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Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: A Review

Wait. V.E. Schwab, one of my all-time favorite living writers, has written a vampire book? A lesbian vampire book?!

I’m in.

What does it mean to hunger? What would you do if you were never satisfied? Would you find more people like yourself to share in that desire? What if you could make more people like yourself?

Maria lived in Spain in the 1530s, and was that perpetually wanting child. When she was eventually married off to a wealthy nobleman, she thought that she would want for nothing else. She didn’t anticipate that her husband only wanted her to be a vessel for a child. What the viscount didn’t know was the Maria had befriended an old widow, Sabine, who concealed a dark secret.

Now you may have guessed from my intro here that Sabine was, in fact, a vampire. She had also developed feelings for Maria and so, in an attempt to set her free of the bonds that would tie her to her husband, she turned Maria. In Maria’s desperate, wanting frenzy, she didn’t stop when Sabine offered her own blood in return, draining away everything that the old widow was. Soon, Maria finds herself alone, with no one to guide her in the strange world of night that she’s plunged into.

In 2019, a young girl named Alice meets another girl at a college party. After what seems like it will be a one-night-stand, Alice realizes that there was more to Lottie than met the eye. Knowing what she has become, but finding it almost impossible to believe, Alice sets out to find Lottie again. There are answers to be found, and most of them seem to trace back to Maria, who is now going by the name of the woman who turned her all those centuries ago.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is beautiful. It hit stores on Tuesday, June 10th. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In: A Review

Shesheshen woke up early, and is understandably upset. Her hibernation in her lair was interrupted by a trio of would-be monster hunters, and she was only able to kill and eat one of them before the others escaped. Using some of the dead hunter’s remains (and other bits of the ruins where she lives), the shape-shifter is able to build herself a bit of human-like body framework so that she can sneak down into the nearby town to see what’s changed since she was last awake. Borrowed bits of flesh and bone give her body more of the appropriate shape, allowing her to fake her way through some interactions. When her disguise fails in the middle of a festival celebrating her imminent death, she’s chased back out of town. The crowd, including the two survivors of the raid on her lair, pursue her until she falls off of a cliff.

Upon her next awakening, she’s startled by the presence of a human woman who has treated her wounds, wrapped her in blankets, and stoked a fire. The woman, an outsider not from the village, introduces herself as Homily. Before the monster can really focus on what’s happened, she’s being fed soup and entreated to rest by a woman who is clearly oblivious to Shesheshen’s monstrous nature, taking any oddities about her as symptoms of having just fallen over a cliff. Homily loads her into a cart and strikes off back to town. Soon, she’s in Homily’s room at a local inn until she can finish convalescing. A couple of things strike Shesheshen, then. First, the people of the village seem terrified of Homily. Second, she is beginning to feel… feelings. An odd sort of mutual attraction seems to be blooming between Homily and the woman she knows as Siobhan. Homily feels a genuine attraction to the monster she’s rescued, but she has no idea what Siobhan actually is.

As the two are getting to know each other and growing closer, though, the reason for Homily’s presence in Underlook comes to light. She’s the daughter of the Baroness Wulfyre, one of the family that rules the isthmus where Shesheshen lives. She’s also a master monster hunter in her own right, and had come to the village to assist her brother in hunting down the Wyrm of Underlook. Unfortunately for her, her brother Catharsis was the monster hunter that Shesheshen devoured before she and Homily met, and all of her remaining relatives believe that Shesheshen has cursed their line. Now Shesheshen is torn. Does she continue her charade or reveal her monstrous nature to Homily and hope that she can be forgiven for who she is? She’s finally met someone who might be a suitable host for her eggs, but if Homily figures out her identity, siding with her admittedly toxic family means Shesheshen’s death.

John Wiswell has released a brilliant debut novel with Someone You Can Build a Nest In. It’s a delightfully bizarre fantasy romance told from the perspective of a monster, and I’m utterly entranced by it. His descriptions of Shesheshen’s odd morphology and attempts to human are charming and disturbing simultaneously, and the Wulfyre clan (barring Homily) are suitably horrible. All in all, it’s an unconventional love story that will leave you questioning what relationships can be, and whether we can grow to become more than what our parents expect us to become.

My utmost thanks to NetGalley and DAW for an eARC of this title in exchange for a fair review. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is out in stores today, 4/2/24. Check it out.