Have you ever wanted to know what it was like to speak with the dead? Do a seance? Be a medium? Roos Beckman is exploited by her mother, being dragged to different settings and homes to be a medium for paying folks to speak with the dead. Some cast members have the power to alter the course of Roos journey, while others enter her life and become an object of desire.

This tale is suspenseful, well-written, and intriguing. Thanks to NetGalley for an e-arc in return for an honest review.

My Darling Dreadful Thing is spectacularly spooky in all the right ways. From the first chapter I was wanting more! Johanna Van Veen described everything in such a way that I felt in the book with the characters.

Queer, gothic horror?? Yes, yes yes and yes please and thank you.
The book is written in first person POV and a doctor's report as the MC is being questioned in a crime. (Past and present elements)
As you should expect in a gothic book it is slower paced with a haunting setting (both in atmosphere and spooky boos).
The book quite gripped me from the onset. I found it to beautifully dark and eerie.

This one takes a little bit to unfold, but once it does, it is quite intriguing. I appreciated the descriptive, sensory writing. It takes an epistolary approach-- but sometimes does more telling than showing.

However, the story will leave you wondering, 'what really happened?'

Recommended for those who enjoy a gothic, slow-burn, a Sapphic tale full of unreliable characters that makes us question how trauma can affect us.

There are some heavy themes, so check the trigger warnings if concerned.

(and how 'bout that cover!)

Thank you so much to net galley and poison pen press for this ARC

My darling dreadful thing is my favourite read of 2024 so far! When I first saw the blurb for this book I knew it was right up my alley but I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did.

First off a gothic manor setting is always a winner for me and van Veen executed it amazingly. This novel was incredibly atmospheric.

Nothing I can say will manage to encapsulate the love that is in this novel; the obsession, the all consuming love was everything I was promised and more.

This novel has the perfect balance of beauty, horror and love. It was extremely reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s writing which I love. I cannot recommend this book enough and I can’t wait to see what van Veen writes in the future

This book captured my whole being.
I was drawn into the story and loved everything about it. The back and forth between the modern world and the past was very interesting and I needed to know what happened to the young woman and her ghost.

I loved this gothic novel with its horror elements

I went into this book blind, and I am so glad I did. I truthfully was grabbed by the cover. I can honestly say this book took my soul and ran with it. I devoured this in less than 12 hours. I was so invested in the characters and how the story was to unfold. I became such a huge fan of Ruth and Roos. I love a gothic horror theme and this one was exactly that. I think anyone looking for a quick, thrilling read will have a wonderful time devouring this book. It was the perfect amount of dark, spooky, gothic and beautifully written all wrapped in one. Huge thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the opportunity to read this one.

3.75, rounding up.

Our main character, Roos, has grown up in a rather traumatic home. She can see spirits, with her mother uses to her advantage by monetizing seances. One day one of the seance clients, Agnes, sees something special in Roos, and offers to take Roos away from her mother's home, which Roos gladly accepts.

The ensuing tale is one of trauma processing, mental health, and unconventional love all around.

There was much to enjoy about this. It was very eerie and definitely delivered on the promised ~gothic vibes~. I felt like the writing was very sensory and really brought the story to life for me (the clicking of Ruth's jaw, the smell of the bog, the descriptions of the spirits). As cliche of a trope as it is, I do always like a story that leaves you wondering how much is reality vs how much is fantasy, and I think this book did a very good job with that.

Overall a good read! Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC :)

Thank you to Netgallery and Poisoned Pen Press for an early release copy of My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen, this book will be available for purchase on May fourteenth of 2024.

My Darling Dreadful Thing has a rather slow start, it took me a while to get through it but I’m glad that I finished it! I’d say about 50 or so pages in is when the story really picks up. This was beautifully written, you can tell right away that the characters and plot were all well thought out.

The characters are intriguing! I loved the spirit companions and their little quirks, they were the best part of My Darling Dreadful Thing, the interactions we get from Agnes and Roos spirit companions were cute! Peter and Ruth’s protectiveness for our main characters is written in a way that I enjoyed, they didn’t come off as overly possessive and the four of them go along nicely!

The plot did take a while to pick up but once it does I did get more invested in it. I liked that we got to see the events in what happened and the little interview parts. It was interesting to hear what the doctor thought about Roos spirit companion as well as her relationship with Agnes.

Overall, I think this book was beautifully written. I think this will open up more discussions about childhood trauma and how it can affect one’s mental health. I’m interested to see other people’s take on My Darling Dreadful thing it certainly can be perceived differently from person to person.

