I enjoyed The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab so much that it made My Top 5 Books of 2021 so I decided to give her 2025 release Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil a try. First and foremost, this is a well written historical fiction novel with multiple female character points of view. All three characters eventually intersect in this plot spanning multiple centuries and multiple countries.
Alice is our contemporary character in 2019 and a student at a university in Boston. Feeling adrift, a one night stand changes the course of her life and sets her on a path of regret and revenge. In 1521, Maria is aged 10 years old and living with her family in a small town on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. We meet the third character Charlotte/Lottie later in the book and we pick up her backstory from 1827 in London.
This is a character driven book about these three women:
"In fairy tales, big things happen in threes. Three children. Three beds. Three roads. The third bite is poison, the third gift is great, the third door always leads home." Page 338Now that I've set the scene and have your attention, it's time to drop a bomb... this is a sapphic vampire romance. Yep, you read that right. The paranormal romance genre rarely features in my reading schedule but I took a chance on this based on the strength of the author's writing. And I was right!
The writing in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is beautiful. The personal challenges and internal struggles faced by all three women kept my attention and the gothic setting was sublime. As they age over decades and centuries, vampires in Schwab's world start to lose touch with the values and characteristics that made them human.
"Now and then, she wakes to find another little corner of her emptied, some aspect crumbled away in sleep. Perhaps it was a shard of insecurity. A sliver of regret. Sabine probes her mind, trying to find the nature of the absence, like a tongue searching for a missing tooth, but never does." Page 265Schwab addresses the topic I was most interested in when reading the Anne Rice Interview with the Vampire series: what is it like to be immortal? (Don't worry, there are no sparkly vampires here). The author examines the toll it takes on all three of the characters, including the challenges they face maintaining their existence in the world without revealing their secret nature and evading the dangers that pursue them.
This statement from a male vampire to one of our characters reminded me of the relationship between Lestat and Louis:
"If you wish to stay, then you may do so as my guest, and I will be your gracious host. But you will live as I do, by a certain set of rules. There will be no skulking about in shadows, no victims stolen from the street and cast in the canal. I will show you how to savor every soul you take. How to claim space, and bend minds, how to enthrall, enchant, and masquerade. How to be the last one they think of when the bodies go missing." Pages 206-207Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a unique genre-blending novel that defies easy categorisation and will appeal to a range of readers as a result. Straddling historical fiction, fantasy and queer romance and championing strong feminist characters, this book may appeal to you even if you don't like vampire novels. And if you believe books about vampires aren't for you, consider this:
"And here is the awful thing about belief. It is a current, like compulsion. Hard to forge when it goes against your will, but easy enough when it carries you the way you want to go." Page 401Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab is about female agency, love, power, hunger, control, rage and revenge and is highly recommended for Anne Rice fans.
