Roos only has one comfort in her life, Ruth, her spirit companion, who helps her through a childhood of neglect and hurt. That is, until Roos meets the enigmatic Agnes. Told in hindsight, My Darling Dreadful Thing tells a dramatic Gothic tale of love and death. Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have been reading up on narrativity theory the past few months and a big element of recent narrativity theory was the idea of consciousness, if I understood it correctly. Narratives are ways in which we share our perception of the world, ways in which we try to give others an actual, real insight into our minds, our consciousnesses, our ideas. What struck me most was that realization that we can indeed never show someone else exactly how we feel, that we are, in some ways at least, forever stuck on our own in our own heads. I'm bringing this up because My Darling Dreadful Thing is so utterly infused with a sense of loneliness, with a desire to be seen, understood and perceived, and with a fear that true understanding is impossible. The story Roos tells us, one of spirits, seances, and hauntings, is one which screams for connection and I think it is delightful how Johanna van Veen kind of gives the reader a choice to either follow Roos in her version or take a more detached, cool distance. Gothic novels are what I like to call Capital Letter Books. They are about Romance, about Fear, about all the things we could write large. And in My Darling Dreaful Thing these big things, bit emotions, all come up. How we engage with them, is up to us, but we always have the choice to follow Roos in her story, to take whatever peek we can into her life and her mind.

Roos helps her Mama make money through seances. While the ghosts she calls up are fake, her spirit companion, Ruth, is not. She has been Roos' one comfort for years, as her mother's behaviour moves between neglect and abuse. Everything shifts, however, when Agnes Knoop visits and the two become tied to one another. In moving to Agnes' dilapidated mansion, called Rozentuin, Roos is given space to become her own woman. And yet she finds herself ever more drawn to Agnes and the tragedy that suffuses Rozentuin. One act leads to ever growing tension as the novel hurtles towards its dramatic climax. Told mostly through Roos' perspective, My Darling Dreadful Thing in fact switches in perspectives. Roos narrates large parts of the story in retrospect, occasionally interjected with excerpts from a transcript of a doctor interviewing her after something dreadful has happened at Rozentuin. The transcript shows us how Roos attempts to explain what happened and then smoothly transitions into Roos actually explaining it. I did enjoy this back-and-forth and thought it was a really interesting strategy to also deal with the spirit/ghost-side of things and the way readers may think of it. It builds up a nice image of Roos as well, because we get her own thoughts and then the doctor's assessment of her and her story through the transcript. Agnes' story is also really interesting, especially as it includes her background as an Indo person and her experiences living in the Netherlands.

Johanna van Veen is Dutch, but wrote this novel in English, so it is not a translated work, if I'm correct. If it had been, I would have liked to read it in Dutch, because despite leaning heavily on the British Gothic tradition, My Darling Dreadful Thing is steeped in Dutch tradition. From the names, to the state of Rozentuin, to Agnes' history and the Netherlands' colonial past, it was great to read a novel which engaged with all of that. While I think that at times the writing could have been a little sharper, I do also appreciate this might be a genre thing. Gothic novels are often a little dreamlike, a little dramatic, full of crumbling mansions and evil forces. That is what My Darling Dreaful Thing reads like as well and if you're in the mood for it, excellent! However, as I said, van Veen does also build up a really interesting character in Roos who, for me at least, seems so suffused with a sense of longing and desperation that it is almost unbearable. I look forward to seeing how Johanna van Veen's writing develops and am absolutely on board for future novels by her!

My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen is a beautiful queer Gothic novel of spirits and loneliness, hauntings and connections.

My Darling Dreadful Thing is a sapphic gothic tale. The story is set in the 1950s but it felt like it took place in the 1800s. It definitely has a Victorian era vibe that I loved. This story is dark, haunting, and sad. It deals with trauma, abuse, love, and death. It took me a little while to get into the story but I felt like things got more interesting towards the middle of the book. I really liked the author’s writing and I look forward to reading more from her in the future. I would recommend this book to lovers of slower paced gothic fiction.

3.5⭐️

My Darling Dreadful Thing is the ultimate unreliable narrator novel. If you love being unsure whether something did or did not really happen, this book delivers.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of reading The Turn of the Screw, this book is essentially an homage to it. We have a similar concept in that it’s a young woman sent to a secluded place where her sanity begins to unravel, though the essence of that insanity is of a different nature than in James’ book.

