This is a beautifully written book; it's hard to believe it's the author's debut novel.
I can vouch that the atmosphere of a girls-only boarding school is precisely captured, the plot is gripping with an excellent twist, and the main characters are well-drawn, although (for me) maybe with not quite enough distinction between the two narrative voices.
I'm already looking forward to reading more by Rachel Donohue.
Many thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for giving me a copy of the novel in exchange for this honest review.

Temple House is a private Catholic school set on cliff tops in Ireland. Twenty five years ago a 16 year old girl and her arts teacher went missing and no trace of them was ever found. Nuns and prefects kept a very close eye on the girls - the atmosphere is repressive. Those who do not "fit in" are treated as outsiders. Enter Louisa, Victoria and Mr Lavelle - are they pretentious or independent spirits? A journalist who, as a very small child, lived close to Louisa - the girl who disappeared, looks for a story around the 25th anniversary of the disappearance.

For me this book took a slightly unusual approach which I'm still not sure about. The first thing we get is Victoria's current story. She is the girl who did not go missing and this part is dramatic. After that we hear Louisa's story in part then the journalist's take on what she finds out. The book then takes parts of each of their stories. It intrigued me but I did find it a little odd. As it started in some senses at the end.

Throughout this book I felt there was a real sense of foreboding which impressed me. The best bits are excellent. The main characters in this were well worked. The whole story felt very evocative of time and place. On some level this is rather an ordinary story. Young girl and her arts teacher go missing from a private Catholic school. 25 years later a nosy reporter decides to dig the story up again and find out what really happened. I guess I came to this book thinking that was the story. But it isn't really! This has far more to it than some I've read with a similar outline. It's about people who "fit" and people who don't; people with blinkers and those without. It is also about love and growing up and maybe some of the cracks in society.

Sometimes - though rarely - the publisher's hype lives up to the story. I think this is one of those cases. There are flaws here I think however overall this is a worthwhile read. It didn't grab me straight away but when it did it didn't let go!

The Temple House is a girl’s school, run for the privileged and (mostly) staffed by nuns who live there. Many of the girls are socially linked and their (wealthy and influential) parents sit on the management board. It was recognised that at even at the time of the “disappearance” the school could have been seen as old fashioned – even for rural and Catholic Ireland. But changes (experimental) are being implemented and they are deemed to lie at the bottom of the problem that will ultimately see the school brought into disrepute and then closed down. The seemingly simple changes – the appointment of a male art teacher, Mr Lavelle – and then the planned introduction of highly academic “scholarship pupils” trip the “vanishing” of both Mr Lavelle and the first scholarship girl Louisa.
On the 25th anniversary of the vanishing – when neither of the two missing have ever been reported seen again – amidst renewed media interest a female journalist, incidentally a younger neighbour of the missing Louisa, will research the events. She will try and persuade Victoria – believed to be Louisa’s closest friend at the School to tell what she knew of the events that led up to the day of the disappearance. Victoria will be pushed to suicide. This is a novel, so the depth and detail of the background will be supplied in memory recall by the missing Louisa whose chapters interleave those of the unnamed journalist.
Louisa wins the scholarship to part board at Temple House at the age of 16. The school is a completely alien environment to her, with esoteric rules she does not understand and with largely disinterested or hostile residents. Her parent’s marriage is falling apart and over the course of her last months her mother will leave the family home. Louisa is left coping with this, .exacerbating not just the vulnerabilities of her situation, but dealing with life as a developing teenager. When she starts to attend the relaxed art classes she meets Victoria who will be become her closest friend. But the politics of young female response to a young and attractive male teacher will lead to tensions and then public claims that he was involved in “inappropriate behaviour” that will lead to his dismissal. As this issue comes to a climax Louisa will “vanish”. The school will be remarkably lax in reporting this. But even when the police become involved she cannot be traced amidst claims of lies, prevarications and back covering. Did she run away with Mr Lavelle? Was he involved in inappropriate behaviours with minors? Where is she? Who is responsible?
Without giving away the plot it is hard to discuss this in fuller detail. But the depictions of an old fashioned school with esoteric rules and privilege supposedly looking after its own and willing to “cover up” irregularities is pinpoint accurate. Donohue gives not just a good understanding of the building within its landscape, but the feel of an old fashioned school that might well evoke personal memories. But the underlying foundations are the emotions of teenage girls in close proximity, particularly when in competition for status, friendships and the attention of the sole male teacher. As young Louisa is trying to understand her place in this circle, she has to determine whether her beliefs about and understandings of the new people around her are correct. The novel shows the pressures of the need to find a close and understanding friend that one can rely on – coupled with the stresses and urgencies of being a teenager.
This is an extremely fine novel. Donohue handles the action, the places, the people and the emotions so well. It is both absolutely believable and compelling, pulling the reader along at pace. The journalist search allows the story to develop stage by stage as her evidence grows. This allows the reader to move through what apparently happened, but to constantly re-evaluate this as more information is revealed. New truths are allowed to emerge, but old animosities and pressures to hide the truth still linger. However, the impact of an unexplained disappearance of a child on the people around her is never allowed to be forgotten. Well worth reading.

