ARC Review: Hunger, Love, Rage

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

Publication Date: June 10, 2025

Summary from NetGalley:

ARC provided by Tor Publishing Group via Netgalley for an honest review.

Confession:

I was hoping to fall in love with this book, just like I did with Addie LaRue, but it never quite fully clicked for me. I liked it, but I also struggled a bit with getting it read. It just never fully captured my attention and I found it to be just too long and a little on the slow side pacing wise. The writing was excellent as always, so I think my lack of interest was more on me than the quality of the book. Character driven stories are just not my thing usually.

This is a sweeping fantasy that covers a lot of time periods as we follow the stories of these three women. I did appreciate the historical aspects of the story and enjoyed the descriptions of the different settings, especially the regency balls. I also enjoyed the descriptions of Boston and Harvard in the present day. I did struggle a bit with Alice’s flashback about her childhood though, they just sometimes didn’t seem to flow with the rest of the story.

I can’t say that I particularly liked the three women, but I did sympathize with them. Maria’s story was pretty tragic, and she is certainly a product of her time period when women basically had no rights. I had a little bit more sympathy for Charlotte, mostly because she had a lot of empathy for others and felt sorry for the ones she killed. Alice was my favorite and I totally got how she felt about being turned.

The story was a pretty straight forward look at these three women’s lives and how their circumstances shaped who they were. As I said though, there wasn’t much plot accept for looking at how their characters changed as they moved through their immortal lives, especially Maria’s and Charlotte’s. The pacing felt really slow to me because of this, and I had a hard time connecting to a story that felt a little on the repetitive side. The stories also took too long to come together, and I felt like Maria’s story took precedent over the other two. I did think the ending was a good one though.

I think I am in the minority on this, but again I don’t think it is the story’s fault. If you enjoy character driven stories with morally gray characters and toxic relationships then this is one you will probably like, especially if you are a fan of the author’s work.