I’d love to see more from Roos and Agnes or just from Johanna Van Veen in general!

First off, a big thank you to Netgalley and Poised Pen Press for the letting me read and review this ARC.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Gothic, LGBTQ, Horror
Pacing: Slow
TW: Trauma, violence, DA, self harm

This is an amazing piece of gothic sapphic fiction.
The story follows Roos, a young woman who has a spirit companion. She has spent her days helping her mama hold séances. One day she meets Agnes, a widow whom seem to share the fact of spirit companions.

My Darling Dreadful Thing goes deep into topics around mental health, all of them done beautifully. I felt as if I really got to understand how all these characers ended up acting the way that they did, and I also felt that the actions and reactions were very believeable in relations to their trauma. This was such a good portrayal of mental health struggles.
The pacing as a bit too slow for me in the beginning, but as soon as the story shifts away from the séances it really picked up. I also really enjoyed the shifts between Roos’ retelling of the events and her therapy sessions, it really made the story have another layer to it.

This was a beautiful book, and such a strong debut.

The only thing that took this down to four atars instead of five was that I always felt like a bystander in the story, I lacked the last bit of immersiveness for me. But somehow I also felt like that was how it was supposed to be read.

Loved it!

Tiktok review will be poated in theoddbooks 11.4.24, aka tomorrow.

5 Reasons to read My Darling Dreadful Thing

1. Suspense
2. Sapphic
3. Spirits
4. Unreliable narrator
5. Dual Timeline

*I received a copy of this book as an ARC for review from NetGalley
I lived laughed loved this book. There were lesbians and ghosts and spooks, i couldn't have asked for anything more.

What a fantastic read. This story had an equal amount of mystery and horror with a love story mixed in. The way the story was written extremely well and I enjoyed the perspective of both Roos and the doctor. It always interests me when we start with the end and work our way through the story from the main character's POV. Roos was a sympathetic character and I felt for her so much. Her story reminded me a lot of other stories I have heard of people that have developed MPD. This was theorized by the doctor and it definitely tracked which is due to how the author wrote this story. It was easy to see how the reality of Ruth was very real to Roos which is typical of people who may suffer from mental health concerns. Johanna did an amazing job of finding that balance. I also 100% cringed when we learned about the incest issue. No thank you! But this did play a big role in Agnes' story. I really loved this book and would definitely recommend it to those who enjoy gothic novels!

This was really something else in its entirety. You get to experience this glorious book not just through the characters but through Doctors notes as well that further the unreliable narration and make us doubt every single thing we’re reading. It’s a great twist to not know who to believe, from a readers perspective. I really like the main characters and the authors descriptions were so beautifully horrific and unsettling. It was every gothic vibe lovers dream. Not only that but it was incredibly spooky and I think it’s a great read to get lost in.

If you've seen this book and though about pre-ordering it, this is your sign to do so.

I just got finished reading the ARC and it was such a beautiful and well written story! It keep me on my feet the whole time.

Here's a little blurb on the book:

The book follows Roos, who has experienced a great deal of horrible things in her life. To get her through these times, she is accompanied by a spirit companion named Ruth. Roos is saved from her living situation and goes to live with a widow named Agnes, who also happens to have a spirit companion. Long story short, someone ends up murdered and Roos is to blame, throughout the book you follow her story and her trying to prove her innocence/sanity to the court.

I hope to one day see more from Agnes and Roos.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Absolutely breathtaking and I am completely enamored with this story! It is so beautiful and poetic and I believe this is going to be one of those novels I never stop thinking about.

Thank you @netgalley and @poisonpenpress for the eARC of this novel for my honest review.

I received an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review through Netgalley, thank you Netgalley and Poison Pen Press!' Please heed the content warning for this one including stigmatization of those considered mentally ill, child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual violence, racism, misogyny, and homophobia as well as graphic descriptions of physical violence and horror.

I had a wonderful time reading My Darling Dreadful Thing. As horrifying as it is beautiful, the novel follows a young woman, Roos Beckman, and her spirit companion, Ruth - a terrifying primordial force that is fiercely protective of her medium - as they go from performing in Roos’ ‘mother’s’ fraudulent seances to becoming the companion of a grieving widow, Agnes Knoop after a seance gone askew. The story is told as a recollection by Roos to her psychologist Doctor Montague who has been tasked to confirm if Roos is mentally fit to stand murder trial. I just wanted to roll around in this book forever and found myself completely sucked in from the first page. I haven't truly stopped thinking about it two weeks after reading the final lines.

