Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily...her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.
This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow...but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.
This is a story about show more rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character, one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life...how it ends, and how it starts.

The story follows three women across three different timelines. In 1530 Spain, María rebels at her family’s control over her life. She’s a 14th century, "wild child". María doesn’t want to get married or have children, and this is expected of women of this era, but she figures if she must, it should be far away from her small-minded family. Maria arranges her own marriage to a rich viscount in a hope for freedom but finds herself only further bound by his extremely domineering nature. She’s eventually shipped off to her new in-laws, where she is held until her husband decides he is ready for her to have his children. Her only escape is a visit to a mysterious, ageless widow who runs an apothecary. “I want to be free,” María says.... “by any means necessary.” as she is seduced into vampirism

Almost 300 years later in the English countryside, Charlotte lives an idyllic life enjoying nature and literature and the company of her childhood friend Jocelyn, whom she is in love with. When her brother catches the two young women kissing, he arranges for Charlotte to be sent to London to become a "proper lady" and of course, find a husband. Though she is bound in corsets and trapped in the manor to wait for men to "fill her dance card", she eventually finds excitement in a glamorous widow who takes the impressionable Charlotte under her wing, seduces her and changes her in more ways than one.

Last, we come to 2019, and Alice who has chosen her own means of exile. She has left her small town in Scotland to attend Harvard University. Growing up, Alice was a mere shadow to her wilder sister, Catty, and now away at college, she wants to form her own separate identity. Alice seems to have gotten her wish when she meets a beautiful, magical girl at a party. After a dreamy one-night stand, Alice finds herself transformed in ways she hadn’t ever imagined possible...and what's more...she had never agreed to. Alice, confused and tortured by the "hunger" she doesn't understand but can't deny, goes in search of answers, and finds herself drawn into a centuries-old drama.

The story lines do eventually blend together, though not until well to the end of this very long book...but it was well worth the wait, because of the beautiful and raw descriptions of the places and the times, as well as the slow-burn melodramas between each of the women...Maria, Charlotte and Alice.

Like many vampire novels, Bury Our Bones delves over and offers portrayals of the age old controversary of "what makes us human". Is it our relationship to death...or our friendships and family ties...The place where we were born and raised? These are all events and connections that should enrich our lives, but in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, family, friends and home are the sources of each of the woman's pain. They come loaded with common expectations and constraints, but they, as a whole, only serve to bind María, Charlotte and Alice though centuries apart.

I thought this view offered by a literary critic, though I may not totally agree with all of it, still sums it up fairly well..."Here in the world of fiction, vampirism is offered as a reprieve from oppression...but the immortality of each woman, only introduced an entire set of new problems. As vampires, they will always face the threat of their hunger and yearnings turning into something as dangerous as the forces they wanted to escape to start with. It’s an apt story for our current culture... the decades of improved, but often still not equal conditions for women. In the United States we have seen the end of Roe vs. Wade...a backlash against D.E.I. initiatives and a dystopian focus on women having the choice to have, or not have, children. At the same time, 45% of American women voted for an administration that has, and continues to pursue these very limitations. The "mommy versus child-free war" continues and it appears that we are still eating ourselves alive.

Bury Our Bones is a tale that is told on a razor-sharp edge. It was way, way too long, and at times it almost lost me, but there was something in each woman's story that the reader feels an almost compulsion to understand. show less

I enjoyed The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab so much that it made My Top 5 Books of 2021 so I decided to give her 2025 release Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil a try. First and foremost, this is a well written historical fiction novel with multiple female character points of view. All three characters eventually intersect in this plot spanning multiple centuries and multiple countries.

Alice is our contemporary character in 2019 and a student at a university in Boston. Feeling adrift, a one night stand changes the course of her life and sets her on a path of regret and revenge. In 1521, Maria is aged 10 years old and living with her family in a small town on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. We meet the third character show more Charlotte/Lottie later in the book and we pick up her backstory from 1827 in London.

