Review: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

3/5 stars

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab (2025)

This is a story about three women. In 1532 in Spain, Maria, a young tomboy who has begun to blossom into a beautiful young woman, is forced to marry an older man who cares nothing for her. She dreams of escape, and finds that dream realized when she meets a mysterious, seemingly immortal widow, Sabine, who shows her a way out. Maria accepts, and, in so doing, takes more from Sabine than was on offer.

In 1827, Charlotte, or Lottie, as she is known by her friends and family, lives in a beautiful house with a beautiful family that is full of rules. Rules about how she must behave as she reaches her teen years, and who she is allowed to love. After she is caught in a tryst with her best friend, she is shipped off to London to attend fancy balls and learn to behave like a lady. She too meets a mysterious woman named Sabine, who offers her freedom and love. But Lottie soon learns that Sabine's love comes at a high cost.

And finally, in Boston in 2019, introverted Alice is attending Harvard, and trying to find ways to connect with someone - anyone. Out of character for her, she attends a party, and ends up having a one night stand with - who else but a woman named Sabine. When she awakes the next morning Sabine is gone, but she notices she feels like a completely different person... and there are small blood stains on the bed, and two small puncture wounds on her neck. She vows to find out what is happening to her, and to find the woman who has turned her into a monster.

I liked the way the stories weaved together, and the parallels between each woman's desire to shed the constraints of their time. Each yearns for more, each wants to become something new, and each ends up finding that the freedom they thought they were choosing has bound them to violence and abuse for eternity.

What I didn't like was the clichés and repetition in the writing itself. I'm usually impressed with Schwab's prose, but this book felt half-baked, or, at the very least, in need of a more strict editor. I stopped counting how many times a character spoke of the smell or taste of iron and rust (i.e. blood), or how often a character squeezed a table or a bedpost so hard the wood splintered. Find some new metaphors and descriptive language, please!

---

UP NEXT: Somewhere Beyond the Sea, by T.J. Klune