So...Is it Good?: BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL by V.E. Schwab
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This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Rebecca Shinsky. Jeff is out today and I am joined by our managing editor, Vanessa Diaz, and an editor at Book Riot, Danica Ellis. And we are here to talk about one of the biggest releases of summer, V.E. Schwab's new novel, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. We've been hearing about it for months and the three of us are convening to determine whether it's good. Vanessa, Danica, thanks for joining me.

I've been looking forward to this all week. Yeah, me too.

Yeah, I confess I read this a couple of weeks ago before I went on PTO and then I got all excited all over again when I came back from my trip and was like, oh, I get to review the book and then I get to sit down with them and we're going to talk about it. I've been looking forward to this conversation for months. Before we get into it, a couple common attractions in the Book Riot feed. First of all, Jeff and I will be back at Powell's in Portland. Vanessa will be with us on July 9th to talk about the

best books of the year so far. You can snag a ticket for $10 and get 10% off any purchases that you make at Powell's that night, and we would love to see you for a live recording of the show, a chance to hang out. One of Powell's book buyers, who reads more than probably all three of us combined, is also going to join us and talk about some of their picks for

for best of the year, and we're just really stoked to get into that. I've had a little sneak peek. Sneak peek. Sneak preview peek is called a preek. A sneak preek. The pics, and it's a lot of fun. Coming up in the Patreon, Jeff and I are going to talk about Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy, which is maybe our shared favorite movie trilogy, starting with Before Sunset, but we're going to talk about, or Before Sunrise. We're going to talk about all three of them together. So you can look for that in the Patreon and a bunch of other...

fun stuff coming up. That's patreon.com slash bookriotpodcast. Let's take a quick break and then we will get into it.

Okay, so Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, V.E. Schwab. This was my first time reading V.E. Schwab. I had just not, like, the pitches for the other books just hadn't been compelling to me. I just hadn't quite gotten there. I'm not a huge fantasy reader. And then Danica months ago said, but toxic lesbian vampires, y'all. So Danica, I'm going to toss it to you. Tell us...

What is the pitch for Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil? Why were we and the rest of the internet so excited about it? Yeah, I also hadn't read any of B.E. Schwab before, so this was my first as well. I did not realize that. Yeah, I try to keep up with queer book news for our queer shelves and also for my own interest, so this kind of came across my desk.

when V Schwab on her Instagram announced this as the toxic lesbian vampires are coming and I was like that's enough for me like if obviously I have heard great things about V Schwab but honestly if it had been any author I probably would Stephen King's toxic lesbian vampires yes

I'm almost sorry I said that. Anyway. And that was genuinely all I had originally. And the blurb is very vague. I was trying to figure out how to talk about it in the newsletter. And the blurb is just like three women. They're vampires at different times.

Go for it. And that's about all you get. It's not wrong. Yeah. I get now why it's so vague. I don't.

She does talk about, like I read a few interviews and she does say that she thinks the ideal experience is not knowing a lot going in, which I think is true. But yeah, it did make it kind of hard to pitch until toxic lesbian vampires and then that was all you need. We're good. What else do we need? It really is a great tagline. So Vanessa, from your eyebrows going up when Danica and I both said that

that we had not read V.E. Schwab before. I assume that you have. I have, yeah. I'm a huge fan of the Shades of Magic series and her middle grade series. It starts with, shoot, is it Tunnel of Bones? Anyway, that's the one that's about like a little girl whose parents are paranormal investigators. The thing they don't know is that she actually sees ghosts. They just don't know that she actually sees them and it takes place in like Edinburgh and Paris. Anyway, I am a huge fan of her writing. So I was going to read this just on the strength of that. I'm a huge fan of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which was the other

Book that she really described as like the book that almost broke me because it's so like much of me on the page that she swore she'd never write a book that took that much from her. And then she said...

just kidding, I did it again. And this time it's the Toxic Lesbian Vampires. So, oh, yeah, immediately. Like, I was always going to read that. And I really love the vampire thing. But yeah, I'm a huge fan of V.E. Schwab. So this was sort of like a no-brainer. So we'll tap you as the expert then. Are there hallmarks of a V.E. Schwab book? Like, what are you looking for? What are you excited about when you're coming to a new V.E. Schwab? Definitely. I mean, I do think she just was really great, like sentence level writing, which some folks find a little melodramatic. And I

