Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a slow experience, with three character POVs spanning a long time period. I found Alice's chapters harder to follow as they have more dashes and brackets which can make the sentences quite unwieldy, especially combined with the present tense used. Her chapters include a lot of flashbacks as well, so I found it quite choppy, which took me out of the story. This will undoubtedly have its cult fans but unfortunately I didn't connect to the characters and therefore to the story.

Disclaimer: I received an Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley, but this is my voluntary and honest review.

I’ve always been drawn to books that span the course of a lifetime, and Bury Our Bones takes that concept to an entirely new level by spanning centuries. This novel sweeps across various time periods, following three key characters, and it constantly shifts, tugging at your emotions in unexpected ways.

As I read, I found myself torn between which character I most wanted to follow and learn more about. The way their stories intertwined was so clever and captivating—it kept me hooked from beginning to end.

As always, Schwab’s writing is absolutely stunning. It’s a perfect balance of beauty and accessibility, never too flowery or intimidating, yet rich with atmosphere and vivid detail. The characters feel so real and well-developed, making it easy to get lost in their world.

This book and its characters will linger with me for a long time. I truly felt like I embarked on a journey with them. I absolutely loved it, and I’m so grateful to the publishers for sending me an early copy!

Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC! Rating- 4.25

Ok... where to start...

This book was very interesting to me. As someone who's read (and loved) nearly all of VE Schwab's other books, I certainly had my hopes up and was literally squealing when I received the ARC for this. Did it meet my expectations- definitely. The world building is always incredible and the plot lines original, but my favourite thing with this book, like other novels by the author, was definitely the intricacy of the characters, and how well the nuance of morality is depicted. At the start of the story, some aspects didn't feel quite so cohesive in terms of time lines, but I loved watching the stories of each character evolve, and the ending was well-executed. The only reason why this wasn't quite a 5-star for me is that the plot felt a little predictable, and the ending was a bit anti-climactic and rushed for me. I didn't love Alice quite so much as the other characters, too.

But overall, this was such an entertaining and fast-paced read, with incredible character development and writing! Thank you again to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

This felt very slow paced. Writing style wise.
A more character driven book than plot. Which I can see being hit or miss for some people depending what style of book you like.
This did take me a little while to get into but I did enjoy seeing the different women's stories and how they became vampires and dealt with such a change.

Nothing has ever sold me more on a book than "toxic lesbian vampires" and boy this deliver. This is a novel drenched in rage and grief, but also yearning and bloody toxicity. It's atmospheric and spans over years and years, so it's similar to Addie Larue in that sense, but combined with the morally grey characters of Vicious. A beautifully haunting and gothic story I won't be able to stop thinking about for a while. I will say Vicious is still by far my favourite Schwab novel, but Bury Our Bones has surpassed Addie Larue for me. Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the ARC!

This will contain spoilers

I'll be honest with you, I have just finished the book and I don't know how I feel. I loved it but the haunting lyrical style of the story has left me just sitting here staring into space with an empty head (hello book hangover).

We follow three women, who's lives (and deaths) are intimately linked. These women are affected in different ways by their past and the decisions that led to them being buried in the midnight soil.
Maria/Sabine who doesn't want to be a wife but wants the freedom of position it will give her, her only goal in life is to be free and to live on her terms. Throughout the book we see how she becomes cruel and hollow and her humanity is stripped from her, but looking back at the decisions she made even as a child, I feel like somewhere inside her she was always cruel and selfish.
Charlotte, a reluctant debutante who just wanted to be free to love openly and not be forced to be small for the sake of others. To me Charlotte's main issue is that she was always nieve and a bit of a coward. Her choice was always to run and to hope someone else would deal with things for her, she was selfish in the way she wanted her life to be easy and despite climing to care for others, she allowed them to be fodder for her escape.
Alice, all she ever wanted was to be seen, to be brave, to live up to her sister's shadow. Alice has always been in bewteen, never truly feeling as if she belonged but also not ever being brave enough to face it head on. Maybe in time away from her family dynamic and with therapy, she would be able to feel whole in herself.
All of these women are flawed in different ways and the way vampyrism is used in this book to enhance their flaws is fabulous. Becoming a vampire, a predator of your (previously) own kind is something humans have written about and battled with for years and it is no different here, each woman has her own way of deciding who to kill and the way they justify their doing so. They both want to cling on to who they were while trying to reconcile what they now are and who will they become?

Overall I felt hope, pity, anger and derision for each character in the way they are portrayed, and I feel like Schwab has done a fantastic job of showing humans as the flawed, scared creatures we are. We all just want to belong and be free, the question is: What price are you willing to pay?

A huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me access to this title.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into this at all. I tried and re-tried, having started again, and it just wasn't for me and I wasn't able to get past 20%. I found it overly convoluted and just was not a fan.

Such a shame as I loved The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, so perhaps it is just the wrong time for me!

