【 BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL 】

Genre: Fantasy (vampires)
Audience: Adult
Author: V.E. Schwab
Published: June 2025
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 535 (hardback)

This was in some ways everything that I expected, and in other ways, something of a let down. I was really excited for some dark and mysterious vampires written by Schwab. She certainly delivered on the vampire front and with some exceptional writing that lifted the characters off the page. But this book had a meandering plot, that was hardcore on the “meh” side of things.

This is a book about vampires and about women. It’s a book that spans over 500 years of history and revels in the glory of those settings that the reader gets to explore alongside each character. It’s a story of the dark side of human nature and an exploration of what it means to have and to maintain your humanity. It’s also a damn good romance with, naturally, a lot of bite.

There are multiple POVs in this book, which makes it read a little like a mystery. Who are these women? When did they die? How did they die? Who made them vampires? All the good questions come with this. And the best question of all, is how do all their stories relate to each other?

But that’s sort of where it ends, in terms of the things the plot has going for it. This is a book about the characters, and it feels like the emphasis and attention given to their backstories was at the sacrifice of maintaining a cohesive and interesting plot. In short, there honestly isn’t much a point to the book.

You will find yourself engrossed in the narratives, fascinated by the characters, enthralled by the horror, but you will probably also been empty (perhaps like the vampires themselves) upon reaching the concluding pages of the novel. This was very much so a book where I turned the final page and just sort of shrugged in disappointment. What a let down.

I personally wish that Alice’s whole POV had just been cut from the book. It unhappily anchored us in the modern day, where I would’ve been happy revelling in the romance of 16th century Spain or 19th century England. I would’ve been happy exploring the Sabine–Charlotte story from start to end, without Alice’s random intermissions interrupting it. And I would’ve been very happy to not cover the same bloody ground (no pun intended) as Alice learns about her new life that we’ve already covered (for the reader) in other POVs. She was a wet blanket and her incessant backstories seem to have no bearing on the plot. Rather frustratingly so. I could not care less about Catty, good lord.

Speaking of backstories, the flashbacks were a little out of control. I think this would benefitted from simply telling the stories in chronological order, rotating through the POVs, rather than constantly interrupting whoever’s POV you were currently in to provide a pages-long backstory/context. Eurgh.

I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the somewhat heavy-handed man-hating in this book. I get it, I’m a woman, too. I get that walking the streets at night is scary and that if you were a vampire, the turning of the tables might be freeing. But I didn’t think that was handled well and came across unpalatable to me. Maybe the irony is the point? The villains in this book are the women, most of the men are irrelevant and doing no harm (Maria’s husband aside).

I’d say there is an intellectual way to dissect this book and turn some of these grievances into a more positive light. Perhaps this is all meant to be thought-provoking – a reflection of the cyclical nature of violence, of the irony of power play between genders, and so on and so forth. But I felt that first and foremost this was a romance, and a dark and gloriously twisted one at that, and so I’m left unsure if what I’m so unsatisfied with is intentional or a structural issue with the book.

I loved Schwab’s take on vampires, though. It was very reminiscent of Interview with a Vampire and of all the dark and wonderful things of Dracula itself. And of course, the queer romance (toxicity aside) was to die for (no pun intended). This had the bones of a great masterpiece, but the confused and pithy ending really let me down. I’m not even going to start poking holes at all the ways the ending and the villainisation of some of the characters doesn’t really ring true.

Three stars for the sheer brilliance and enjoyability of the read, up until the final moments when it just didn’t come together.

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Title: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Author: V.E. Schwab
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This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life—
how it ends, and how it starts.