Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

Born restless, her father used to say. Which was fine for a son, but bad for a daughter.

You’re having fun, she tells her heart, and her heart thuds back in all its stupid anxious glory no no no no and Alice wants to cut it out, wants to be a different version of herself, one that isn’t so goddamn insecure.

“How did he die?” she asks. The widow’s smile widens. “Slowly.”

but here’s the thing:

How many times is this phrase going to be used in this book ugh

Venice, Italy 1679

Sabine is going to create lottie?

If, if, if, and she knows that way lies madness but once she starts, she can’t stop her mind from going down the hundred ways it could have ended instead of how it did.

and here’s the thing,

Husband. What an ugly word. A rock tossed in a clear pool, muddying the water.

“I’ve heard her say she will never take another husband.” “What a sorry life,” says Edith. But she’s wrong. The woman Charlotte met at last night’s ball struck her as neither sad nor lonely. Only free.

“Death comes, and sometimes it is kind, and often it is cruel, and very rarely it is welcome. But it comes, all the same.”

Time doesn’t heal. It just wears you down. Tricks you into thinking, as the present slips into the past, that it will stay there.