Book Review: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Buckle up, this is a LONG one...

I want to preface this by saying I wanted to love this book. I didn't like Addie (for many of the same reasons I took issue with Bury Our Bones), but I DO love vampires, and I've enjoyed all of Schwab's other work.

As someone with my specific background (psychology and literature), I was massively drawn to the promise of a character-driven sapphic vampire novel that spanned centuries... Unfortunately, what I found was pretty prose masking certain fundamental flaws that undermined both the character development and historical authenticity, both of which (imho) are absolutely vital to anchor a work of this scope.

The Good: Atmospheric Writing

Schwab undeniably has a gift for evocative prose. When the writing works, it creates genuinely haunting moments that capture the gothic atmosphere the novel is going for. The pacing isn't slow as some other reviewers have said – it's actually very well-paced – but the narrative DOES meander significantly (particularly in drawing out inconsequential details of Sabine's life, and details about Catty when we're in Alice's POV.) It could benefit from tighter editing, especially for a supposedly character-driven book.

Technical and Stylistic Issues

While I've always enjoyed Schwab's prose, I had some issues with it this time. In no way do I think any of my problems with it are on the author – it was clearly all intentionally done to evoke a certain response from the reader – I just personally disliked some of it, though I'll admit I noticed it less and less as the novel went on, maybe because it got better, but more likely just because I got used to it.

For me, Alice's POV is too jarringly written. It's somehow simultaneously very broken up and yet long-winded. Then in Charlotte's POV there's a lot of excessive repetition in paragraphs, with rhythmic loops of threes that become really dull to see again and again. In Sabine's POV, too many metaphors serve style over story (my hand dropped like fruit? I mean, what??) pulling me out rather than deeper in.And why is everything "foxed" and "pressed into amber"?

But the biggest technical problem for me, was that for a supposedly character-driven novel, there's a shocking lack of actual dialogue in huge sections of the book. Instead, we're constantly told what characters have said rather than hearing them speak. Which robs us of the chance to hear their voices, watch their personalities emerge through conversation, or feel any of the tension of their interactions.

When dialogue does appear, it sometimes felt stilted and disconnected from any authentic voice. How are we supposed to connect with characters whose actual words we rarely hear? This telling over showing undermined so many other elements of the book. A book can't claim to be character-driven while refusing to let the characters actually drive scenes through their own voices. Especially when writing about women who are denied a voice in society.

It was such a big issue for me that even the most gorgeous prose couldn't compensate. And for a book that spans centuries and intends to showcase the evolution of relationships, the lack of conversation was just... baffling.

Also what was with the way this was a vampire novel that looks down its nose at other vampire novels, while pulling tropes and lore from literally EVERYTHING else I've ever read?

Alice's narrative included phrases like "straight out of a paranormal romance" and "this place might as well be the film set for a teenage urban fantasy" which is ironic, given that's essentially what Schwab has written, whether it's marketed as genre-defying or not. It comes across as unnecessarily disparaging toward the very genre traditions the book relies on, despite Schwab clearly being a fan of said genres herself.


THE MAJOR PROBLEMS

Historical Authenticity

For most of this novel, there was a complete disconnect from its historical settings – which didn't just weaken the worldbuilding, it actually sabotaged the feminist themes everyone's praising? If you want to write about women claiming agency across centuries, you need to show us what they're actually claiming it FROM. We got surface-level only.

Beyond chapter headings with the dates of death for each character, there's virtually NOTHING to ground readers in any specific time period until Charlotte's POV appears – and even then, it only felt period-appropriate because of my familiarity with shows like Bridgerton... We don't get any proper historical grounding until we reach 1914, at 76% of the way through the book. This is FAR too late and showed a massive misunderstanding of how historical fiction should work, especially when the characters are immortal.

When Charlotte casually referenced preferring "the works of Austen" in 1827 – which is pretty anachronistic (Austen's name wasn't widely recognised until the 1830s) – it made me realise that almost all of these characters apparently exist in a cultural vacuum. Which just emphasised how Schwab kind of missed the point of her own premise. If you want to explore female resistance, you need to show us what they're RESISTING. We're told Sabine will be married off, but she gets ahead of it and then doesn't like what she gets. We're told Charlotte will be married off, but miss most of Amelia's teachings, and she's largely still left to her own devices even at balls in London. We know these time periods were oppressive toward women, but because of the characters we get, we never really feel it.

An 18yo woman like Charlotte in 1827 would have been shaped by incredibly specific constraints around marriage, property, social mobility, even basic things like what she could read (doesn't seem likely her family would even have Austen and Shelley in the library?) or where she could go alone.

But instead of authenticity, we get characters who think and speak like modern people, in period-appropriate clothing (we assume, since it's rarely described to us.) It's not exploring how women navigated historical oppression – it's just aesthetic window dressing. The way people spoke, what they aspired to, even what terrified them would all have been completely different. When the characters are essentially interchangeable across centuries, we're not being shown anything meaningful about how power dynamics change or endure.

