After "A Darker Shade of Magic", I have been chasing the same feeling and high that I got from that trilogy (and now the first book from the spin-off). I have come to realize, though, that while Schwab's fantasy is definitely for me, their more...literary (? this is probably the wrong word but I'm at a loss as to how to describe this) novels are not for me. I didn't really like Addie LaRue, and while I liked this book infinitely more, it didn't gut punch me the way Schwab's fantasy work does. That is not to say that this is bad---not by any stretch of the word. But, if you're coming from ADSoM, you may not quite enjoy this.
I did love the characters, though. They were vivid and fleshed out, and they really jumped off the page. I also really enjoyed the queerness of this---as a queer person of color, I always love a story that strives to land outside of heteronormative relationship. What really made this not for me, though, was the same issue I had with Addie LaRue where I just felt like I was waiting for something to happen and something to hook me. Combined with the overly aesthetic prose, it made me feel as though I had to push myself through this instead of being pulled along by the compelling plot and world.
This was a very vibey read, and I liked the overall aesthetic. Also, more queer vampires, please. However, the prose and plot didn't quite do it for me. If you're looking for a very vibe-heavy, atmospheric/lyrical queer vampire story, this will definitely appeal to you. As always, I'm already looking forward to what V.E Schwab puts out next! A little disappointment definitely hasn't made me love their other works any less.

This is VE Schwab’s best work yet. The writing was beautiful, and I couldn’t put it down. The journey to find out how all of the characters were connected kept me hooked the entire time. All three women you follow were complex and easy to become emotionally attached to.

If V.E. Schwab writes its, I’m reading it!!

For years, I wanted to find a book that was similar to Addie LaRue, and this is it! I just needed the same author to write a very similar book set in the same world only now, with toxic sapphic vampires 😆

With that being said, I did DNF at first. It starts out slow and I just needed something else at the time. After about 25% it REALLY picks up and it’s all uphill from there. It’s haunting, addicting and incredibly atmospheric! Schwab is so incredibly talented at what she does!

This book brought me back to the days of Twilight, when I wished I could be a vampire

Sapphic vampires, absolutely! I went into this know I would probably love it, and I did. V.E. Schwab is a fantastic writer and I've enjoyed almost every book she's written.

thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.

TL;DR: this was 4.75 stars rounded up. It is pretty damn brilliant, but not perfect. If you're looking for a dark, emotional, and thought provoking sapphic story about vampires, this is your book! if you're looking for one of those five things, this is probably still your book. Here is why:

This jumps time periods - from Maria in the past to Alice in the (almost) present, and I was fully invested in this story. The plot is pretty brilliant. You're almost certain you know where it's going.... but .....

I love VE Schwab in general and I especially love how she plays with tropes. This book is no exception. Going into it, I knew it was about vampires, and the vampires she created are both incredibly traditional and entirely creative and unique. Same goes for the plot - everything you think you understand about it is turned around and flipped in such a cool way. As a literature element, this is brilliant.

I also really liked the characters. They felt well rounded to me and fantastically developed, to the point where I almost felt like I could picture them. The narration keeps your focus as it takes you from place to place and person to person and I didn't want to stop reading.

Wait. So.... why wasn't it perfect? At times, the narration did lag a bit, and there was a moment where I felt like the story fell too far into tropeland and didn't fully recover. I think this was intentional on Schwab's part, but it pulled me a little out of the story (if you've read it, I can tell you exactly where this was, but I'm going to leave it out of my review for the sake of those still wanting to read the novel).

All things considered, this was incredibly well written, the plot was well paced, the themes were on point, and the characters were brilliant. I would highly recommend it - it seems to transcend genre and appeals to a great deal of audience. It is a bit slow at the beginning, but stick with it! I really enjoyed it overall.

I was blown away by this book. I do believe it’s my favorite now. I loved all the characters. I highly recommend this book to everyone!

I just finished Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab and here are my thoughts.

A wandering stranger, a wild girl….. A hunger so real… Time.. Endless.

A girl with a tender heart offered her freedom at a price no one should have to pay.

A girl running from her past when a one night stand leaves her with questions….

