Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

This genre-defying novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author V.E. Schwab reimagines immortality through the lens of hunger, love, and rage across three pivotal centuries. Set in 1532 Santo Domingo, 1827 London, and 2019 Boston, it follows three women—María, Charlotte, and Alice—each navigating a desperate path to self-ownership in worlds that seek to define them. Schwab crafts a haunting tapestry where beauty and danger intertwine, exploring how women transform from prey into predators when offered a choice beyond survival. The prose is lush and atmospheric, with each timeline revealing deeper layers of a shared, blood-soaked legacy. Readers will be drawn into the visceral, gothic world where every character’s hunger—whether for freedom, power, or vengeance—shapes their destiny.

The novel’s strength lies in its unflinching portrayal of female resilience. María’s escape from a life of being “a prize or pawn” in 16th-century Spain, Charlotte’s forbidden intimacy in Regency-era London, and Alice’s reckoning with identity in modern Boston all pulse with raw, emotional truth. Schwab avoids romanticized tropes, instead centering vampirism as a metaphor for the hunger to exist authentically in a patriarchal world. The writing is deliberately paced, weaving moments of quiet intensity with explosive revelations that linger long after the final page.

At its heart, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a meditation on how life begins and ends—through loss, transformation, and the quiet rebellion of planting one’s own bones in the soil. The narrative structure, moving fluidly between eras, mirrors the cyclical nature of oppression and liberation. Schwab’s signature lyrical style shines as she turns historical detail into visceral, immediate storytelling, making the past feel as urgent as the present.

Readers will find themselves captivated by the novel’s haunting atmosphere, where every setting—from a cloistered English estate to a fog-drenched Boston college campus—becomes a character in its own right. The relationships are complex and messy, refusing tidy resolutions in favor of authentic, often painful, growth. This isn’t a story about finding love, but about discovering oneself in the aftermath of hunger.

The book’s emotional weight is amplified by its exploration of how women’s stories are erased and rewritten. Schwab gives voice to the “lost girls” in history, weaving a narrative where the past never truly dies—it simply waits to be unearthed. It’s a masterclass in literary horror that leaves readers both shattered and strangely nourished, much like the feral rose at its heart: soft petals hiding sharp teeth.