I think that's maybe a valid critique because that can be the case. And there were even a few times where I was like, OK, come on, girl. But you're going to get and she definitely has a knack, I think, for writing characters where she's not super concerned whether you find them likable or not. That was one of the big hallmarks of the Shades of Magic series with I think Lila was her name. So you're kind of going in for that. And she's going to explore those things all the way and give you I will. You know, my girl is maybe not.

huge on the editing on length, which is fine by me because I like a juicy. It is a long look. And this is not her first one. Again, Annie LaRue is like just as thick. So I don't even know if what I've described sounds like a sell, but it is. It's like, I know I'm getting what I'm getting with her. I know I'm going to have lots of places where I write down some sentences that I thought were really nice. And she's going to give you characters that act on their impulses without regard to whether you think the way they're acting is something to, you know,

praise in any way. And I love that. Yeah, that's interesting, especially given the kinds of impulses that vampires have. Correct. Yes, that's where I was going. All right. So as Danico is explaining to us, this is a book about three women who eventually are vampires. I guess we'll talk a little bit about them and try not to give any spoilers and then at some point we will enter spoiler territory and you will be listeners on your own reconnaissance if you don't want to get

spoiled. So there are three main characters. We start in the 1500s with Maria, who gets married off to a Viscount. She thinks that it's going to give her a better life. And he's terrible. He's really terrible. He's terrible. Being married to him is terrible. Sex with him is terrible. It's all terrible.

And she meets a woman named Sabine, who is a widow who owns basically like an apothecary. This mysterious woman who seems to have a lot of independence. And this is, of course, very appealing to Maria, who does not wish to be trapped under her husband, literally and metaphorically. Then there's, thank you for that snicker, Danica. But it's...

Then there's Alice, who we meet in Boston in 2019. She has met a hot girl at a party, and then she's woken up after their encounter, and things are not the same as they were before she went to sleep. And Lottie, who...

We meet kind of in multiple places. So Lottie is the most spoilerific of these, but Lottie is also the sort of the connective thread between some of the characters. I think they're vampires and they're lesbians. It's not like an incomplete pitch. That really does a lot of the work. Let's, I guess we'll cut to the chase of this is an, is it good episode? Was it good? Did y'all like it? Danica, what did you think? I really liked it. I, I,

Like I said, it was my first V.E. Schwab. I didn't know what to expect. I also didn't know what to expect the whole book. When I say the less you know, the better, I feel like that implies there's going to be these big shocking twists. And maybe they are shocking. But I didn't think of it that way as much as it just kind of feels like it...

I want to say meander, but in a good way. It just kind of takes different turns than I originally expected. And you're following these characters for a very long time. Like centuries. Yes. You can kind of live multiple lives. So I kind of looked back at it and realized, is about 80% of this book prologue? But that's fine. Yeah.

think that's a great way to put it. It just sort of unfolds. And I agree going in like without much information, like a vague synopsis will usually drive me nuts. Like give us a little more about what to expect, but that they're connected in some way we know from the very beginning, but like what the connection is going to be or how it will be revealed to us. But I felt like I was in

Good hands. I think I liked it but didn't love it. I would say it was good. But yeah, I would say it's good. Vanessa, where were you? I did also kind of end in the probably strong like, maybe not all the way love. And that's okay because it was still a good time. But for reasons of, and again, even though everything I just said is also true, what happened, which is that the book, you know, she'll take her time. If each one wants to take you on a ride, she absolutely will. And there was a portion of it where I was like, okay,

So now I really do. And I think, to be fair, and I really love that Danica gave this caveat, because so many people had said to me, like, the less you know, the better. I was expecting something a little bit more explosive to happen a little sooner. And that expectation, I think, will drive you a little bit mad because, again, we're following these women for a real long time and you don't really see that thread of commonality until pretty, pretty soon.

where it was driving me a little bit nuts. And then once I kind of just accepted that where this was going to go, then I feel like it became a much more enjoyable experience than I kept on going. So I really did like it. I don't know that it's 100% my favorite, but it was a good time. And the vampire thing is just fun to see how she treats it in her hands with the whole toxicity because they're very toxic, super toxic. I did guess, I think, what's supposed to be the big twist. Yeah. Almost. Almost.