3 time lines… 3 womens lives all intertwined…

This is like Addie LaRue on steroids. I normally hate books that have more than one timeline but this worked. It worked really well. I often find myself enjoying one timeline more so I get frustrated with the ones I don’t but that didn’t happen to me.

This book will sit with you. The kind of book that is more character driven the plot heavy but the writing is so beautiful and slow pace will have you fully submerged into the story in the best kind of ways.

Do you like vampire stories? How about sapphic vampire stories? This one is for you.

The book is full of toxic love. These women burn for the kind of world that isn’t made for them. They are women ahead of their times.

Read if you like

Feminine Rage
Morally Grey Characters
Cat and mouse games
Lovers to enemies!!!

I loved the writing, I loved the slow creepy factor it had going on. I think I would have preferred the audio more but this was 4.5 stars for me.

Thank you to @netgalley and @torbooks for my gifted copy!!!!

I was having a conversation with a friend about V.E. Schwab and she asked if I would like her style. For me the answer is always going to be yes, but there's so much more to that question. Schwab has a voice, but her style transcend her books. Each character or world brings their own style to the page. In Bury Our Bones, you get three very different characters who tell their stories in very different ways. I have been waiting for Schwab to write a sapphic romance for years and I am thrilled, heartbroken, and mad all at the same time. You will get love, but also obsession. Two very different things.

Bury Our Bones will be a hit for people who loved Addie Larue, but will feel far away from people who love her for Shades of Magic. If you love a multi-generational story, you are going to love this one. If you want a pretty little bow, this might leave you wanting more.

Addie LaRue but make it a toxic sapphic vampire romance — that’s how I felt reading Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. There are three different point of views featured in this book spanning across multiple timelines that cross to create a compelling story. This is a slower paced, character driven book but it still draws you in and keeps you turning the page to see what happens next. I love how Schwab wrote the characters in this book - they’re unique, interesting, and it’s easy to see how their human lives shaped how they would be as vampires. I also appreciated how much Schwab injected into this book from wanting to have autonomy to family relationships to love and so much more. I also like how Schwab brought the different characters and timelines together to create an ending that will stick with readers. Overall, I loved this book.

🧛‍♀️ “Bury my bones in the midnight soil,
plant them shallow and water them deep,
and in my place will grow a feral rose,
soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.” 🥀

V. E. Schwab’s new book, “Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil,” just came out last week, and it’s truly something special. If you’re a fan of her work, particularly “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue,” I think you’ll find this absolutely brilliant.

This novel follows a clever story told across different time periods, weaving together the lives of three women. We meet María in 16th-century Spain, a headstrong young woman yearning for freedom from patriarchal society. Then there’s Charlotte in 19th-century London, whose quiet life takes an unexpected turn when she meets a certain fanged someone at a ball. And in modern-day Boston, there’s Alice, whose life is irrevocably altered after a steamy, alcohol-hazed night with a beautiful woman.

The blood-soaked thread connecting them all? Vampirism! But Schwab uses this trope to explore something much deeper than just the surface supernatural; it’s about their desires, their strength, the reality of being a queer woman in a heteronormative society, and what it means to choose between morality and survival.

I caution those who are looking for a fast-paced vampire story - you won’t find that in this book. This is a book of true character study where the plot is happening BECAUSE of them and not TO them. I loved every moment.

5/5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to @torbooks for granting me access to the ARC on Netgalley!

If you loved THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE, here is the book you've been waiting for. Two words: Lesbian vampires. I loooooved this story from the very beginning and oh my gosh — the scream I screamt when I got to the ending. CHEF'S KISS.

I continue to admire Schwab’s writing, voice, and stories. Bury Our Bones is, at times, dark and heartless, and others, hopeful. Through the characters, readers are able to experience lifetimes, and whether vampire or human, the feelings the characters experience are universal: hatred, betrayal, jealousy, love, hope- all of which readers can connect with.
Highly recommend!

