Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
V. E. Schwab
Tor Books, 2025, 544 pages
$29.99

Reviewed by Ruby Stefanucci

In her latest novel, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, a queer vampire romance, Schwab enchants readers once again—especially those who fell in love with the aching beauty of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Bury Our Bones follows the lives of three female protagonists across centuries, across lives and dreams left behind, as they are born anew. Sabine, whom we are first introduced to, is a whirring storm through the text, born with a natural hunger for freedom and a heart that takes without regret. Alice is a melancholic junior, searching for meaning in her mourning and revenge for those who changed her. Lottie captures our hearts with her softness across time, chased by a past she cannot outrun. We watch Schwab’s characters grow into women who flee, love, dream, and navigate the costs of choosing to live forever.

Schwab entices us from her first chapter, reminding us how effortlessly she creates worlds and imperfect characters within her text. In Bury Our Bones, she forms a story intertwined through centuries, spaces, and places that simultaneously build the lives of her characters. Weaving back and forth in time, Schwab marks the centuries, lessons, and lovers her characters experience over the years. Throughout her works, Schwab uses the history and upbringing of her characters as a way for readers to understand their motives and desires. Her characters are individual, they come alive within the pages, through the years and places they inhabit and through their presence in each other’s lives.

At first glance, Bury Our Bones seems YA-queer-vampire romance-esque, but the nuances of Schwab’s characters, their challenges, and their morals extend into the adult genre. The novel contrasts themes of youthful fantasies against the darkness of mortality and power imbalances. Schwab depicts feminine hunger and female desire in human and immortal lives and shows readers what happens when hunger is never satisfied.

Schwab does not shy away from capturing female queerness, conveyed through each lesbian protagonist in their perception of people, spaces, and self. Her queer romances explore the intricacies of lesbian relationships as they defy conformity over centuries, showcase the beauty and terror of navigating fantasy realms, and capture the erotic desire and cravings of sapphic attraction. Depicting this in the fantasy vampire genre heightens the yearning and craving, as expressed in: “because I like you. . . Because I want you. Because there are too many kinds of hunger, and I can’t pick them apart. Because I’m afraid” (212). Here, Schwab exhilarates readers with this interdependent hunger.

Brought to life by complex queer protagonists, Bury Our Bones is a provocative, haunting exploration of desire, hunger, and the cost of immortality. Schwab compels us to question how far we would go for freedom and whether we could trade our souls for it—or how women might survive without it.

Ruby Stefanucci (she/her) is currently based in Tarntanya/Adelaide, Australia. She recently completed her undergraduate studies, double-majoring in English and Classics, and was a fall 2024 intern with Sinister Wisdom. Ruby is a lover, writer, artist, and poet, but mainly just a girl in the world.