4.5 stars - rounding up

This did not go in the direction I was expecting, but wow this was good!!

Set in the Netherlands in 1887, we follow Lucy as she cares for her twin sister Sarah, who becomes ill after discovering a dead body on her property. As her behaviour becomes more erratic, Lucy is forced to consider the possibility that something worse than madness is at play.

This is a stunningly created gothic and atmospheric story. The entire time I was so immersed in the world and Sarah's mental state. I loved the scientific and supernatural combo. And I think all of the complicated relationships were handled brilliantly.

Every time you thought you had all the answers, another twist was thrown at you. If you enjoy slower paced books I recommend this!

Set in 1887 Netherlands, Blood on Her Tongue follows Lucy as she returns to her family's estate to care for her twin sister, Sarah, who has become ill and dangerously fixated on a bizarre body unearthed in the bog near their home. As Sarah's behavior grows increasingly erratic, Lucy must confront the possibility that something far more sinister than madness is at play.

As is true with gothic fiction, the atmosphere reigns supreme. The author builds a haunting, claustrophobic setting that perfectly complements the story’s tension. The house feels cold and suffocating, the nearby bog is basically a character itself, and there’s this constant dread hanging over everything. Sarah's transformation is both disturbing and magnetic, drawing readers into a world where the line between the natural and the supernatural blurs. Her peculiar behavior and condition are filled with uncertainty and mystery.

Lucy is a great narrator, determined to make sense of her sister's decline. The bond between the twins is the heart of the story, but it’s twisted and uncomfortable in a way that totally works for gothic fiction. It's complicated, painful, and achingly human. You’re never quite sure what’s real or what’s supernatural, which helps the creeping unease. As with a lot of gothic fiction, it’s a slow burn. There’s more moodiness and creeping unease than plot devices, but the payoff is worth it if you hang in there.

If you like your horror quiet, slow, and full of creeping dread, Blood on Her Tongue might be right up your alley. This book is all about mood—foggy landscapes, crumbling family homes, and the kind of tension that feels both tender and terrifying.

“Because I couldn’t bear you leaving me behind. I thought it would hurt less if I were the one leaving you behind instead.”
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Blood on Her Tongue is a gothic horror similar to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. It hits all the main courses; the discovery of a mysterious body, an incurable disease, and the unraveling of each character's horrific secrets.
🥀
Unfortunately this book did not live up to my expectations. While I loved the gory, creepy ways it explored sibling relationships, lust, and the fear of the unknown, I found it very predictable and lacking in excitement. It felt like gore was used mainly for shock factors, and the bulk of the characters' decisions felt similar or out of field for the main story.
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⅗ stars.
Thank you Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC copy! 🤎

I loved this book. It’s dark, gothic and unputdownable. The setting is perfect and characters back stories are so touching. I couldn’t put it down. The book is vivid and immersive. Some descriptions are gruesome. This is a feminist horror. Author creates such a powerful and poignant characters that you can’t help but gets completely invested in their lives. In the late 1800s in the Netherlands, Lucy go there to meet her twin sister Sarah. Her obsession with centuries old corpse and strange behaviour leads to a diagnosis of brain fever. But Lucy sense something odd and tries to get to the bottom of it yet the truth is sinister and rather unsettling. She must protect her sister. If you like dark and gothic feminist books with sinister secrets, truth, possession and gruesome details, this is right up your alley.

Thanks to the Publisher

I was pretty excited to read this book, because it sounded like everything I love. In the end, I was both disappointed and positively surprised.

First, for the things I loved: The concept is so interesting! This book draws heavily on the vampire tradition but doesn't only limit itself to the obvious (Dracula, Carmilla). There's some cool revenant folk lore and science influences as well, all grounded in a pretty convincing historical setting. There's sapphics (so many sapphics, guys!!) and having just finished Hungerstone, a Carmilla retelling, I was so happy to get not one but two sapphic vampire stories within the same month! What a wonderful surprise.

For things that I didn't enjoy: the writing wasn't as evocative as I would have liked. For a gothic, I have pretty high expectations when it comes to atmosphere and the creeping sense of dread as the mystery unfolds but this book unfortunately fell on the weaker end of the spectrum. Also, there was a heavy dose of bigotry voiced through many side characters, and while I do believe that it was meant to make a point (about the times, womanhood, etc), I personally found it made the reading experience a little less enjoyable, since it was just too heavy-handed for my taste.

All in all, I do recommend this though. The story offers a fresh approach to a very old topic, the ending felt very well deserved and I am looking forward to whatever the author writes next.

I don't usually read horror books. I have an overactive imagination and like to read before bed. This book was worth the risk of nightmares! An isolated estate, a crazy wife with an unexplained illness, her twin sister who would go to any lengths to protect her. From the first pages, we know that there is no hope of a happy ending all tied up with a bow. The train has already gone off the rails and all we can do is watch and see who makes it out alive. No one is making it out unscathed. With major Dracula/Jane Eyre vibes, this gothic horror was exactly what I was looking for! Creepy, relatively low level gore (there are a few scenes that I really shouldn't have read before bed, or while eating), and twists that kept me up late into the night. The major question throughout the book is how much of a person must remain for them to still be the same person. If you have access to all of a persons memories and feelings, can you become that person? Would you still love someone, if they were reduced to those things? Despite the historical setting, the ideas are very timely. [This book reminded me of one of the stories in Exhalation by Ted Chiang in the best way.]

A not so attractive type of vampire.

