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At the Temple House School, nothing is as it seems. One day, a student and teacher disappear from the all-girls boarding school housed in a Victorian mansion in Ireland. Now, twenty-five years later, a reporter is determined to find out what happened in this skillful page-turner, perfect for fans of Kate Elizabeth Russell's My Dark Vanessa.
At Temple House, nothing is ever as it seems.
Louisa is the new, brilliant scholarship student. Finding most of the other students at the all-girls Catholic boarding school as icy and unfamiliar as the drafty mansion, she forms a fierce bond with the intense and compelling Victoria, an outlier and student provocateur.
Their close bond is soon unsettled by the young, charismatic art teacher, Mr. Lavelle—igniting tension and obsession in the cloistered world of the school. Then one day, Louisa and Mr. Lavelle disappear.
There is no trace of either one. It's the unsolved mystery that captivates the whole country. Year after year, the media revisit it, and the conspiracy theories persist. Now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary, a journalist—a woman who grew up on the same street as Louisa—delves into the past to write a series of articles and uncover the truth. She finds stories of jealousy and revenge, power and class. But will she find Louisa and Mr. Lavelle, too?
Because remember—at Temple House, nothing is ever as it seems.
Paperback Original
"The creeping pace, melancholic tone, and full-bodied characters create a perfect snapshot of desperate youth amid oppressive tradition. This stands among the best of the current modern gothic trend." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Rachel Donohue is an enchanting writer. Her words seem, at first, innocent and straightforward, but then it becomes apparent that they are doing mischievous things. As Mr. Lavalle, a central character in her impressive debut The Temple House Vanishing, points out: 'It's important to remember that here, nothing is ever as it seems.'" - The Sunday Business Post (Ireland)
"Donohue is a master of clean, sharp prose, and has a hugely impressive ability to create layers of atmosphere or ratchet up tension in a couple of beguilingly simple sentences." - The Irish Times
"This brooding tale of obsessive love, teenage jealousy and hidden desire has a dark charm all of its own…While the unsettling atmosphere is enough to keep the pages turning, Donohue also does a fine job of holding parts of her story back. When the shocking solution is finally revealed, it is in the sort of circumstances that all but force the reader to return to the beginning to marvel at how the trail was laid." - inews.co.uk
This information about The Temple House Vanishing was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rachel Donohue lives in Dublin, Ireland, where she works in communication and media relations. In 2017 she won the Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year Award for her short fiction. The Temple House Vanishing is her first novel.
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