I liked this book. It was a bit slow to start, but by the time I’d reached the half way point, I was hooked.

I particularly liked the friendship between Victoria and Louisa. I’ve been a teenage girl, I HAVE a teenage girl and the intensity seemed perfect.

I don’t want to give spoilers, as this is a mystery so I’ll just say that I liked the way the story concluded and I enjoyed the journey!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy of this book.

The Temple House Vanishing is told by two people...Louisa and the journalist who has dug out and got caught up in the story of a disappearing student and her teacher years later around the anniversary of the disappearance.
Temple House School is a place swathed in strangeness, from the decrepit and spooky building and grounds themselves seemingly shrouded in mist and mystery, to the odd behavior of the pupils and the teacher caught up in the weeks precluding the vanishing of Louisa, to the staunchly Catholic nuns battling modern life and keeping the ethos of the school firmly rooted in the past..

The author sets the scene beautifully, of wealth and privilege, of class struggle and of the curious group psyche that the older and more established girls create around themselves, to the exclusion of others.
There are plenty of hints at wrong doing on the part of the teacher although mostly in rumour and gossip from the girls themselves and little is resolved in terms of what actually was going on in the summerhouse behind closed doors and away from the nuns compared to what may have been wishful thinking on the part of some of the girls.
.A very cleverly plotted tale with a great twist at the end.

Although atmospheric and well written I found this book too slow moving.
I enjoyed the present day journalist narrative far more than the storyline set at the school. Supposedly set in 1990 it could easily have been of an earlier era, in fact I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t.
Not my cup of tea I’m afraid with a mix of genres and characters I didn’t engage with. The author can weave a gothic type tale but I was glad when I came to the end of the book

Temple House is an elite boarding school for the daughters of wealthy families. So when Louisa wins a scholarship to the school, she is thrust into a world she doesn't know how to navigate; a world of petty jealousies, Catholic traditions, and schoolgirl fantasies. Shunned b y the popular girls, Louisa is drawn into a friendship with arty, ethereal Victoria, the pet of the handsome art teacher Mr Lavelle. And when Mr Lavelle takes Louisa under his wing as well, the three form an unlikely friendship.

Years later, a journalist is reporting on the unsolved mystery of the missing Mr Lavelle and Louisa, who are thought to have run away together when their romance was discovered. The narrative is split between the journalist, who narrates the present, and Louisa, who tells the story of her school days.

The book is finely written, but the story took a while to get going, and then seemed to lose its way in the second half - I enjoyed the story as a whole, but it took a very meandering path, and for a lot of the book, very little happened. I won't spoil the ending, except to say that the big reveal is one of my most hated literary devices, and utterly ruined the book for me - without it, the rating would have been a 3, possibly a 3.5, but I hated the ending so much that it cast a pall over the whole novel,

Thank you to NetGalley, who provided me with a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is an interesting and atmospheric read with some beautiful descriptions of the school grounds. The swimming hole and the summer house particularly appealed to me. I felt for Louisa, starting a smart new school as the ‘scholarship girl’. It was, for me, a slow burn, literary read rather than a page turner and I found it hard to engage with some of the characters but I enjoyed the undercurrent of tension and teenage obsession.

A girl Louisa and her art teacher disappear from the Temple House Convent school , 25 years later a journalist ,who used to live across from the missing girl , starts her own investigation into the story . As she delves into the disappearance a number of different theories start to appear . This story is told from the perspective of the journalist , Louisa and her best friend at the school Victoria . A well formed story framed in an unusual way , but unfortunately not my cup of tea , but I think it will appeal to many.

I’m not disputing the fact that Rachel Donohue can craft a story not that she can create convincing characters. However, this novel is a disappointing read. The first two thirds of a story which investigates the disappearance twenty-five years earlier of a teacher and one of his pupils, unfolds well. The claustrophobic Temple House school, the teenage tensions, the stultifying religious rituals, the gothic-like grounds all work to create a febrile atmosphere and it is understandable that some of the teenage girls look to their beautiful art teacher, Mr Lavelle, as the epitome of all they desire have even though, in reality, he is an inadequate waster whose ego is fed by pubescent fantasies. It is no wonder that feelings escalate, that the teacher and one of his pupils vanish, and that devastation follows.
However, the way in which the author uses narrative voice really does not work by the end of the novel – to explain more fully would be to spoil the plot. I enjoyed the focus on present-day journalism – this felt really authentic. Nevertheless, I cannot rate this novel as highly as a number of other readers because the denouement is so poorly fashioned, casting its awkward shadow over my overall view of the novel.
My thanks to NetGalley and Atlantic Books for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

In the 1990s sixteen year old Louisa disappears at the same time as her art teacher. Twenty five years later, a journalist is investigating this for a story and becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened. Did Louisa run away with charismatic but shallow Mr Lavelle or is there a more sinister explanation?