In this novel, we have Roos, the main character, being interviewed by a doctor who is fairly certain she has either schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder (though, this being the 1950s, his understanding of these is different from today). These interviews and the epigraphs serve to frame the story, as we then have chapters - most of the novel - of Roos telling what happened to her. We are already aware of what has transpired to some other characters, but the WHY is the reason the doctor believes Roos is mentally ill. What’s incredibly well done about this novel is something I will talk about at the end because it’s not really a spoiler, but it kind of is.

While this story is fun in the unreliable narrator sense, it is definitely not a fun novel in that it’s very bleak. Roos is a traumatized, abused young woman, and her new friend is also not in the best state of mind. Yet, Roos’ trauma is an integral part of the story, as is why she’s so close to Ruth.

Ruth, thankfully, adds some levity to the story in that she makes acerbic, often amusing comments. There’s also a scene in the middle of the novel which had me almost-laughing because it was so absurd. It’s dark and creepy and tension-filled, but it still had me very amused in a dark humour sort of way.

The characterization of Roos is fantastic. Because her first-person chapters are framed by the interviews, we approach reading those chapters almost from the mindset of psychoanalyzing her ourselves. We watch what she does and see how every little thing ties back to her trauma, to her desire to keep the first good thing she’s ever had. It’s very immersive in that regard and keeps you rather riveted.

Likewise, the setting is gothic to the extreme, with a run-down mansion in the bogs and a dying sister-in-law. It has very Crimson Peak vibes, in a way. If you like Gothic, you’ll love it.

The tone and atmosphere of the novel are dark and menacing, and you feel for poor Roos the entire time. The novel is absolutely entrancing.

Ok, ready for the spoiler not spoiler? It's one of the best things about the novel, so I have to talk about it. Stop here if you want to go in completely blind.

The entire time, and even at the end, we are never really sure - just like The Turn of Screw - whether Ruth actually exists. The novel expertly lays out the evidence for both interpretations so that you can’t definitively say whether she was experiencing hallucinations or whether the ghosts were, in fact, real. So much of it, from her mother’s seances to certain physical things that happen, depends on Roos’ explanations, which we cannot trust. This is also reinforced by explanations of things that I found odd - like how ghosts can touch things - which make these things make sense, but do they make sense for reality or for Roos’ reality? We can’t ever be sure, really, and that’s the best thing about the book. For a Turn of the Screw homage, it nails the concept.

An excellent debut!

This is a story unlike any I’ve read before! And I haven’t read many gothic stories but I definitely want to read more now after this one! It is creepy and keeps you on the edge of your seat!

My Darling Dreadful thing reminds me of House of Hollow and Juniper and Thorn in tone, and that is high praise. Gothic, a bit grotesque at times, pretty word choices.

Set in post WWII Netherlands, you don’t explore the setting too much and instead spend most of your time exploring Roos and her spirit companion. I felt the first person narration style really worked for this. I enjoyed Roos’ voice and character.

I will say that even though it is set in the 50’s, it felt more like the 20’s to me so that is what I was picturing in my head.

It is a start at the end kind of story, where the narrator tells you how you got to where you start.

I loved the device of the sessions with the doctor and how they kept pace with the story. I wasn’t sold on them at first but they grew on me.

I liked Agnes right away. She seems cheeky, like a character who has gumption. And growing up mixed race (Indonesian) in this time period and as a bastard child of a rich man had to have helped harden her shell.

It is a slower paced novel, using that to build up tension and intrigue for the reader. The spirit companions and the comfort of menace they can bring was a great tool to examine the human characters’ failings.

Overall, I really enjoyed myself.

In Johanna van Veen’s My Darling Dreadful Thing, Roos, a young woman coereced into starring in only kinda fraudulent seances by her “Mama,” does have the ability to see the dead, but really just one. She is tethered to the spirit of the long-dead Ruth, who possesses her body and adds authenticity to the seances, even when participants’ loved ones’ spirits fail to appear. Soon enough, Roos is taken under the care of Agnes, a wealthy, if austrasized, widow with a spirit companion of her own.

Riddled with references to classic gothic texts, with varying levels of subtlty, van Veen adds a new twist on the familiar. The novel pulls most directly from The Turn of the Screw; in addition to epigraphs from James’s novel at each new part, Agnes named her spirit companion Peter Quint after the menacing apparition that stalks the governess and her charges. The inclusion aligns Roos and the governess and pushes readers to question Roos’s reliabiity, particularly after an unexplained death. Van Veen also includes subtler references to The Yellow Wallpaper, enhancing the characters’ isolation as the wallpaper leaves stains on clothing and hands, Gilman’s “smooches.” Finally, and without revealing too much, I would suggest that in formulating Willemijn and Thomas’s relationship, van Veen was inspired by Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher hide spoiler. Like any good gothic novel, van Veen reworks classic themes and forges something remarkable.