'Some things are so horrible that the only sane response is a bit of madness.’

It is no secret that I live for darker tales, the horror and the gothic so this hit a lot of my very specific buttons. Upon reaching the crumbling estate of Agnes Knoop, l felt the book began to amp up those Gothic Horror elements with the introduction of Agnes’ tuberculosis-ridden sister-in-law and the memory of her husband whose presence is very much felt regardless of whether or not he is physically, or spiritually present… It felt timeless without being predictable, a refreshing spin on a fairly standard formula for the genre. The sapphic yearning is also handled excellently, culminating in a beautiful and heart-wrenching relationship. I especially appreciated the treatment of Agnes' character and her culture, it would have been all too easy to wash over that aspect but the inclusion brought something deeper to her character and highlighted a history that I knew nothing about before this, which I found helped immerse myself in the setting and characters.

The relationships in the book are the highlight, even more than the sapphic slow burn between Roos and Agenes, is the connection that defies all conventions of romance, friendship, and family between Roos and her spirit companion Ruth. I felt it would have been easy to just lean into one convention for their relationship but van Veen never did, surprising me with their interactions and feelings til the end.

You need never be alone again now, Roos. You have named me and let me drink from you. We are wedded to each other now, you and I.’

The novel is filled with truly grotesque descriptive writing that haunts the page and is a staple of its genre executed flawlessly, van Veen should be immensely proud of this shining debut. I would not hesitate to recommend this to everyone I know, but specifically those of us in love with the Gothic, the tragic, and finding the beauty in ugliness.

What an utterly gothic and disturbing story van Veen has created. It took me a moment to get into the rhythm of this story, but once it takes hold, it is a wild ride.

There are a lot of things being said in this book, the heart of which is somewhat pounded into the reader by the end. The story wants you to think about the abuses children suffer and how that can, and often does, affect them into their adult lives. Those outside the story want Roos, and therefore the reader, to acknowledge that what Roos knows to be true is merely a symptom of some sort of psychosis.

But the truly thrilling part of this book is: what if its not? What if the story that Roos is telling us is true? Everything she experiences can, surely, be dismissed by doctors as psychosis, but the inkling of the idea that it is true? That is spectacular and terrifying.

This book is so atmospheric, its delicious. The wan van Veen describes the way Ruth takes posession of Roos, the way the spirits look, even the dilapidated former glory of the Rozentuin are so glorious in their descriptions. I thing its often difficult for modern writers to truly write gothic literature well, because we live in such a modern world, but this book oozes gothic atmosphere.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This is a fantastic novel, a deep-rooted horror piece of work, and just an all-around beautiful and haunting book. I absolutely adored this book, and it had so many things within it that I feel I want to know more about beyond this world that we see here - it's such an interesting concept, and as a whole it was just a swan-song of beauty, terror, fear, desire, and love.

Roos as the main character holds a lot of mysteries within her whole story - she is an unloved and mostly unwanted vessel for her not-quite mother, who keeps her in employ undertaking seances for the masses who have enough money to pay her. She is, in substance, an unhappy woman, and does not live the life that she wants and cannot even recognise that she may be worth more than what she is currently stuck within. Until along comes Agnes and the promise of a new life - and Roos falls hard and fast into a deep mire of ghosts, mysterious pasts, and a completely different life ahead of her.

This book was a really beautiful thing to read, although I did find it hard in places to like certain characters (like Ruth) who could be a little over the top. I only hold off on making this a five star because I don't feel as though I particularly loved the way that the medical and trial side of this played out - it cracks the immersion of the Rozentuin to an extent, and I just felt like it could have been a little bit more subtle in some areas.

It's nice as well to have a Dutch slant on a horror novel - a substansial chunk of my family is from the Netherlands, and I feel that we often underutilise and appreciate just how creepy our country can be. I really enjoyed having this front and centre in places in the novel, and found that it just carried that air of menace and oppressiveness so much better than other pieces maybe could have.

The climax of the story is certainly messed up, and I read it with eyes wide and glassy late at night - it doesn't really feel like it is scary persay, but it certainly carries a sense of dread with it. The ending gives some level of closure to the events, but is also satisfyingly open ended, and I think the characters were left at just the right place for this. I really did enjoy the whole of this book, and looking forward to what the author does next!

I was not a fan of this one. Honestly, I found it boring. The author writes well though and is super descriptive.