Blood on Her Tongue is a fascinating and morbid period piece. The curious case of the bog body turns into a thrilling and unique dilemma, where the bonds between family are challenged. Loyalties are questioned and I was left captivated until the last page.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy for reviewing. All opinions are my own.

This story follows Lucy as she journeys to her sisters estate to tend to her while she’s ill. Lucy & Sarah have a weird twin dynamic, as Sarah is more daring and dominant, (propriety be damned), and Lucy submissively follows all of her whims. I liked reading the letters between them while it filled in the gaps of the story. Van Veen’s take on revenants/vampires was interesting and different from anything I’ve read in a while. I liked the story well enough, but I feel like it dragged on a bit too much for such a quickly wrapped up, open ending.

Quick synopsis: 1887 Netherlands, a twin girl becomes infatuated with a corpse found in the bog and something within the bog corpse overtakes her and it has an insatiable hunger for human blood. Her other twin is ready and willing to do whatever it takes to help her sister.
Review: A dark, gothic, supernatural, horror with some sapphic longing? There’s literally nothing else I desire from a book! This book was so original and deliciously done I could not put it down! A very fun and atmospheric read with just the right amount of gore and anticipation throughout. I also love how this wasn’t a book about romantic relationships, but rather a complex and codependent relationship between siblings and how far one is willing to go to protect their sibling.. would they go as far as murder? I love any sort of vampiric, demonic possession books and this one will be another all timer for me from the mastermind that is Johanna Van Veen! Another thing that I love about Johanna’s books is that you never really know if it is truly supernatural or pure madness of the characters. Highly recommend to all! (:
Thanks @netgalley and @poisonpenpress for allowing me the ARC in exchange for my hostage review!
Blood on her tongue available March 2025!

4.5☆

Taking half a star off for what happened to Arthur. I'm only joking; it's not a full five stars because it didn't hit the same way 'My Darling Dreadful Thing' hit.

The number of times I've said, 'No, she wouldn't,' to myself is insane. I absolutely love Johanna Van Veen's way of writing and the fact that she isn't afraid to write about the themes discussed in this book.

Her work makes my heart burn and my brain need time to process. I've never had an author become an auto-buy this fast!

This was a 5/5 for me! It took me a while to read, but that’s only because I read so much slower in the digital space. This book was just everything I long for in a gothic novel: excellent creepy setting, a little bit of blood and gore, the victorian setting. I enjoyed that Johanna used bog bodies again, but gave it a slightly different spin from her last novel. The vampire inspiration was very originally executed as well. I enjoyed this book a lot more than ‘my Darling Dreadful Thing’ because the relationships felt real to me. I adored the deep connection between twin and that romance wasn’t the main subject of the story. I really felt for Lucy and enjoyed seeing her slowly lose grip of.. everything really. In ‘my Darling Dreadful Thing’ one of the questions for readers was: is it madness or reality? And in this novel, ‘Blood on her Tongue’, you can ask yourself this question again. But, honestly, it was better executed than last time, it’s.. well in Dutch we say ‘het ligt er minder dik bovenop’ which translates to that it’s less obvious. Johanna please keep writing these lovely gothic novels!

This book was a wild ride. The writing was engaging and well-paced, but I just felt like I was waiting for a big reveal or twist. It was certainly dark and complicated with its dives into various relationships.
And there were moments I had to literally shudder from a scene…so it was definitely compelling! I just feel that the resolution was essentially “ok, this is the end now” and it didn’t stir any new feelings of wrapping it up for me.

I struggled with this one. The writing was mostly fine but I felt confused with some parts. While it was a different, interesting take on a vampire story, I felt that it fell flat. I just wasn't into it.

I'm a bit stuck with this book, because I *think* it accomplished what it was trying to do, but that accomplishment is also what makes it very frustrating to read.

Lucy, our heroine, is - no beating around the bush - obsessed with her twin sister. She dashes to her side whenever she needs help, sleeps with her husband to try and feel closer to her, and eventually destroys her entire life for the sake of protecting her. There are two ways to view this: one, the book is about the horror of a deeply co-dependent relationship, in which case, mission accomplished! And yet, it feels like there's something missing. Maybe it's just that we see nothing of Sarah before she vampirism takes over, and so it's hard to understand just what Lucy is so obsessed with. It makes Lucy seem weaker as a character, because her defining trait and core motivation for everything she does is protecting Sarah - but we, the reader, can't see what's so special about Sarah that makes Lucy so devoted, and it gives the impression that she's so lacking in personality, she'd latch on to anyone who exerted the slightest force of will over her. There's also a secondary character, Katje, who is in love with Sarah and characterized by being very frail and weak and dependent on her - so is the takeaway here that Sarah surrounds herself with women who don't have the strength of will to defy her? That would be interesting, if the book really committed to it, but it doesn't.

The other way of seeing it is that this is a triumphant love story, and . . . no, that doesn't work at all. As I've said, Lucy is so lacking in spine and Sarah in personality (we see a lot of Sarah post-vampiring, but the book also tells us repeatedly that she is now two people in one body, so that's not really Sarah, is it?) that there's no real reason to root for the two of them. It's especially contradictory because one of the main throughlines is Lucy and Sarah's absolute terror at being sent to an asylum, as their aunt was - but the facts as available to the antagonist characters (Sarah's husband Michael and their family friend Arthur) make it clear that this is the best possible option, because Sarah eats people! There's another throughline, that of male abuse and patriarchy, but it doesn't mesh when the abuse in question is "thinking the woman who's going around stabbing herself in the eye and biting peoples' fingers off should probably not be running around free." What we're left with is two lead characters, one of whom is a pushover and the other one of whom is a cipher, and so we can't really invest in their fates, because there's just not enough "there" there.

(As an aside - I know Grady Hendrix's "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" is divisive, but to me, it succeeds where this one fails, because we see the antagonists of that book wielding power over the women in their lives in situations where our heroines are desperately trying to make them see sense. Whereas, in this, every decision Lucy makes regarding her sister is so nonsensical, we end up rooting for the men in her life to separate them because it clearly needs to happen! The book needed to either commit to the Lucy-Sarah relationship being a horror story, or show Lucy as a character with the mental/emotional resources to steer her own life, and it did neither.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. When *My Darling Dreadful Thing* was released, I was thrilled, and this story surpassed even my high expectations. It offers a unique twist on the traditional vampire tale, much like *A Dowry of Blood*, presenting a mournful recounting of a vampire's love story. However, rather than focusing on romantic love, it explores the profound, enduring bond between siblings and does not shy away from the complexities and messiness that can arise in family relationships. One of my favorite literary genres features what I call "unhinged women," and I appreciated how the ending embraced this theme wholeheartedly.

A little odd, but not so odd that I did not enjoy the book. I thought it was an interesting take on vampire lore.