Possibly from the first chapter, which honestly I think was a better experience for me because I was not waiting for a big twist. I was just like, okay, I think this is what's happening. I think I also did guess it and that was part of the reason where I was like, if this is what we're going towards, I think I kind of know what's up. But again, once I was just sort of like, no, we're trying to just live life.

in these women's experiences and go along for the ride of what it is like for them to go from living a regular life to now this new life and the ways in which they interpret and adjust or don't adjust to the like trappings of that new life, then I, again, I had a good time with it. But if you are expecting like a big, then, you know, temper that expectation. Yeah, I felt like

I mean, it's very plotty, like a lot happens. And a lot of it is just the characters going from one experience to another. But it's kind of character, like secretly character driven. Yeah, yeah. In a way that surprised, like it was pleasantly surprising to me that it's like 600 pages, a lot of things are happening. We're not doing a whole lot of like reflection with the characters. So it doesn't feel character driven in like the literary fiction kind of way to me.

But it was more driven by that than I expected it to be because of this, like what you're saying, centuries long unfolding of things. And it didn't feel to me like a book that was setting me up for a big reveal at the very end. Like there is a reveal of something. But by the time it happened, I think the breadcrumbs are there. Like I didn't feel like Schwab was expecting us to have, you know, like huge exclamation points over our heads when we read it. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I think that's true. I really like vampire novels that actually dive into what it would be like to live for centuries. Like I, I love the Gilda stories where we kind of just keep meeting her at different time periods and different places and say, like, you literally do have basically different lives because especially if you're going to be young forever, like you could, you can do so much in those hundreds of years. Yeah.

So I liked that aspect of this. Yeah. Let's maybe take the women one by one and talk about them as a way to sort of get into this. So Maria is the first one that we meet. And I think here we're going to enter spoiler territory, listeners. So if you don't want to keep doing this. Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty tough. Like the person with the thing. Anyway, yes. I can't even use names necessarily. There aren't like a whole lot of big things to be spoiled here, but we're going to talk in detail about the book. So Maria is the first character that we meet. She's the one who gets married off to the terrible Viscount and she meets Sabine, the woman who runs the apothecary. TLDR, Sabine is a vampire vampire.

And tells her all about how the two, this is like one of the recurring themes is that these women who have, who are dead but are living forever as, as,

as vampires, have freedom that real live human women don't have under the thumbs of patriarchy and expectations of heterosexuality. And Sabine tells Maria that two kinds of women have leave to wander through this world alone and unmolested, nuns and widows. And Sabine is presenting herself as a widow, but we find out that she is a vampire because she offers to turn Maria into

And the thing that happens then is Maria wakes up a vampire, like has this hunger. Sabine invites Maria to drink from her. And Maria is so hungry that she drains Sabine. Sabine is dead. So now Maria is... That's probably the most surprising thing for me. That was the most shocking twist. And it's very early on. Yes, I agree. Yeah, that Maria just has no idea what's happening. And... Yeah, yeah.

And so then she, like, she goes outside, but the sun hurts her. She feels this hunger and she doesn't know what to go do about it. And I haven't read a ton. Like, I've read some vampire books, but not a ton of them. So I was curious for y'all. This was the first time I encountered someone who has been turned into a vampire who doesn't know that that's what they've been. Hmm.

turned into. I mean, I absolutely screamed in my car because I was listening to this on audio when she killed off Sabine. I was like, you just killed the source of the knowledge because she wasn't going to be able to tell her all the things. And then sure enough, yeah, I don't know whether I have spent a lot of time with a book where the person didn't know or didn't find out immediately, you know, five minutes later sort of thing. And she was figuring it out on the go because the person who turned her was gone. And now she was having to

figure out what all of this means for her, you know, physical as well as like future life. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's the usual story beat is someone gets turned into a vampire. The vampire who turns them is like, let me show you the ways. Right. Yeah.

