing in its language, forcing me to backtrack to see if I had missed something, and then disappointing in that I wished fate would have pounced on transgressors. Perhaps this ending was more realistic in that aspect than wish-fulfilling.

All in all, an excellent debut novel.

I received a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I had some high hopes and mixed feelings about The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue. On the surface it ticked all of my “summer reading” boxes: A book set the late 1990s where a sixteen-year-old girl and her teacher disappeared from a remote Catholic girls’ boarding-school housed in a cliffside old mansion in Ireland? A journalist who knew her as a small child wants to look into it during the current day? Yes, please! That’s the literary version of clickbait.

All of those elements were there, thankfully. I loved the creaky old house they lived in and the rustic grounds. The nuns were suitably surly. There was the charming new friend, the new student with the wrong shoes, the “is he creepy or not” teacher, the single and a little odd journalist who is super intent to getting to the bottom of the case.

All great bits but I have to admit I was a little let down by the book. It’s told from alternating points of view, that of the journalist and the missing girl. Unfortunately they had very similar “voices” and it was almost difficult to to tell who was doing what at times which is strange because their lives were quite different. If their voices were different, I would have felt like I cared more about them but for the first quarter I was almost wondering if there was going to be some twist and they were going to be the same person. There was a slight twist I guess since Louise, who had gone missing as a child, narrated a lot of the book (how was that possible?) but what happened to her was fairly predictable.

The writing just seemed unnecessarily opaque and had little immediacy. I actually thought maybe it was translated from a different language and the translation was stilted but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

It was very atmospheric and it that is what you are looking for in novels over character development and plot, you will probably enjoy it more than I did. The scene setting and the feeling of being in a boarding school far from home as a scholarship student did seem quite real.

3.75 stars

Really interesting. Hypnotic. Didn’t go where I expected it to go, and carried an uncomfortable edge from beginning to bitter end.

Writing style: ★★★★
Sense of unease: ★★★★★
Plot/Pacing: ★★★ 1/2

The Temple House Vanishing comes out on July 6!

As I write this review, there's a thunderstorm outside my window and we're on our 5th day of constant rain and storms. This feels almost creepily tied to the review of this book... so I'm rolling with it.

It was a dark, and stormy night...

But actually, it wasn't. It was just "a" night in the rural Irish moors when Louisa disappears from the Temple House school. The enigmatic young male teacher, Mr. Lavelle, disappears too. Many theories abound over the years as neither student nor teacher are seen again.

Did they run off together?
Was their something sordid in their closeness?
Where are they now?
What REALLY happened that school year in the all-girls boarding school?

On the 25th anniversary of the disappearances, a journalist decides to have a crack at solving the case. The students are now middle-aged women, the nuns who ran the school are dead, and Temple House itself is slated for demolition. If the case is going to be solved at all, it must be now.

But all is not what it seems, and as the layers unpeel from this gothic tale the lingering sense of unease creeps up on you. Don't get too comfortable.

I thought this was a very interesting novel. Is it a mystery/thriller? Kind of. Is it a twisted tale, meant to unearth the darkest aspects of human nature? I don't know if I'd say that. In the end, I'd say it's a character study and an exercise in the gothic classics. The Temple House Vanishing is perfect for those who enjoy Sarah Waters and Sarah Moss.

The writing style took a little getting used to, as it's very no-nonsense and deals in overt sentences laced with undertones. I found it really easy to get lost in the surface plot and glaze over some of the fine print in the details... and then that would bite me later, as those fine details were where the true story is unfolding.

A complex, multilayered dual-POV novel with a lot of interesting nuances.

Now, a brief NON-SPOILER section on the ending. As this novel is centered around a mysterious circumstance, there is a final series of reveals regarding The Truth of What Happened. I found myself surprised by the ending... and also slightly cheated... and also vaguely uneasy. It wasn't a comfortable, or frankly satisfying, ending. But it felt very real and not over-sensationalized and honestly fit right in with the overall sense of lingering unease that the novel provoked.

If this review doesn't turn you right off from the book, then I'd say you should pick it up! The target audience is on the small, niche side, but you'll have a good time here if that's your thing.

Thank you to Algonquin Books for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

An intriguing premise, dual timeline and dark atmosphere make this a gothic mystery suited for fans of Mexican Gothic, The Wonder, and The Bell Jar.

Creepy and descriptive, Temple House Vanishing brings the reader into the competitive, troubling world of teenage girls. The author skillfully adds twists and turns that finally reveal the uncomfortable...or at least one version of it.

This was such a great read! I really enjoyed how we floated back + forth between the past and present so effortlessly. The writing made the plot very clear + concise. Even though this book is a thriller, I think it brings up great conversations surrounding class and minor/adult “relationships.” I thought Victoria was such an interesting character, so I would have loved to read more about her.

This book was pitched as a great pick for fans of Catherine House, which was my favourite book of last year. With this claim, I thought there would be more focus on the gothic setting, but there was not. The only similarities were that they both took place at a school with gothic architecture. This is no fault of the author as I still had a great time reading her book, but it should've been marketed better.

Gothic academia at its finest, this story of angsty teens in the 90s UK, moodily traipsing through the corridors of a decrepit mansion on a cliff by the sea, will scratch all your itches for an eerie and haunting tale. Inappropriate and taboo relationships take centerstage, stern nuns, invisible help, and plenty of mean girls are the supporting characters. Brains and beauties, the clash of the classes, all come together to tell a story of a mysterious disappearance and its consequences.

An advanced copy of this book was sent to me by the publisher. The opinions are my own.