The novel switches between Roos’s first person narrative and the clinical notes of a psychologist assessing her ability to stand trial after a mysterious and fatal event at Agnes’s house. This layered narration allows Dr. Montague to, like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Dr. Watson, serve as a proxy for readers, asking Roos to explain herself in greater detail. I don’t feel this added very much except novelty, which might just be enough. The interview notes don’t reveal anything that isn’t present in Roos’s narrative, but it does serve to heighten suspense, hinting at the fatal events before they are entirely revealed.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The setting of post-WWII Netherlands and the history of colonialism there (which I was very unfamiliar with and eager to learn about!) provided a fresh background to well-executed Gothic tropes and surprisingly effective body horror. The author really nailed the vibe of dread while also deftly exploring the socioeconomic intricacies (as well as the literal ghosts) that created it.

In the book My Darling Dreadful Thing, we meet Roost at first she is living with the woman she calls mama somewhere in the Netherlands. She was raised to do psychics scams on those who visit wanting to reach dead loved ones. There initially very successful at their flap trap until Agnes comes for a reading. Right away there’s something palpable between them Agnes can even see roost’s Spirit companion Ruth. Something Agnes is very familiar with because she has her own companion in Peter. So when she comes back weeks later and pays for her companionship her fake mama couldn’t be happier and neither can Roost. When she moves to the rambling rundown Rosentune mansion she is so happy to spend her time with Agnes and although she isn’t a big fan of Vlinea Agnes‘s sister-in-law she does feel bad the bitter woman has consumption and is on her last leg. Despite her grave illness she is the one who puts everything in motion that marks the beginning of the end. Once again I have written a horrible review about an awesome book this is the authors debut novel and boy did she hit it out of the park.I thought the authors imagination in the great way she described events was superb, theres authors who have published many books that do not write is great is Miss Johanna did. I also want to say Ruth plays a big part in the book and I should’ve mentioned her more and the review the ending was awesome and should she ever get what she wants I hope the author writes another book about it so we can hear all the details. I felt so bad for roost and so the ending I must admit it was a good one! I want to think poison pen press for my free arc copy via NetGalley please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review please forgive any misspelling of the names I am not familiar with danish so I apologize.

My Darling Dreadful Thing
By: Joanna Van Veen

I read this on Netgalley and it was a 5 star for me! I love horror novels and my favorite being gothic horror. If you’re into a gothic sapphic horror you should pick this one! It’s creepy haunted house vibe and all the crazy things that happen in this story will have you not being able to put the book down.

This is set in the 1950’s and follows a girl who lives with her mom as a child and her mom would pretend to hold seances at their home for people to connect with their loved ones. The girl would hide under the floorboards to pretend she was the spirit while the people would try to connect to their loved ones. Meanwhile she’s there she actually connected to a spirit and was bounded to her as a companion.

Now she’s 21, all throughout her life she’s the only one that can see this spirit companion and communicate with her.

So much happens and some of the things that go on make you question if this really happened or was the girl just mental. There’s a murder, she meets someone named Agnes & there’s also excerpts in the book set up like a doctor/patient conversation.

I really enjoyed this story, it was creepy and gave my vibes of the haunting of bly manor, what moves the dead, and my favorite, Poe.

This is an incredibly unique and turbulent gothic tale, that I completely devoured. The characters are divine, the plot twisty, and the setting is pure perfection. Roos Beckman is a young woman, whose Mama is not the kindest. She food intake is limited, she was forced into small spaces beneath the floor to work wires and strings for their seances when she was a small child. In the small confines of the basement Roos meets her spirit companion, Ruth. Ruth is her friend, protector, mother figure, and will not allow any harm come to Roos. Mama of course uses Roos and Ruth in her seances to bring in money, none of which Roos sees. Agnes Knoop is rich woman who has come to experience one of their seances. There is an instant connection with Roos. Agnes takes in the horrible conditions Roos has been forced to live and has her move to her mansion that is falling in around itself. It is dark, dingy, yet Agnes brings the light into Roos life. This is one book I do not want to go into great detail about or you will miss out on all of the surprises that are in store for you.

I do love an atmospheric read and this one ticks all of the boxes. I was absorbed into the pages and into Roos life. The characters and the storylines between them are fantastic. You can feel the pain and anguish oozing out of Roos, and her need to fit in somewhere, to feel someone's love, and to have someone's attention. Thank you to Johanna van Veen and Poisoned Pen Press for my gifted copy.