And that Schwab just sort of turned that on its head. So Danica, that was most surprising to you as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I think in retrospect, it makes sense because she is such an independent character and you continue to see that of she was one of the interviews I read with V Schwab. She was talking about, she's a character who every time she is like,

put in a box, she picks the lock. Like she's just continually being like, okay, how do I get my way out of this way? Like she's, you know, trying to escape her small town. So she gets married to this guy. It turns out this guy is just another different prison. So she figures out a way out of that. And I can totally see how for her, like, I don't think it was conscious necessarily, but for her, it would mean like you are now like,

beholden to this person. You don't own me. Yeah. And I think she would rather be independent with

no guidance, no knowledge than to feel like she is just trading another one of these relationships where she's dependent on someone else yet again. Yeah, I mean, she does throughout the whole book of her braid that this means to be free, right? Which is what Sabine said to her, but she said to her freedom at all costs, whether conscious or not. I totally agree that that does characteristically make sense. Yeah. It also just gave me pause to be like, when did vampire lore enter culture? Yeah. So

you know did a little googling like dracula's published in 1897 and before that vampire lore is sort of in european culture like the 17th and 18th centuries but we're in the 16th century here it's 15 something with maria so like she wakes up a vampire and stories about vampires have not like permeated storytelling culture at that point

So just no clue. And she goes decades, if not centuries before she meets other vampires and they tell her what she is and like give her the whole history, which I thought was a really fun choice in a vampire story. Like a nice departure from the, let me show you the ways. Yeah.

Some of my favorite parts were these other vampire characters who are just side characters, because I think we spend so long with Sabine that you really get this idea of like, this is what a vampire is. It's Sabine. But then she starts to meet other vampires and you're like, oh, there's actually a lot of ways to do this. And hers is...

not necessarily the best way and they all feel like real like they they feel well-rounded even if they're only on the page for a little bit it feels like you could read the story of this other character and they would completely hold up to that

Yeah, I totally agree. And you just switched into calling Maria Sabine. So Vanessa, tell us about that.

gets rid of, again, the person, she decides that part of her freedom is reinvention and that she's no longer going to be called Maria, but instead Sabine. So when Danik was calling her Sabine, it's because that is the identity that she now assumes. Her name is Sabine for the rest of the book.

Yeah, which I also thought was interesting, like a whole new, you don't just have this completely new existence, but a new name, a new way to move through the world and maybe drawing on, like, I think she is trying to channel that like kind of mystique and power that she saw in Sabine.

thinks that she's beautiful and mysterious and has no idea anything about her and then meets her decades later and is like, you look the same. What's going on here? Like, this is how vampires work. But that theme of freedom, like Maria, I think at one point is discussing a potential victim and a man that doesn't realize that he thinks that she's the damsel, not the danger. And there is a lot of this, not just repetition in the story about

what it means for women to be trapped or to try to seek freedom, like the extremes you would have to go to in the variation, like the variations of this world to be free. But the ways that women are perceived and how she's really fighting against that and wanting to be perceived, or at least knowing for herself that she is not the way that people perceive her. She is much more, she's much more dangerous than this fancy woman is.

That was something that I kind of changed my mind about the book is that early on, I was like, okay, I see how we're doing like a feminist, you know, flipping of the book.

Yeah, that predator prey thing she talks about several times. And there is one point in the novel where several characters are like, I'm going to attack these awful men as sort of a revenge attack.

Moment, which is fine. But I as it went on, I realized like, oh, that's not that's not really what's happening here. Like, obviously, she is talking about feminist themes and how these women are trapped in their circumstances and go to these lengths. But these are not like.

righteous characters you know they are they're toxic they live up to it they make some some bad choices and definitely in the body count it is not just terrible men who are yeah

I'm so glad you mentioned that because Maria does think about like a feminist revenge approach basically like she'll just kill bad men and then later on Alice one of our other characters has a moment that's basically like a contemplation of Dexter like what if I just did the thing like Dexter but lesbian vampires and we're just going to kill bad men and it is so much more.

complex than that because they're driven by this feminist rage but also just by this hunger that doesn't discern at all. Lottie has a lot of that. I actually really liked that because it's really easy to, so again,

spoilers here. Let's talk about Lottie next. Alice comes second in the book, but I think Lottie's relationship with Sabine... Because she connects both of these characters. So Lottie is the vampire that Rebecca alluded to earlier who essentially seduces our second character, Alice, at a party. So again, they hook up

Then Alice wakes up in the morning is like, something is different. Oh, my gosh. I and then, you know, connecting lots of different pieces is like, hey, I have no heartbeat. I'm dead. Oh, my gosh. Lottie turned me. I must find this person and like, you know, go yell at her for what she did to me.

That takes a while. And we eventually find out that it was not Lottie that turned her. It was Sabine. And then we flash way back and get the story of how Lottie and Sabine came to be. And we find out that they were basically a couple. Like Sabine turned her. She also was facing this like

And she was at that point in society where, you know, she had like a coming out season and she realized that she had feelings for a friend of hers who did not reciprocate those feelings or at least didn't want to act on them. She's like, what do I want to do? I don't want to marry a man. She's like, I got an option for you. And then boom, right? They turn.