Blood on Her Tongue is a dark gothic horror novel that offers a very atmospheric setting which follows twin sisters grappling with a mysterious, parasitic affliction in 1887 Netherlands. The book was great at setting an eerie scene but I found it difficult to get into it. I found the sisters relationship to be uncomfortable as well as the other relationships in the book. That being said I really enjoyed the direction Johanna van Veen. The author combined the scientific with the supernatural and threw in a bit of sanity. I am definitely interested in reading more from the author.

Thank you to Johanna van Veen, Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for the audio-digital ARC provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

In a society where women shouldn't think for themselves and men dictate their lives, Lucy tries everything to save her beloved twin sister Sarah from an unknown sickness that is starting to consume her.
I really liked the setting, atmosphere and how the story starts taking different turns the more you read.
Perfect balance between horror, body gore and humor.

Set in 1887, Lucy receives a series of letters from her twin sister that become more and more concerning. After finding a dead body in the bog, her sister has become ill and requests Lucy come see her. When Lucy arrives, she finds her sister on her death bed with some unique symptoms and cravings. Lucy will do anything to help her sister survive and stay out of her worst fear, the mental asylum.

This starts off with ALL the Dracula vibes. Learning the backstory through a series of written letters, a loved one on their death bed with intriguing and disturbing symptoms, and even a character named Lucy. I was loving the gothic pacing and setting for the first half of this book. At about this point, the story takes a bit of a turn, and I'm not sure the author knew exactly how to end it. 5 stars for the buildup....but overall this was a 4 star read for me.


Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC for an honest review.

Blood on Her Tongue was a delicious, delightful, unhinged, rage filled/rage inducing, gothic horror novel.
This book had it all - creepy vibes, questionable characters, a unique mystery, twins (no offense to twins but even just the premise of twins is a great set up for some good horror (I’m so sorry, twins)).

It starts with a classic, gothic storyline - one sister is mysteriously ill, it's the 1800s so she's not being taken as seriously as one would prefer. When her twin arrives, she's in worse shape than initially thought - she won't eat, she isn't sleeping, and a few oddities occur that point towards the fact that this may not be your typical fever induced insanity.

The layers unraveled at a beautiful pace, every time you thought you were reaching a conclusion, you're given that MORE you were searching for. The story spirals into a direction I wasn't necessarily expecting, but I wasn't disappointed at all.

I think we've all deemed Johanna the queen of gothic literature in modern times. I cannot wait to read what she comes up with next! Thank you to Johanna and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

With books like these (not plot-driven), I think it's best you know as little as possible, so I won’t summarise anything here. This is what you can expect:
Exquisite writing.
Spellbinding atmosphere.
Intriguing characters.
Discussions about what it means to be a person, the sacrifices we’re willing to make for those we love, and much more.

I usually don’t like describing books through memes, but these are such a perfect fit!
“I support women's rights, but more importantly, I support women's wrongs.”
“Would you still love me if I were a worm?”

This was such an odd read but I really enjoyed it. The setting was very gothic and played really well with the advancement of the story, especially concerning how women were meant to act.
I really enjoyed this book, but it was a bit confusing at parts, I felt like there could have been a bit more descriptive scenes, especially with the characters outside of the twins.

Overall, this was a pretty creepy book and I loved the ending.

When I requested this, I had high hopes. I love books about the dynamic between sisters, and gothic horror is my favorite subgenre of horror. That being said, something about this book missed the mark in my opinion. The gothic vibes were written very well, and I liked the originality of the bog vampire being. But it felt as though the author was trying a little too hard to make the writing quotable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it becomes a problem when it's a detriment to the flow of the writing and the pacing. Other than that, I loved the exploration of society expectations, sexuality, and agency.

gloomy and gory and grotesque---a very fun, swampy horror-thriller. i like how willing this book was to get gross with it. every room felt feverish and dark and it was all great! i liked what the big rotting estate added to the story. i think it was a good choice to have certain characters erupt into manic clarity so late in the story, when at first decorum and politeness demands other things of them. i do think this could've been much longer, since the ending sort of dissolves into fast-paced resolutions, but i appreciated how naturally the horror grew and grew.

DNF at 51%

With everything that was going on in this book this should have been a page turner for me however I was just really bored, things progressed at a snails pace. This book had a lot of intresting concepts, it was just too much of a slow burn, and made me lose interest. I can see how many others have really enjoyed this read, it just wasn't for me personally.

-historical fiction, slow burn, twin sisters, possession.

Many Thanks to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for sharing a digital copy, as always, opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This book was a beautifully grotesque Gothic tale. Truly an incredible callback to the Gothic classics with a spooky setting, unexplainable events, and forbidden loves. Many descriptions in this book were very hard to stomach as Johanna van Veen holds nothing back when writing the gory and disturbing.

Beneath it all was a strange tale of familial connection that questions where line between the monster and the human truly lies.

Now, if you're going into this book expecting some sapphic romance as I was, note that this is not a main focus of the story. Yes, it's present, but it is not as central as some of the advertising would have you believe.

this was my first book by author Johanna van Veen and wow! this was so unique and fresh take of gothic horror. very eerie and weird (in a good way!) and super gripping. i need the physical copy with the blood dripping edges now! definitely recommend to any horror readers to give this a shot, you won’t be disappointed!

This book is first and foremost a gothic novel in the spirit of Mary Shelley. The graphic depictions of well, blood on her tongue were unsettling but extremely well used throughout the book. The slow burn tension was masterfully done!

A story about a young woman who will do anything to help her sister, even if it goes beyond her moral values. To the extent that she pays for it with her sanity and gets her hands bloody.
An interesting insight into the 19th century - with a tremendous amount of gore! Definitely a top pick for fans of body horror!

This one was soooooo atmospheric and just creepy. I own this authors other book and will be reading asap! This is the perfect spooky book for soooky season! Thank you Netgalley!