Chilling, haunting, sad, thrilling! Loved this. A compelling, wonderfully written work of horror! Highly recommended!

Satisfying sapphic romantic story of a woman who uses legit psychic powers in service of a horrible, harridanly charlatan. Or the story of an impressionable mentally ill young woman in thrall to a horrible, harridanly charlatan who grabs hold of sapphic love to effect her escape from abuse.

Either one fits. Both take us down the very dark, quite chilling paths that Author Johanna ushers the reader down. Roos, our PoV, has never experienced a normal life. It's the second culturally Dutch novel I've read this month that paints a very bleak picture of Dutch life after WWII, though I suppose that isn't exactly a shock is it. What does surprise me is the deeply homophopbic atmosphere Author Johanna portrays...I suppose the patriarchal horror of the world she's limned before our utterly appalled eyes is a big part of that, as the homophobia in question is directed at sapphic lovers.

If I'm to offer you one inducement to exceed all the others to get this book into y'all's hands, I'm going with: Dutch Author Johanna wrote this book in English, about lesbian survivors of a horrifying war in the Netherlands, because she's Dutch, because she's lesbian, and because she's clearly not quite right. How many people can accrete so many out-of-mainstream identities, write a story directly centered in them all, and get it published in the insular US market? And then, topping the high-calorie literary sundae with its obligatory gorgeously red cherry, create the undead/zombie character that twangs your readerly heartstrings with her fullness and pathos? Sweet, dead Ruth...my favorite zombie!

There are no others, just this one.

You can read, and there's a synopsis above this, so you know what's going on. I'm here to tell you if I think Author Johanna did the job of convincing me to invest in her world: Yes. Did she make me think long and hard about how the transactional world cheapens, while defining, human relationships: Better than the Southern Gothics. Roos is a classic Tennessee Williams character, a Blanche Dubois plus agency, with the psychic fragility and serious Love problems; Ruth puts me in mind of a gender-flipped Darl Bundren, articulate, doomed. Did her writing cause me to sit quiet for long moments, committing parts to memory: once, which is once more than most books I read. (It's a spoiler, so I daren't share; the Spoiler Stasi are ever vigilant and quick with their truncheons.)

The unique quality I literally never expect from horror, especially Gothic horror, novels is, here, the pervasive Dutchness of the story. It could not be reset in the US, or England, without losing the special something that kept luring me past my usual guardrails against con-artist faux psychics and fantastical stories of spirit lovers. These are usually the tropes I use as reminders that I have compararively few eyeblinks left and don't want to waste them. Author Johanna, in using postwar, post-Occupation Netherlandish settings, convinced me not to pre-judge these characters. Their long national trauma, their dark personal traumas, their battles faught against real cultural horrors, all formed a gestalt of world and people that convinced me to set my usual intolerance for these ideas aside and consider them as real...to the characters, thus opening the door to my belief as well.

That's a huge achievement for an author I'm unfamiliar with. I'm really pleased to say that I felt the ending was indeed a payoff commensurate with my investment of care and attention.

Brava, Johanna van Veen. Clearly your genesis as the odd-triplet-out was predictive of your sui generis selfhood. I'm eager for more from you.

Wow! This gothic masterpiece is everything I ever wanted and more. Johanna van Veen knows how to write and she doesn't disappoint. I am not exaggerating when I say this is my best read yet for 2024. If you love crumbling mansions surrounded by decay and mystery, spirits, and murder, this is for you. It's dark, decadent, and delicious. It's everything that my horror-loving heart could ever ask for. This has made me into a huge fan and I'll be on the lookout for this writer's other works.

This was a very dark and possibly triggering story.
Roos is a young woman who becomes friends with a female ghost who appears to, and comforts her through all the awful moments in her life. Her mother is a cruel woman who hits her, and starves her, so that her persona is attractive to the strange sad creatures that visit her mother’s house, hoping for a glimpse, or to hear from their deceased relative. It’s all a scam… The front room is full of gimmicks to make these poor people think there is someone there with them.
Poor Roos is filled in on another scam to rake as much money as possible from a grieving young widow. This woman called Agnes has had a lot of problems in her young life and after seeing how the girl is treated, buys Roos to be her companion.. So the true story begins…..with murder on the cards!!
I really don’t know how I feel about this story. It’s a gothic tale, so of course it’s dark and sobering. The story is easy to read, but there are a few scenes that could upset the gentle reader, so beware!.
Many thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for the opportunity to read this arc copy for review consideration via Netgalley.
#Netgalley, #PoisonedPenPress, -#JohannaVanVeen1997.

