I won’t be posting about this one publicly. It didn’t work for me. I made it about 54% before recognizing that I’m not the audience for it. I did this as a buddy read and my buddy really enjoyed it. I think it opened up promising with an atmospheric vibe. We somehow lost that and the plot. I needed things to move. Definitely recommend to other readers.

Like any good vampire story, Schwab's Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is about the humanity of its characters. Is it possible to still be human even without the specter of mortality haunting every choice we make? The story essentially follows three protagonists, making it somewhat uneven at times. It takes a very long time for the stories to intertwine, which is sometimes frustrating. However, I still really enjoyed the book, particularly as it explored the troubled and troubling relationships and power differentials between vampires. Alice is an extremely likeable character, while Maria quickly becomes terrifying yet no less compelling. A truly enjoyable and emotionally intense vampire story.

VE Schwab has done it again. The prose was so exquisite. The multiple storylines kept me interested and when it all came together I was shook.

So beautiful throughout, but I wish the ending was.... more.

Very reminiscent of Interview With A Vampire, especially the recent show.

Excellent sapphic vampire novel. The characters are well-developed, interesting, and genuinely terrifying. The writing, is, as always, beautiful and evocative.
It does suffer from being similar to "Addie LaRue" in that it's about immortal beings chasing each other through time. If I were unfamiliar with Schwab's other work, I'd be blown away.

While V. E. Schwab’s latest novel is undeniably ambitious and beautifully written at the sentence level, I found the reading experience frustrating. The prose often leaned toward purple without building real momentum, leaving the story feeling drawn out and amorphous. The themes of hunger, love, and rage are compelling in concept, but in execution the narrative never quite coalesced into something that felt impactful. For me, it was more style than substance.

Of course anything written by V.E. Schwab is an automatic read for me. This book was a little bit slow to start and there were times that I was unsure if I would like it or not. However I soldiered on and I am glad that I did. I really liked the three different stories of three different vampires over a long span of time. I liked how they ended up connecting and why. The ending was good and overall I really liked this book. It is not my favorite of hers but I still very much enjoyed it.

I see why lots of people gave this one 5 stars - the setting is just sooo good. I really liked how unique it is, but I wish it was a little more fast-paced.

We love toxic lesbian vampires.
And VE Schawb does a brillant job writing them. The only thing that I could see being an issue for people is the fact that this book is very character driven, not plot driven.

This book was incredible! It shocked me as I did not think I was going to be this obsessed with this book. I have never read Schwab’s works before, but now I want to read them all.

Love. Death. Hate. Hunger. Promises. The woman in this book are captivating. These toxic lesbian vampires had me hooked and I didn’t want it to end.

This story started out slow, but I became enchanted and feel as though I fell under a curse with how much I was invested in these characters. A beautifully tragic, sapphic vampire fantasy.

Schwab’s historical fantasy intertwines three women whose collective story and individual lives span centuries. Maria’s story opens in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Spain, in 1532, Lottie’s in London 1827, and Alice’s in Boston 2019.

Schwab’s masterful characterization of each, differentiated by their distinctive voices, creates the emotionally compelling core from which unfurls the novel’s driving force: each woman’s response to her transformation into a near-immortal and violent creature. Schwab’s vampires provide rich, unexpected loam in which to explore human yearnings for love, sustenance, and freedom. Vampires in Schwab’s skilled hands have expectation-defying depth, whether a reader usually loves or hates vampires. Relationships between women and the dynamics of control and need are central to this brilliant dive into the human heart.

Schwab seamlessly integrates character with style, different and evolving for each woman. The language is period-appropriate but goes well beyond that. Alice’s 2019 narration sounds contemporary with hints of stream-of-consciousness (adroitly startling after Maria’s voice in 1532 Spain). But also, the reader feels Alice’s struggle to find and become herself—her doubts and powerlessness—in the piling up of “when” and “and” clauses in this example: “It’s because there’s a moment, pressed beneath the weighted blanket of the storm, when her body stops fighting, when all the voices inside her finally go quiet, and her shoulders loosen and her lungs unclench and her skin goes numb and the line between girl and world gets smudged, and she is washed away.”

Will these women find and hold onto their deepest desires? Who and what will they destroy in the process? Those plot strands drive the reader forward, but the literary virtuosity glues the reader exquisitely to each page.

V.E. Schwab's latest sapphic vampire romance spans centuries, and while the writing is superb, the scope is perhaps too broad to keep readers invested for the 600+ page epic. I enjoyed the characters and the atmosphere, but felt there was a lack of a driving force beyond waiting to see how the two timelines were connected. I'll still recommend this to vampire enthusiasts and fans of Schwab, but I would have preferred to see a more focused and streamlined version of the story.