I do get that Sabine and Charlotte are supposed to be "different" for their relative times, but being a bit rebellious and different to others around you doesn't mean you exist outside of all cultural influence. Even the most unconventional woman in 1827 would still have been shaped by the world around her to some extent. By refusing to engage with actual historical constraints, Schwab missed countless opportunities to show genuine female resilience, which made the "feminist" themes feel shallow and unearned.

Even María's marriage situation lacks historical grounding. While Andrés is presented as awful (and rightly so), his expectations were entirely typical for a 16th-century viscount. María's ability to choose her husband at all, and her refusal to bear children purely out of vanity (she complains about how pregnancy drained her sister-in-law's beauty), shows the same disconnect from historical reality that plagues the rest of the book. If she hadn't been so self-absorbed and superior, demanding someone above her station, she might have chosen more wisely – but this kind of nuanced exploration of how historical constraints actually worked is exactly what Schwab avoids. Yes, she still wouldn't have been able to marry a woman, but she might have been able to marry someone kind and understanding. People like that DID exist in that time, even if they were harder to find.

These serious disconnects weren't helped by the scattered use of Americanisms throughout, either (which, okay, US author so I expect US spelling, but none of the main characters were American.)

When a Scottish character uses phrases like "jack-o'-lanterns" and references "parking lots" and red cups at parties, it completely breaks immersion. These aren't things we say or do in the UK – we say "car park," "Halloween pumpkin," and we don't use red Solo cups at parties. When Alice and Catty smash bottles with baseball bats in a "parking lot," it feels particularly jarring for a Scottish setting, both culturally and practically. These details matter because they're supposed to ground us in place and culture.

Oh, and don't use Scots words if you don't use them in an appropriate context or SPELL THEM CORRECTLY (dreich, not driech!) Not to mention how badly Catty's Scottish accent is executed.

Also, the invented Scottish town of Hoxburn feels tokenistic for the sake of including a Scottish character just because Schwab happens to live there. But it seems she didn't want to do the research to use a real place (or didn't think it was important enough to, which says a lot in itself), and so what she's created is a no man's land, that feels entirely untethered and fake. The same goes for many of the settings. Some are grounded in specific locations (like the fountains in Rome), but barely. Spain doesn't read like Spain – it could be anywhere warm, just like the time periods. The result isn't atmospheric, it's just generic. And for an author praised for her atmospheric writing, it was hugely disappointing.

Character Development

For a character-driven novel supposedly about trauma and growth, the character work completely undermined its goals. María/Sabine remains essentially unchanged for centuries until meeting Charlotte, at which point all of her meaningful development (or deterioration, as the case may be) is compressed into the final 30–40% of the book. And no, playing games to draw out the hunt isn't development. It's just a game, entertainment, and that's made very clear.

Think about it for a minute – if you're exploring cyclical trauma and whether immortality allows for genuine growth, then having your main character stay exactly the same for 400+ years until the plot demands otherwise isn't deep character work, it's laziness dressed up as a theme. It's character development deus ex machina – centuries of stagnation suddenly justified by one relationship that conveniently appears when the story needs it.

I've seen people say Sabine, still going by María, is sympathetic to begin with, and I wholly disagree. She's established as a narcissist with a superiority complex from childhood, yet continues to be surprised when her manipulative behaviour doesn't give her what she wants, and her husband is awful (because she judged him purely on his appearance instead of doing some groundwork.) Even across centuries, she shows the same emotional immaturity, makes the same self-serving decisions. If this is supposed to be about trauma and healing, where's the actual exploration of that process? Instead, we get sudden her transformation because the plot needs it, not because it's been earned through authentic development.

The book wants to explore "cyclical trauma" but won't show us the actual cycle – just the rushed end result when it's convenient. Real trauma work is messy, full of setbacks and requires recognising patterns slowly over time. Having it all happen in the last third because Charlotte shows up isn't exploring trauma, it's using trauma as a plot device.

I might even argue it suddenly changes the story from character-driven to plot-driven, at 60% in, which is exactly the wrong direction for a book that's supposed to be about deep psychological exploration.

Also, can we talk about the male characters? Early on, they're largely stereotypical placeholders – which I understand in a sapphic-focused narrative, fair enough – but any character worth more than a paragraph deserves basic dimensionality, especially if we're expected to care about them in any way. Andrés also presented a nice, simple way to bring in a bit of historical grounding, too – what wars was he fighting in? Even a small detail like that could have provided both character depth and better historical context.

Worldbuilding Inconsistencies

The supernatural elements lacked a fair bit of internal logic, which was particularly maddening when the book kept going on about claiming spaces and boundaries. You can't build so much thematic framework around the significance of thresholds and consent, then have Sabine magically appear in Alice's dorm to turn her because the plot needs her there. Yes, Lottie wasn't directly invited in with specific wording, but it was clear she was welcome. Sabine was NOT.