Thank you Pan MacMillan and NetGalley for providing an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It has taken me a few days to gather all my thoughts, because… wow. This is Schwab at their absolute best.

The story follows three women navigating the changes that the midnight soil brings to their lives. Three different settings, three time periods, and three very different characters. I don’t want to give any further details, because it is best to let the book guide you through the story.

To no one’s surprise, Schwab’s writing is poetic and enthralling. The story is immersive, full of melancholy, and incredibly well crafted. The characters shine so so beautifully, they’re all flawed and all follow a very well executed arc. I loved the scenes set in Spain, but of course that’s my very biased opinion! 💃🏻

Schwab is not trying to reinvent the genre, so do not go into this expecting a new take on vampires. She is utilising the lore as a tool to tell the story, and the love she’s poured into this book can be felt on every single page.

If you enjoyed Addie LaRue, you will definitely like Bury our Bones in the Midnight Soil!

Thank you Netgalley and TOR for the ARC of this book. I loved following Sabine, Charlotte and Alice’s journeys. This book spans centuries and has different POVs. Sometimes this set up can put me off but Schwab does it masterfully. An incredible vampire story but more importantly a beautiful and absolutely heart wrenching love story.

The writing was incredible. There is a fair bit of violence which is unsurprising given the topic but somehow it’s been expertly woven into a love story. I went into this book completely blind having loved Schwabs previous work and this did not disappoint. It’s a passionate and tragic love story with so many themes embedded. An absolute 10/10 and I will be buying it just for my bookshelf.

Hmmm how to review this book. The premise is rather simple: vampires doing vampire things! But there was a lot of complexity, both in the characters and the story. I'll start off with the writing and prose, which was and gorgeous. There were many passages that I just read over and over again thinking "teach me your ways V.E. Schwab please I want to write like this!" I struggled with Addie LaRue because the prose was very fluffy and felt a bit overdone, but there was none of that here. Each sentence was crafted and sharp and the emotions of the characters bled so well through the pages. I also loved how the vampirism in the books played into some of the old tropes (drinking blood, wooden stakes, immortality, etc) and then also completely reworked some of them too (I particularly liked how the 'having to be invited in' was handled).
The characters were also excellent for me (well, almost). I really enjoyed how each had their own hidden motivations/desires as well as their vices and flaws. Nothing about them was surface level, every choice had hidden machinations behind it. I think I would have preferred the point of views to be a little more balanced. We're told that there are three protagonists, but one isn't featured until half-way through and Sabine really dominated the book for a while (which is appropriate to her character I suppose), and I just didn't find her point of view particularly interesting. It led me to feel like I was dragging myself through the book sometimes to get to the next point of view.
I think the main thing that means that this isn't a five star read for me is the pacing. A large portion of the book was dedicated to a particular character just sort of going around and killing people and I just found it a bit boring. It felt very aimless and I think a portion of it could have been cut and I would've enjoyed it more. In contrast to this, the ending resolution happened extremely quickly, a bit too quickly for it to feel entirely satisfying. Everything was wrapped up in only a couple of chapters and I just wanted a bit more. This won't be an issue at all for some people (I think a lot of people will really love this), but, personally, I would have preferred a faster pace at the beginning and a slightly slower one at the end.
So, in conclusion, I think a lot of people will really love this. And, though the pacing let it down for me a little, I definitely don't regret picking this up. VE Schwab is clearly only improving as a writer and I can't wait to see what else she puts out in the future, you could even say I'm hungry for more!

3 ★’s

This multi-timeline novel follows three women Maria, Alice and Lottie whose lives intertwine across centuries. The story spans many decades from 1532 to 2019 and takes place in many locations; Spain, Italy, France, London, Boston. We follow each character's journey and learn how they came to become vampires.

Victoria’s writing and prose is excellent but I had two issues which were the length and pacing. The book is character driven which I didn't mind at first because I found each journey interesting but when this book is over 500 pages and there’s no plot progression until around 80% it started to drag on and became sluggish. In my opinion this novel could have been edited shorter without sacrificing any story.

The ending was underwhelming and left me unsatisfied.

I enjoyed some parts but at times I was bored. If you like vampires, horror, LGBTQIA+ rep and historical fiction with gothic vibes this might be for you.

V.E. Schwab is one of my favourite authors and, of her books, “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” is one of my all-time favourites. I went into “Bones” with high expectations (because it’s Schwab), but also assuming that nothing could match up to Addie. I should have known that Schwab always delivers.

I devoured this book in a single day. It is dark, delicious, disturbing, sad, compelling, and gorgeously rich. When I was a teenager I read “Interview with the Vampire” for the first time. I didn’t realise until I read “Bones” that this is the book I wished “Interview” had been. It was the book I wanted, desperately, when I was younger where the female narrative was centred. Where the characters, in all their spoiled, vain glory, aren’t victims or plot points or a way to move the story along.