Happy release day!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Poison Pen Press for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review

4.25- I loved this debut!!! Haunting, atmospheric, and creepy in the best way possible. This hit all of the high points of the gothic genre for me. I loved the dual timelines and the interview portion, and the way this format allowed the story to unfold including the pacing and the amount of information. Overall, very engaging, fast paced, and satisfying. Would definitely recommend for people looking to get into gothic horror

🥳 HAPPY PUB DAY !!!! 🥳

This book is wild ! 🙃
There's alot going on for sure ... Alot of weird creepy things happening. Love that creep factor !! 💀
a slow burn gothic read .
I did want a faster pace but I still very much enjoyed this book .. more than I thought I would actually . It's just so weird I loved it 😂
Sure a few things annoyed me but for a debut novel this was killer 😜 & definitely unique . I don't think I'll be forgetting this one anytime soon & the cover art is gorgeous .

Thank you #NetGalley for another Arc
#mydarlingdreadfulthing

I absolutely loved this book! Sapphic Gothic Horror?! Say less! My Darling Dreadful Thing dug up the best of my favorite gothic horror: The Haunting of Bly Manor, Mexican Gothic, Crimson Peak, etc.

I loved the inclusion of the psychiatrist’s notes and interviews resembled the healthcare horror of The Exorcist.

Highly recommended for the classic, gothic horror lover - especially if they are LGBTQ+!

Thank you Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC!

I just finished My Darling Dreadful thing by Johanna Van Veen and here are my thoughts.
Roos Beckman has a gift. Her mama uses her to make people believe they are being contacted by their deceased loved ones… In reality Roos has a spirit companion only she can see, the spirit she calls Ruth…. One that takes over her body during these seances to fool the people that come.


When Agnes Knoop, a beautiful young and wealthy widow attends one of the seances, she does something Roos never expected… She looks right at Ruth. No one has ever noticed Ruth before. When Agnes offers Roos mother a handsome sum of money to take Roo away with her, her mother agrees. The estate is falling apart and the real reason Agnes brings her to the place has become apparent. With Agne’s sister in law sick and ailing, the house smells like death but the relationship between Roo and Agnes grows closer.
Something happens at the estate that leaves someone dead and Roos is on trial for the murder. The story she has to tell not only sheds light on what happened that night but also on her sanity.
This was a really dark book. We get the story in 2 ways. The flashbacks to the past starting with Roos and being exploited and starved by her mother and then in the form of her interview with a specialist to see if she was crazy during her murder trial. I wasn’t a fan of the short hand in the interviews. Miss K, W -. It got confusing trying to decipher who they were talking about. Why didn't the author just write the name or short hand it to one type instead of Miss K sometimes and then W. Plus having a Mrs K and a Miss K… UGHHHHHHH.
That was probably my only real issue with the book. I didn’t want to have to think that hard ya know. The book really builds slowly but the whole time it is eerie and you can really feel the atmosphere building.. Gets the heart racing just a little bit at a time. ‘
There is a lot to unpack in this book. Mental health, abuse, family drama, incest, a lot of religious zealotism with the chapel and the statues… Enough to set my teeth on edge! Loved the classic creepy house gothic vibes and it was really well written. Has some Sapphic romance in there too which I actually quite enjoyed. You can see how these two young women with a lot in common could end up feeling a certain way about each other and it was tastefully done.
Definitely an unusual read but I enjoyed the heck out of it and for a debut… WOWWWWW
4.5 stars


Thank you @poisonpenpress and @netgalley for my gifted copy. Released yesterday so grab a copy now.

My Darling Dreadful Thing was truly a culmination of some of my absolute favorite things and it DELIVERED. Sapphic, Gothic af, paranormal, and just told so freaking well - I devoured this book! And that cover?! Stunning!

I was hooked from the first page!

This is definitely a gothic story, we have ghosts, a spooky old house, and two women who have a pretty dark and disturbing secret that just begs to be discovered by Roos and Ruth.
I loved meeting Roos and Ruth. While the backstory of how they came to be together is pretty tragic I loved their relationship and learning all about how Ruth came to be. I also really loved how the story was interspersed with medical notes from the doctor interviewing Roos in the present. Trying to prove whether Roos is sane or not. While a decent amount of things are happening between the characters this does have more of a slow build that really ramps up the tension as the story progresses.

The story was weird and unique and had me completely entranced from beginning to end and I can't wait to see what this author is going to come out with next.