The story discusses the idea of using your will to claim ownership of a space, to hold up the lore of a vampire not being able to cross a threshold without an invitation, which was actually a nice, fresh take I hadn't seen before. BUT this should be central to the book's exploration of female agency and taking up space – except when it's inconvenient for the plot, apparently. If you're going to use vampire rules as metaphors for consent and boundaries, those rules need to actually matter, as in real life.

Beyond this massive inconsistency... why do their victims' bodies heal? How? Why did the widow turn to dust and ash, why was she not stronger than María? Why did Hector and the other woman (I can't even remember her name) fall, when they're supposedly so old and strong and wise? Vampire lore needs more consistent rules (or at least explanations), and these often felt arbitrary rather than thoughtfully constructed.

When your worldbuilding contradicts your themes, both suffer.

The Anne Rice Problem

The marketing promise of "sapphic Louis and Lestat" did this book no favours and highlighted (for me at least) exactly what was wrong with Schwab's approach.

Anne Rice didn't just write petty vampires with relationship drama – she used immortality to explore genuinely difficult philosophical questions about morality, identity, what it means to be human. Her vampires carried actual intellectual and emotional weight.

Schwab seems to think vampire aesthetics + queer representation = depth, but that's not how it works. Using "toxic lesbian vampires" as your hook doesn't automatically create meaningful gothic literature. Rice's characters developed gradually over centuries, shaped by the genuine weight of immortality and the historical periods they lived through. They weren't just modern people with fangs, out of time. It felt like a waste, because it was such a GOOD IDEA 😫

I also noticed way too many direct echoes of Rice's phrasing and concepts without the substance that made her work compelling. SO MUCH is pulled straight from TVC – not just lore like blood tears but even phrases ("Don't be afraid") and plot devices (burning and fleeing). Not to mention bits from Joss Whedon (turning to dust), L. J. Smith, Charlaine Harris, Stephenie Meyer, and so many more... But this borrowed the surface elements while missing what made them work – the serious engagement with what immortality actually means for psychology, relationships, moral development.

Also for this metaphor to work, are we to believe Lestat and Sabine are supposed to be parallels? Because if so, Schwab got all the Lestat "vibes" and missed all of the subtle nuance, despite stating that Bury Our Bones is supposedly in direct conversation with IWTV. Lestat was compelling because his charm masked genuine philosophical complexity. Sabine is just... unpleasant for 400 years until the plot decides she should be, well, even worse.

Superficial Representation

This book was marketed heavily on its sapphic themes (and I think is #1 in the LGBTQ+ Fantasy category on Amazon atm.) Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but the relationships could have been any gender combination with virtually no impact on the plot or character development...

The "sapphic" elements felt more like aesthetic choices than proper explorations of queer identity or experience. For a book supposedly centred on women claiming their voices and agency, the actual exploration of what it means to be queer women across different historical periods was surprisingly shallow, and the relationships themselves didn't get much building or attention. The reader was just expected to acknowledge that yup, Charlotte is in love with Sabine now and vice versa.

Final Thoughts

I get that this book resonates with people excited about the representation and themes. The concept of using vampire immortality to explore female agency across centuries could have been BRILLIANT. But concept isn't execution, and good intentions don't equate to a good book.

BOBITMS did improve somewhat toward the end, and while I read it in a few days, the speed I read it at was more about hope and frustration than enjoyment. A book shouldn't only become vaguely intriguing at the 70% mark, especially when it promised such rich thematic exploration. There's far too much unnecessary backstory for Sabine that adds little to nothing given her lack of change, and the historical periods feel like interchangeable backdrops of places the author might have been to on holiday once or twice rather than lived experiences that shape character.

The main problem is that all the ambitious themes in the world can't save a book where what should be basic elements – character development, historical authenticity, consistent worldbuilding – aren't well done. Schwab has created something that announces its themes rather than exploring them, where historical settings are purely aesthetic, and where character development serves plot convenience rather than psychological truth. And I KNOW she can do better, which is the most annoying thing of all.

For anyone looking for rich character development and historical authenticity in their vampire fiction, this will probably disappoint. For those primarily interested in gothic atmosphere and sapphic themes, it may work better, but even then, while the sapphic themes are there, they aren't exactly prominent or even relevant to the way the story unfolds much of the time.

Would I recommend it? Only to readers who prioritise pretty prose over character development and don't mind historical settings that feel more like generic nowheres than lived-in worlds.

I've come away from this feeling disappointed on multiple levels, and generally frustrated that so many people seem to be rating this highly and missing the problems simply because Schwab is an established author, with themes that sounded good on paper.

The book had the potential to meaningfully explore female rage and agency through vampire immortality, but instead felt like a missed opportunity that prioritised marketable concepts over the craft needed to make those actually work.



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