Midnight Soil, Midnight Secrets: A Book That Cuts Deep
We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.
The scent of damp earth clings to the pages, and whispers of forgotten names rise like fog. In Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, New York Times bestselling author Victoria Schwab crafts a haunting tale that spans centuries, lives, and the dark truths buried beneath us. From Santo Domingo de la Calzada in 1532 to Boston in 2019, Schwab unearths the tangled roots of three women. Each planted in the same soil, their lives growing high, deep, and wild, with sharp teeth that bite into the heart of the reader.
This isn’t just a book—it’s a reckoning. It is a story where life and death blur and the past refuses to stay buried. The midnight soil holds the secrets of love, loss, and everything we bury to survive. Whether you’re holding it in hardcover or on Kindle, this kind of page-turner refuses to let go, and for good reason: Schwab knows how to count on the weight of the bones and stories we all carry.
Title: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Author: V.E. Schwab
Genre: Fantasy, Vampires, Adult, LGBT, Historical Fiction
Pages: 560
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: June 10, 2025
Star Rating: 4 stars
Spice Rating: 0 chili peppers
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Plant them shallow and water them deep.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is among my most anticipated new releases for 2025 (it releases June 10th). So when Tor Books sent me an e-copy, I was ecstatic. (Thank you, Tor!) VE has easily become an author who is indispensable reading. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was my reentry into reading after long times spent not enjoying the one thing I loved most.
Bury Our Bones reignited my love for Schwab. With its haunting prose and poignant exploration of love, loss, and legacy, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil reminded me why Schwab’s stories feel like coming home—dark, beautiful, and achingly human. Let me take you through the pages of this unforgettable tale.
Set in a world both eerily familiar and eerily fantastical Bury Our Bones introduces us to women who feel quite familiar to Addie LaRue, yet stand as a story all its own. While The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue whispers of the quiet loneliness of immortality, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil sinks its fangs into its brutal hunger. Schwab’s exploration of time feels both familiar and refreshingly feral here.
“The world will try to make you small. It will tell you to be modest and meek. But the world is wrong. You should get to feel and love and live as boldly as you want.”
Where Addie’s story traversed centuries with a single, solitary thread, Bury Our Bones is a tapestry of three lives. Three young women whose stories are as deeply rooted in history as the soil that binds them. Santo Domingo de la Calzada, London, Boston. Three settings, three centuries, and three women growing high, deep, and wild. Each with teeth bared against a world that seeks to bury them.
But what makes Bury Our Bones so striking is its visceral approach to immortality. It doesn’t just ask what it means to live forever; it asks what it costs. If Addie LaRue was about fading into the background, Bury Our Bones is about digging deep, leaving marks, and spilling blood along the way. It’s darker, sharper, and, dare I say, even more unforgettable.
Even now, long after I’ve turned the last page and the dust has settled, Maria, Lottie, and Alice claw at my thoughts like restless spirits. Schwab doesn’t just write characters. She conjures them, whole and raw, leaving you tangled in their stories like a spider caught in its own web.
“Is it life,” he counters, “if there is never death to balance it? Or is its brevity what makes it beautiful?”
Maria is the escape artist, sprinting away from a past that keeps gnashing at her heels. She’s the embodiment of fight-or-flight, leaning hard into flight. She initially feels like bathing in sunlight but in turn, becomes the shadows she’s running from.
Lottie is the chaos. A wildfire masquerading as a woman, she throws herself at the world, arms wide and heart open, daring it to break her. And oh, does it ever. But there’s a beauty in her recklessness, a defiant hunger for something more, even as it scorches her edges.
And then there’s Alice. Sweet, unassuming Alice, who makes the mistake of wishing for stillness in a world that thrives on change. Innocence is her first casualty, but it’s the quiet way she hardens. The way her roots twist in the soil she never meant to tend, leaving the deepest scar.
“How did he die?” Maria asks. The widow’s smile widens. “Slowly.”
Together, they’re a triumvirate of tragedy and tenacity. Their lives are interwoven in ways as messy and beautiful as the roots they share. These women don’t just grow—they dig, claw, and bite through history, leaving blood and bone in their wake. And long after you’ve closed the book, you’ll still feel their teeth.
As much as I loved sinking my teeth into Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, the one critique I have is there were moments when the story stumbled, tripping over its own roots. The pacing, at times, felt like a restless heartbeat—racing one moment and dragging the next. Some chapters sprinted ahead, breathless and wild. While others seemed content to linger too long, turning what could have been tension into tedium.
It’s not that the slow moments didn’t have value. They often carried rich, atmospheric details or introspective depth. But they occasionally felt like they overstayed their welcome, pulling down the flow of the story just when it needed to soar. Like a symphony hitting an offbeat note, the rhythm wavered, and I found myself glancing at the clock instead of losing myself in the tale.
“Here’s something you should know. We think ourselves immortal but we’re not. All things get hollowed out by time,” he says.
Still, even with its uneven tempo, Schwab’s talent for storytelling shines through. The missteps in pacing didn’t bury the book. They just made me wish it had taken a sharper blade to its structure. Cutting away some of the slower tangles to let the stronger threads shine.
More than anything, Bury Our Bones feels like coming home. A dark, twisted home where the soil hums with secrets and the walls are lined with teeth. These aren’t just words on a page. They’re incantations that smooth over the cracks in my world, leaving me spellbound and aching for more.
Schwab has always had a way of making the ordinary feel extraordinary, of coaxing the fantastical out of the shadows and into the light. With Bury Our Bones, she’s done it again, crafting a tale that left me breathless and bruised in the best way possible.
Reading this felt like rediscovering the magic I found in my first Schwab novel—the kind of story that burrows under your skin, fills your lungs, and refuses to let you go. It’s haunting, it’s beautiful, and it’s exactly why I keep coming back to Schwab’s work. If you’re looking for a book that bites, Bury Our Bones is it.
Pick up a copy of Bury Our Bones wherever books are sold. At the time of this posting, ALL first-edition copies will be signed by the author while supplies last.
You May Also Like:
2024 Reading Recap: The Best and Worst Books I’ve Read
Power, Passion, and Love: Why Choose Romance Books
A Love as Wild as the Woods: My Feral Romance Review
A Home for Every Story: Organizing Your Bookshelves With Love
Why Together We Burn Didn’t Ignite My Love for Fantasy Romance