Schwab balances the characters on a perfect tightrope of sympathetic and compellingly awful. (Toxic, as her tagline for this book says.) What makes them sympathetic is how much they WANT. Love. Belonging. Power. I could also feel echoes of Addie here, in this wanting to be remembered. In the wanting to have a story. It’s tragic to see how the humanity bleeds out of Maria (Sabine), because she is so vibrant, so human at the beginning. And Charlotte, whose story starts with love gone wrong, is undone by this in the end. I found Alice the least “toxic” of the characters, but, in some ways, her story is the most poignant. It is established that vampires lose their humanity as they age. Alice is at the beginning of her vampire journey, so everything we have seen happen to Maria and Charlotte is still to come for her.

The word I keep thinking in regard to this book is glorious. I read this books in February, but I have already mentally marked it as one of my best reads this year.

This is so much more than a Vampire story, it is enthralling. The time periods are so well researched spanning centuries, cultures and continents. However the different stories all melt so seamlessly together. You will need time after this to digest, and I have no idea what to read next because nothing will come close. Amazing.

4.5!
Not enjoyed a vampire book this much in years!

Wonderful writing and lots of women loving women.

There is a lot of the typical vampire traits - being affected by sunlight, needing to be invited in and being insatiably hungry for blood. However, they’re presented in a way that doesn’t feel cliche and with slightly different nuances than I’ve seen before. Honestly, I thought I was kind of over vampires, but I really enjoyed this one!

I was more captivated by the historical points of view, particularly Maria’s vampire origin story and early years. But the way the characters eventually come together works so well and I found the ending very satisfying (if rather sad and bitter sweet).

This was actually my first V.E Scwab. Been meaning to try their work for years and will definitely be diving into more!

If you want a sapphic vampire tale with lots of typical vampire goodness, but that will also feel refreshing…I recommend.

3.5 ⭐️
Bury our bones in the midnight soil is an incredibly captivating book that intricately weaves the lives of three women across history.
The story is enchanting and will have you glued to every page. The writing is beautiful and lyrical.
The characters are incredibly flawed, but realistic given the circumstances.
The romance however was very lust-forward, which is something I do tend to find with vampire books. I would’ve preferred a more romantic story that spanned decades. It had moments of romantic potential: “she’s heard a hundred songs and sayings about how the right person can make the world disappear, but the world is still there raging around them, only it is background noise, it’s set dressing, and for once in her life she is standing center stage, performing for an audience of one”. I would’ve liked to have seen more of this.
That being said, the messages were good. I particularly enjoyed the historical aspect of the story.
It has an interesting take on immortality, with explanations about how over time you will die, immortality is not real. Over time you lose the parts of yourself that make you real.
“Time doesn’t heal. It just wears you down. Tricks you into thinking, as the present slips into the past, that it will stay there. Safely buried in your wake”
My main issue with the book is that I really struggled to connect to Alice’s story, and whenever it was her POV I found myself looking forward to being in the other POVs.

I've had to sit and digest this one for a little bit before I wrote a review to get my full thoughts in order cause oh boy were there a lot about Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Spoiler: they're all good thoughts.

Oh V.E. Schwab, the woman you are, this was beautiful.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soils follows three timelines across centuries, Santo Domingo de la Calzada in 1532, London in 1837 and Boston in 2019. All three timelines grow together and twist into big gnarled roots that form one big chunky tree of beautiful prose. The branches coming off of each character in the story create little intricacies that create shadows of real people, in real places, doing very real things. Other than turning each other into vampires but more on that later.

What I really loved about this was that, although Schwab has described this as her "angsty lesbian vampire" novel, all of these characters are intricate, they love, they're jealous, and they're angry. They all exist in that morally grey zone, none of these characters are inherently good or evil, they just do things because it's what feels right and there should be more of this!! Give me more!!

The vampire aspect was really well done. So often, it's difficult to write vampires without it being cheesy (I'm looking at you Twilight) or making it so that it doesn't sound like something that has already been done. Whilst, in my head, this was reminiscent of S.T Gibson, it's not a mirror so it stands up beautifully on it's own. Each character has their own distinct voice without it being too distracting or sounding out of place because of the difference in set time.

Huge huge fan of what V.E. Schwab and S.T. Gibson are personally doing for the angsty gay supernaturals at the moment and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Another amazing book from V E Schwab!! The setting makes the book from the start and the plot is enrapturing throughout. Would definitely recommend

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an arc of this book!

I was so excited when this book was announced as I loved Schwab’s books so was intrigued for this one. I love stories with vampires and this one did it so well. The different timelines interwove with each other so well and I had a great time with all of the characters. The structure of the story as well of the pacing was done very well and kept me entertained the entire book.

I adored this book and already have several people that I would personally recommend it to! Sapphic, Vampires, and VE Schwab's beautiful writing! What's not to love??

I've loved everything I've read by VE Schwab so far. And everything she writes just feels so different, completely different vibes.
Fantastic book by an ever fantastic author!