Temple Fall, by R.L. Boyle
The Book
Synopsis:
Flynn heads with her boyfriend, Jackson, and a group of their friends to spend the night in Temple Fall, a mysterious house up on the moors with a strange history. Breaking in for a night of drinking and teenage debauchery they instead find themselves trapped in a strange nightmare after a joke seance goes wrong. Suddenly forced into strange acts and behaviours outside their character, the tight-knit group starts to fall apart - and then Jackson falls to his death.
In the aftermath Flynn must confront the traumas of her childhood, her upbringing in captivity with her mother who suffered from crippling paranoia and OCD. As a foster child she has been forced to make her own place in the world, to forge a new family out of the few scraps of hope and compassion she has been offered in her life. And everywhere she looks she sees the ghostly figure of a Victorian woman, that no one else can see.
The woman that pushed Jackson.
Reeling from the tragedy the group find themselves split apart, each grieving and trying to survive on their own. But when they start to die, one-by-one, on the very second of their 18th birthday, Flynn must keep them all together to keep her found family alive. And she must dig into the lost secrets of her family past, to stop the curse being passed down to the next generation again.
My Review
Temple Fall is a supernatural Gothic horror novel written by R.L. Boyle, published by Titan Book. An intensely delicious horror story about haunted minds, generational trauma and inevitable destiny, all articulated around the classic concept of a haunted house, with touches that give the best Final Destination impressions.
Flynn and her friends decide to celebrate one of their eighteenth birthdays on a camping trip in the fields of an old, derelict house. A storm forces them to take refuge, and soon most of the group members start acting out of character; after they decide to make an improvised seance, they end being cursed to die in their eighteenth birthday, starting with Jackson, whose birthday they are celebrating. Only Flynn might find a way they can escape such a terrible destiny.
Despite the central premise of this story, Boyle puts great effort into fleshing out Flynn as the final girl of this kind of slasher; not only because we will spend most of the time following her, but also showing how her traumatic past is shaping who she is. It is true that the rest of the group doesn't shine as much, but I found them to be fitting characters in the narrative, playing supportive roles that are needed for Flynn's story.
Boyle's writing is quite descriptive, entirely submerging the reader into the story; I've also appreciated how, at moments, it kinda captured the core idea that you can experience at the Final Destination saga: you can't prepare for everything that might end you, so the only way to survive is trying to disconnect yourself from all those things, and how, at the end, it's just inevitable.
The pacing is a bit of a slowburn, especially as it takes a sweet time to kickstart the real story, but I would recommend to stick with the book, as once all is in motion, we have a brilliant plot.
Temple Fall is a really enjoyable horror story, a Gothic supernatural proposal that takes the concept of a cursed house to deliver an engaging and spine tingling story!
The Author/s
R.L. Boyle
R. L. Boyle studied Classical Civilisation at the University of Leeds, after which she worked in a variety of jobs – none of which had anything to do with her degree. Her debut, The Book of The Baku, was shortlisted for a Bram Stoker in 2021, followed by Temple Fall in February 2026.