This is a character driven book about these three women:

"In fairy tales, big things happen in threes. Three children. Three beds. Three roads. The third bite is poison, the third gift is great, the third door always leads home." Page 338

Now that I've set the scene and have your attention, it's time to drop a bomb... this is a sapphic vampire romance. Yep, you read that right. The paranormal romance genre rarely features in my reading schedule but I took a chance on this based on the strength of the author's writing. And I was right!

The writing in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is beautiful. The personal challenges and internal struggles faced by all three women kept my attention and the gothic setting was sublime. As they age over decades and centuries, vampires in Schwab's world start to lose touch with the values and characteristics that made them human.

"Now and then, she wakes to find another little corner of her emptied, some aspect crumbled away in sleep. Perhaps it was a shard of insecurity. A sliver of regret. Sabine probes her mind, trying to find the nature of the absence, like a tongue searching for a missing tooth, but never does." Page 265

Schwab addresses the topic I was most interested in when reading the Anne Rice Interview with the Vampire series: what is it like to be immortal? (Don't worry, there are no sparkly vampires here). The author examines the toll it takes on all three of the characters, including the challenges they face maintaining their existence in the world without revealing their secret nature and evading the dangers that pursue them.

This statement from a male vampire to one of our characters reminded me of the relationship between Lestat and Louis:

"If you wish to stay, then you may do so as my guest, and I will be your gracious host. But you will live as I do, by a certain set of rules. There will be no skulking about in shadows, no victims stolen from the street and cast in the canal. I will show you how to savor every soul you take. How to claim space, and bend minds, how to enthrall, enchant, and masquerade. How to be the last one they think of when the bodies go missing." Pages 206-207

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a unique genre-blending novel that defies easy categorisation and will appeal to a range of readers as a result. Straddling historical fiction, fantasy and queer romance and championing strong feminist characters, this book may appeal to you even if you don't like vampire novels. And if you believe books about vampires aren't for you, consider this:

"And here is the awful thing about belief. It is a current, like compulsion. Hard to forge when it goes against your will, but easy enough when it carries you the way you want to go." Page 401

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab is about female agency, love, power, hunger, control, rage and revenge and is highly recommended for Anne Rice fans. show less

I really liked Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Nothing about it is wildly explosive or edge-of-your-seat thrilling, but it’s such a calm, immersive read — which sounds strange considering there’s murder involved.

I finished it in two sittings during a couple of rainy, stormy days, and the gloomy weather honestly made it the perfect reading experience. This is the kind of book you curl up with under a blanket while the world outside feels gray and quiet.

One element that stood out was how the story showcases the societal formalities and expectations placed on women across decades. Those pressures — how women are expected to behave, present themselves, endure, and remain agreeable — felt spot-on and deeply resonant.

Early, show more more intimate moments carry a tense undercurrent that creates an overall “ick” feeling, particularly through Maria’s experience. It’s uncomfortable in a very real way — not sensationalized, just painfully familiar. The sense of unease, of navigating situations where you feel unsafe yet expected to remain polite or compliant, is something many women will recognize immediately.

I also loved the range in character profiles. Each person brings their own history, personality, and emotional layers to the story. Without giving anything away, their differences balance each other beautifully. They feel complete on their own, yet together they create something richer and more compelling.

There’s also a quiet sadness woven through the narrative — especially in watching a genuinely caring, lovable person slowly rot under the weight of simply living a life far longer than it should have been lived.

If you’re looking for something fast and adrenaline-driven, this may feel quiet. But if you want an atmospheric, character-driven story with emotional depth and themes that linger long after you finish, this is a deeply satisfying read. show less

Three women. Five centuries. One very particular kind of hunger. In 1532 Spain, María is wild-haired, sharp-witted, and trapped — beautiful enough to be a prize, too ambitious to accept it. When a mysterious widow offers her an escape, María takes it, and then immediately betrays her benefactor by killing her and stealing her name, becoming Sabine. In 1827 London, Charlotte is caught kissing her female best friend and promptly shipped off to relatives in the city — a social punishment for an unacceptable desire. A beautiful widow draws her in with promises of freedom and love. In 2019 Boston, Alice has left Scotland and her complicated past behind for Harvard, but a one-night stand with a woman named Lottie leaves her transformed show more in ways she doesn't understand and furious enough to hunt down answers. The three storylines connect across centuries as the reader pieces together that Sabine, Lottie, and the widow Charlotte meets are all the same vampire, and that the hunger these women share is literal, metaphorical, and deeply queer. Winner of the 2025 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fantasy. Described as a spiritual companion to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