I thought I would love this book. I went to a school run by nuns (although not a boarding school) and I was looking forward to some characterisation that i could relate to. In reality I didn't relate to much about the book at all. The characters were thin and somewhat elusive. At no time did you get a sense of who they really were. First love features strongly throughout and yet you never get a real sense of its agony and longing. Yes we are told of the feelings Louisa has for another character but we don't feel them in any way. In the end I found I was unconvinced and unmoved by the story although it was well written. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Whether fact or fiction, a teacher vanishing at the same time as a student is not new.
However, few remain undiscovered given a few months of searching. The Temple House Vanishing poses something of a mystery, neither teacher nor student found after many years of their disappearance.
I won’t disclose more of the story, sufficient to say this is a debut novel and should make Rachel Donohue a name to be remembered. It is very well written, keeping the reader engaged throughout the tale. I was most impressed with her style and how she made a well-worn genre, fresh and new, relevant too. She uses a device which causes the reader to make a false assumption part way through, but at the end it’s a way to reveal what really happened. It’s fair to say this is a stand-alone novel, so I wonder what topic Rachel will choose next in her career?

For me this book was about self image. Louisa as a scholarship girl felt that she was treated as if she didn't exist so was drawn to Victoria and Mr Lavelle as they considered her opinions worthwhile and thus gave her identity. Victoria herself was inventing a persona for herself that was more interesting than the reality. In reality she was impulsive and thoughtless living in a fantasy world. Mr Lavelle had no understanding of the vulnerablity of all the girls that he taught. The book was not what I expected and I felt it was too drawn out in places.

Louisa is a 16 year old scholarship girl at the seemingly prestigious, if crumbling, Temple House, run by an order of nuns. She falls in love with lofty classmate Victoria who is obsessed by charismatic young art teacher Edward Lavelle who is said to watch Louisa. One night, Louisa and Lavelle disappear never to be seen again. The mystery is written about in the national press. Twenty five years later a journalist reinvestigates.

An atmospheric mystery albeit with characters that I did not find sympathetic. Slow moving too, I found myself watching the % counter. The text is well-crafted but I did not enjoy it.

This one was just not for me. The story of a schoolgirl and teacher vanishing from a boarding school in the 90s - moving between then and the present. I found the characters hard to like and didn’t get drawn into the story or their world.

Told between two timelines, The Temple House Vanishing a a slow paced, gentle mystery. Twenty five years ago a girl and her teacher disappeared from a Catholic boarding school and now a journalist is trying to put together the pieces. It's a slow burner told by both the journalist and the long lost girl and I have to admit, it didn't really resonate with me.

It is a novel that relies on its atmospheric nature but I just didn't find myself getting drawn in. It's all a little too shallow, trying to seem deep without really delving into lives of the individuals concerned. I found both teenage main characters rather unlikable and, frankly, boring whilst the art teacher is set up as this teenage God and I never really got why. Very little is actually made of the religious background, and set in such a conservative religious setting that is strange. There's a whole heap of pretentious arty stuff which largely went over my head.

I found the ending rather predictable as well. It had to be one of two options really and I was relatively confident which one it would be from about half way in. All in all, a bit of a disappointment.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC copy.

A convent boarding school run by supposedly strict nuns, which allows the only male teacher (who has no qualifications) to entertain his favourite pupils at all hours in some sort of bohemian studio/den is a bit of an unlikely setting. The fact that adolescent girls would have huge crushes on a young male teacher has not occured to them, even though it is set in the 1990s. Then, when one pupil disappears no one is informed until it is too late. The male teacher has also disappeared, but the mystery is not solved until years later when the school has been closed down for a number of years and a journalist who used to be a neighbour of the missing girl decides to investigate. The truth of the matter is revealed eventually but there are no great twists and the pace of the book is very slow, in an attempt to create an atmospheric setting.

Two sixth form students at a convent school and a charismatic young, male art teacher. What could possibly go wrong? Louisa and Mr Lavelle, the teacher, disappear at the same time. Twenty-five years later a journalist is examining the open but unsolved case. The atmosphere of the ancient building run by the order of nuns was brilliantly portrayed. I attended such an establishment myself, though in the 1960s. By hearing from the two girls and the journalist in turns the story unfolds for us. Occasionally I found the voices so similar I had to go back and check who was telling me the story. The characters, all so young, even the teacher, were trying to find who they were, usually with reference to others. It was a tangle, and an interesting one. Although the style occasionally threw run-on sentences at me, I enjoyed the book overall. A good read.

This book is truly stunning. A romance in so many directions at once, and chillingly dark without ever seeming macabre, The Temple House Vanishing is some of the best writing about teenagers for adults I have come across in a long time. The novel is atmospheric and disturbingly romantic in parts, and while it never feels like a thriller where you're waiting for the big twist, when the reveal comes it is heartbreaking and satisfying all at once. Rachel Donohue is a very exciting new voice, and I can't wait to read whatever she does next. I LOVED this.

What a book!

Temple House comes across as a sort of enigma.

A fairytale or perhaps a nightmare.

Twenty five years after a horrible disappearance of a student and teacher questions are again being asked.

Are all the stories about this now derelict building true?

Executed in an extremely clever manner.

It is slow building but in the best of ways.

Mysterious and thrilling at the same time.

Even when I thought I'd pieced it all together, there was another twist that left me feeling nothing less than shocked.

Cannot wait to share my full review with you on my blog nearer publication time!