VE Schwab’s signature cerebral style is on full display in this novel and you can really see how this is definitely the novel of her heart. I loved the historical and dark atmosphere but I found it a bit slow at times. It’s more of a character-focused book rather than plot so it’s perfect for fans of deep character introspection.

I love V.E. Schwab's writing and this was no exception. It did remind me of Addie LaRue but since I love that one, I did not mind!

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil was beautifully written, but it didn’t completely work for me. I loved how V. E. Schwab created distinct voices for each timeline—the historical settings felt immersive and the prose was gorgeous. The themes of hunger, desire, and autonomy really stood out, and I appreciated how the book explored those ideas through queer women’s lives across centuries. That said, the pacing dragged in spots, and the constant shifting between storylines sometimes pulled me out of the flow.

I have had so many people rave about V.E. Schwab to me. I hated Addie LaRue, so I will admit to being hesitant about this book.

This is a sapphic vampire book about hunger, love, and rage. It builds through the years to all come to a head. It is masterfully built and does not focus so hard on romance that the reader becomes annoyed.

Perhaps I enjoy V.E. Schwab more than I realized.

Thank you to Net Galley, Tor Publishing Group, and Tor Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Oh I loved this book 😭 my only complaint is that it felt a little too long and the end wrapped everything up kind of quickly, but overall I was hooked. Loved the writing! It really transported me to every time period. I wish we had a little bit more about Alice but still really enjoyed this!

✨ Review ✨ Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab

Thanks to Tor and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

Written by one of my favorite authors, this book had high expectations in my head, and, man, did it deliver! It's closest comparison in Schwab's catalog is Addie LaRue for its sort of magical realism, spread across a long, long timeline, in a book told through fractured timelines. I think Addie is probably still my favorite of the two, but this was still awesome!

I was sold just on the premise of lesbian vampires, but mixing in multiple POVs over multiple timelines and I was hooked!

The book spans multiple times and places, but is rooted in 2019 Boston, 1827 London, and 1532 Spain. Each of these times and places is so richly described that Schwab brings out there and builds the world around you. The parties and intrigues live across these pages, and it felt so colorful and compelling.

The characters are delightful and lovable and frustrating and you'll love to hate them -- they're a mess, and I'm so there for the ride. It's impossible to talk about it without giving spoilers, but I loved this book, and hope you do too!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: fantasy, historical fiction
Setting: 1530s-2019 Spain, London, Boston, and more
Reminds me of: Addie LaRue meets The Lost Apothecary meets We Love the Nightlife
Pub Date: June 2025

Read this if you want more of these things in your life:
⭕️ lesbian vampires
⭕️ fragmented timelines through multiple POVs
⭕️ books like Addie LaRue and We Love the Nightlife

"Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil" is another gorgeously written novel from V. E. Schwab. Like everything Schwab writes, it's lush and illustrative and the characters feel so fully realized.

To me, Maria/Sabine’s storyline is the highlight and really serves to anchor the story. Her development unfolds in such a believable, beautiful way that, by the end, you understand exactly how she reached this point.

The ending itself is built up to so well and deeply satisfying.

✨ 4.25/5 — Rounded down to 4 for review purposes.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the advance copy in exchange for my review.

(3.5 ⭐) I read this as it was heavily marketed as "toxic lesbian vampires", seemingly inspired by Anne Rice's writing. Well, it wasn't. This is a poetically written novel, but it did not feel like a particularly fresh or new spin on vampire fiction or gothic romance. While I found certain sections to be dark and evocative, the excessively flowery prose that the author uses can often slow down the pacing, to the story's detriment, especially because it is more than 500 pages long.
There are three primary lesbian characters in the novel, but their sections are unequally distributed and their dynamics underexplored; the person I found the most interesting gets to have the least on-page time and her POV is introduced quite late into the story. In contrast, the modern timeline with the third POV character feels awkwardly inserted into the primary narrative, and does not fit in very convincingly with the other characters' storylines. The story remains within safe, tried-and-tested tropes and boundaries of conventional modern SFF writing, with emphasis on solely Eurocentric aesthetics and a lack of historical contextualization, except two contrived allusions to racism (using disposable Black characters) and calling racially ambiguous characters "tan".
The result is mixed: 60% of this is a fairly enjoyable toxic gothic lesbian romance, 40% is largely hyperbolic prose and lack of diversity + repeated themes from Addie LaRue, which neither accentuate the atmosphere nor further the plot. Overall, a bit more blood and grit, and a bit less melancholic prose would have elevated this into a truly cathartic tale.