[May contain spoilers]
Sabine is the thread that connects all three women — she turned Charlotte in 1827 out of a possessive, obsessive love that eventually curdled into control and jealousy, driving Charlotte to flee. Centuries later Sabine turns Alice in 2019 as Lottie, apparently still playing the same game of turning women and then consuming them. The novel is ultimately Alice's story of rage and reclamation — she refuses to be another one of Sabine's possessions, and the ending is about breaking the cycle of predatory "love" that Sabine has been perpetuating for five hundred years. Charlotte reappears in the modern timeline. The book ends less with a bang than with a kind of bittersweet open question about what freedom actually looks like for women who have been shaped by centuries of being hunted, possessed, or used.
What I think: This is going to depend entirely on how much lyrical, atmospheric prose you can tolerate before you need something to actually happen. It's divisive — some readers found it intoxicating and devastating, others found it repetitive and all metaphor no momentum. The feminist vampire allegory is smart, the 1532 María chapters are probably the strongest, and Schwab's prose is genuinely beautiful. But at 500+ pages it might overstay its welcome for someone with your pace preferences. show less

It’s rare to find a decently done vampire novel lately that isn’t mired in cliches and repeated storylines, but Schwab does the genre proud with her latest! I picked up the book blind, figuring that I would enjoy it simply because she was once again exploring historical fiction, so I was completely shocked that the major driving (magical) element of the stories is that the women in the tale all become vampires. I mean, how could I miss that this was a major part of the plot?! This may not be the first time feminism has been combined with vampire lore to explore themes of vengeance, sapphic love, and the effects of time (all choice themes in my opinion), but thus far this is possibly my favourite of them. But I digress. The story show more meanders throughout the ages, with a cast of richly drawn characters as Schwab tells the intertwined tales of Sabine, Charlotte, and Alice - exploring the challenges each face as women in their own time periods and the reckoning that they are able to harness as they embrace their places in the midnight soil. The author’s love of historical lore is apparent in the wealth of detailing that pervades each timeline, from the intricate rules of London’s Season to the scented winds that blow through medieval Spain, while still fully embracing the modern era as the elder of the two vampires come to a grand collision in the aftermath of an American college rager. Her writing is cinematic and vivid at every turn, and even though each tale is rife with the expected gore that blood-drinking protagonists must beget, it’s impossible to turn away from the characters she brings (back) to life. Even as we see the effects of time wreak havoc on each of our three leads - and an utterly devastating finale scenario to wrap things up - the story has so much soul that it leaves me yearning for the quiet hours before dawn, with a hunger for the exploration of an extended lifetime, and maybe even a feral rose to call my own. show less

At more than 500 pages, V.E. Schwab’s latest, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, is long — but worth it. It’s a lesbian/vampire saga told in two sections: a modern one where Alice is struggling with change in many forms, and an older tale that begins in 16th-century Spain. It’s clear from the beginning that the two stories will collide, but Schwab masterfully weaves them together until the fateful ending. Schwab fans, and other romantasy readers who don’t mind a vampire tale, will love Bury Our Bones.

I listened to this in audiobook format.

This lesbian vampire novel defies genre boundaries. Yes, there are vampires. Yes, there are lesbians. There is a lot of sex. But, the novel has more going on than that. It's really about women's choices, especially in pre-feminist societies. It's about the purpose of life, the purpose of love, the purpose of death. The middle seemed a bit brutal for its own sake, but was redeemed by a profoundly satisfying ending. I feel it did contribute to vampire lore by adding a distinctly woman-vampire perspective. If you're a fan of the genre: vampire fiction or lesbian fiction, or just interested on a good feminist tale with some gore then I recommend this novel.