Dark. Thoughtful. Moody. Undeniably SAPPHIC. Vampires. Schwab is a master!
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is truly Addie Larue’s grownup cousin. With some extra bite for flavor. :vampire:

A very feminine vampire novel about hunger for freedom, the need for love and companionship, and the role of the soul in compassion. Great writing; the angst of a vampire’s existence is felt throughout. The first part of the book seems like too long a setup for the confrontations you know are coming before the final page is turned. Interesting and entertaining.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the ARC to read and review.

Rating: 3.75⭐️

Thank you to the publisher for gifting me an arc in exchange for an honest review.

V.E. Schwab fully embraces the symbolic allure of vampires, portraying them through our three main characters, who each share a similar desire. They hunger for freedom, power, and more than what society allows. The core of the story is queerness (specifically lesbianism) and the deep craving of control in a patriarchal society. Schwab has created a story that tells the true horrors of vampires: not their need of blood, but that their desires diverge from societal norms , and now, with their newfound power, they are free to pursue those desires endlessly, even if they can never truly be satisfied.

This story is written with poetic prose and beautiful metaphors, but there is a lot of repetition throughout this story. It focuses more on the characters than the plot (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but I found the characters started to blend together near the 3/4 mark. I completely understand why the characters are the way they are, but I found myself almost growing bored of the characters as they all started sounding the same. This ties into the ending as well. It’s understandable why it happens the way it does, however, I was left slightly unsatisfied with it.

This was overall a decent book but there were a couple things I just didn’t vibe with. If you’re looking for a story about lesbian vampires filled with female rage, and who not only hunger for blood but also power, then this might just be the story for you.

I devoured this epic vampire tale that was everything I wanted it to be and more!!!! Told over the span of 400 years and following three vampire women, Schwab weaves together a story of violence, passion and rage. She is a mastermind of drawing you so deep into a story that it takes you a minute to place where you are when interrupted from your reading. I loved every everything about this novel- Schwab continues to hold a spot in my top 5 author list!

A fascinating examination of slow rot and who you might be if you literally stopped being capable of evolving as a human because, well, you aren’t one anymore.

This didn’t end up being my favorite V.E. Schwab book, but that’s a pretty high bar at this point. This is such a thought-provoking book and while I desperately wanted more atmosphere and sense of place, especially given the myriad opportunities for that which the plot offers, this is well worth a read for its saga-style demonstration of slow decay and what it means to be human, or perhaps what it means to not be.

The three timelines are difficult to reconcile for a good deal of the book, but that is intentional and they come together very well in the end. I’ll warn readers who rely on snappy pacing and action that this probably isn’t the book for you. It’s extremely slow to progress for about 75% of the book and leans more on thought than action. None of that bothered me at all, but I happen to like slow burn stories a lot.

Again, I wish we’d gotten more immersive setting in this one. The section of the book that takes place in Venice is brilliantly done in that regard and I wish the rest of the locales featured had been given the same treatment. But other than that, I mostly just want to appreciate that it is an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking to write a book like this and do it well, and Schwab definitely pulled it off.

This book was fantastic. It is definitely in conversation with Addie LaRue. VE Schwab's examination of immortality and the cost of obtaining it makes for an interesting novel.

I loved spending time with Sabine and Charlotte. I wish we spent a little more time with current Alice. But I was obsessed with this book the whole time I was reading it. Highly recommend this one.

Amazing writing from VE Schwab, my favorite title from her yet! The characters were multifaceted and their stories tragic. A vampire story you don’t want to miss.

I was really captivated by the writing—honestly, I didn’t expect to get so drawn in. I’m not someone who’s usually into vampire stories or supernatural themes, but something about this one just clicked for me. The way the author weaves emotion, tension, and character development into the story made it feel grounded, even with the fantastical elements.

I didn’t think I’d connect with the characters so much, but I did. Their relationships, the way they handled difficult emotions, and even their quiet moments all felt incredibly real. I found myself invested without even realizing it. The whole atmosphere was just so immersive—I could picture everything clearly, like I was right there with them.

It was also such a fitting read for Pride Month. The queer representation wasn’t just part of the background—it was an important part of the story, handled with care and depth. It explored themes of identity, love, and self-acceptance in a way that felt sincere and touching. It wasn’t heavy-handed, just beautifully done.

I didn’t expect to love this book, but I did. Even now, parts of it are still with me.