My Five Word TL:DR Review: Didn’t Quite Work It’s Magic

Temple Fall sounded like just my thing. A group of friends go to spend the night at an old abandoned house, in the process they manage to become cursed and one of them dies from a tragic accident. To all intents and purposes the rest of the friends also go missing and don’t reappear for months, even though to them it feels like only one evening has occurred. And, from there, things just go downhill.

It’s Jackson’s 18th birthday and his small group of close knit friends decide to camp out at a haunted, and rather creepy house. Upon arrival, the place doesn’t look nearly as bad as the group had expected, given how long it’s been abandoned. They even imagine that someone is still living there. They start to make camp but before long the sky darkens and a storm rolls in, it turns out they don’t have all the right camping gear and eventually they make the decision to enter the house for shelter. Again, the inside looks almost lived in, they find a decent sitting room and crack open the bottles of bubbly and other alcohol. Things get off to a good start but soon the tension starts to rise. The house seems to have it’s hooks in them, creating mistrust and suspicion and before you know it they’re starting to bicker. Then, someone has the great idea to have a seance which results in a scary entity taking over what started out as a bit of fun.

On the face of it I expected to enjoy this a lot more than I did. I loved the whole gothic vibe, the creepy, haunted house and the backstory. It’s well written in terms of the atmosphere and descriptions. I had no problem in envisioning the house and found the history to the place interesting.

However, I had issues. I think the plot suffers from uneven pacing. The first 20-25% in particular was really slow. On top of this there’s then a busyness to the story that just feels too much or too distracting. Flynn has her own past demons. Her mother was abusive and she was eventually taken into care, it’s taken a while for her to find her feet but she loves her new found family. That being said, she has her own ulterior motives for wanting to come to Temple Fall.

Temple Fall itself has a long and dark history that eventually unfolds as the group start investigating. The house is not as it first appears. And there’s a menacing presence lurking in the dark corners.

Personally, I felt like there was too much going on and the different stories were in a competition with each other for attention. I feel like it needed to be more focused. As it was we have the friction between the group, the curse, the house and it’s past, Flynn and her past and also the mystery of what happened to them all when they seemingly disappeared for a few months (as though time in Temple Falls is different from the outside world). All set against a ticking clock as the survivors try to find out more about their curse.

As well as the busy feel and, what was probably more of a deal breaker for me, was this has a YA feel. I didn’t really become attached to any of the characters. They were supposed to be really good friends and yet I didn’t get a feel for that at all and in turn this lack of investment stopped me from feeling worried or scared for any of them.

To be honest, part of this is definitely a case of ‘it’s me not you’ because I should have picked up on the 18th birthday party description. As it is I just became hooked with the whole gothic horror, haunted house description. To be fair, I think, even with the younger protagonists and their sometimes frustrating behaviour, if the story had remained at Temple Fall and focused on the scary elements I think this would probably have worked better for me.

I think Temple Fall will undoubtedly find it’s audience, it just didn’t quite work for me.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

My rating 3 of 5 stars