And so we get all of Lottie's backstory and we do see that Lottie is also attempting that same idea of like, well, what if I only go after like the men that deserve it? And this kind of humanitarian thing that reminded me a little bit of like the Twilight concept where they were like, we're vegetarians because we only feed on animals. Yeah, not like people. Yeah.

But especially the further into it you get and you realize that she has this string of women who are all being, spoiler, taken out by a very jealous Sabine. Who when she decides to leave Sabine, when she realizes Sabine is like out of control in her kills, tries to get away from her. But Sabine comes out of nowhere every single time, tracks her down through all the corners of the earth.

And she, you know, keeps trying to quote unquote protect these women until somebody actually like says it point blank. Like, are you really what is your priority here? Because you could just stop sleeping with these women. You still have your cake and eat it too. And I loved that examination because for a bit there, I think I was also like, oh, Lottie's trying to do this. Like, I don't know if the word humanitarian here is correct, but like.

Ethically. There you go. And then when she pointed at the like, no, not really. Like you're telling yourself that, but ultimately you're still wanting to have your cake and eat it too because you know Sabine's coming for them. You're just kind of trying to absolve yourself of that guilt. And I loved that chapter. I thought hers was the most interesting character for sure. I agree. Because of, and I didn't pick up on it fully until near the end of how she's

She feels like such an ethical character when we're first hearing about, you know, she's turned into a vampire. And even though she has all this hunger, she's horrified by what Sabine is doing. She doesn't she doesn't want to feed. She wants to find a way to like do this.

in an ethical way and at first I'm like oh yeah she's really showing that this is you know you can approach this in a different way but then yeah you start to to think of not just that she is putting these women in danger because at a point it's like okay if you're living hundreds of years and you can't have any contact with anyone like that's going to be pretty tough though you

Do you need to live hundreds and hundreds for years? What?

But also, specifically, she is so scarred by watching Sabine become monstrous over time that she doesn't want to do that to anyone else, which means she won't turn anyone into a vampire just fine, except that when Sabine does it, she starts killing them because she doesn't want them to watch her become monstrous. But...

is that an ethical correct exactly that was the part that I was like oh you got me I've

really appreciated how dedicated Schwab is in this to like all roads lead to being monstrous yes then like as I think it's Mateo who's the really old vampire like first takes the new Sabine under his wing and he tells her like that this eats away at your humanity over time and he is much older than she is and she watches him like decline into that place of just sort of like

sort of monstrous hunger where he's not following his own rules anymore. And then we watch Sabine do that. Lottie watches Sabine go over that journey. But like Lottie is aging centuries at the same time and maybe is unaware that she is also like these pieces of herself

are getting chipped away, but we get to watch it happen. And I really appreciated that, that it was like, no matter what you do here, you're a vampire. And this is an unsatisfiable hunger. So you can either try to eat as little as possible, kill as little as possible, but

but you're still going to be hungry forever. You're always going to be so hungry. And that you are mortal, but even though you're living centuries, you do have mortality of some kind. One thing I wanted to ask you too, that I was curious about is that Lottie says, Oh, I've watched Sabine become this other, she's a whole other person now. And I, you know, I can't, I can't see the woman I fell in love with, but we know that,

that Sabine was pretty terrible before she met Lottie. Like, we've seen Sabine wipe out big groups of people just for the fun of it, right? It's like a Tarantino scene. Yeah. So did you notice, like, obviously she has some of those kind of blackout moments where she seems, like, very weird. But in terms of actual...

ethical because the way Lottie tells it Sabine has become unethical in a way she can't stand behind anymore do you think that's true or do you think that's something that she's kind of telling herself about why she was in that relationship in the first place I think there were always signs because I'm and you know some of this is a little blurry for me now because it's been a bit since I read it but

you know from the very beginning we'll say little stuff and some people say stuff to lottie that you know aren't i enough like little things like that right that even if it's just to go hang out with new vampires like that's it you know like doesn't there's little signs to me there that like oh there was some possession i think she was just sort of like caught up in the glamour of it that is also though easy to say because we get the full behind the scenes of how terrible she's been so like maybe it's a

with the idea of like getting to be with this woman that she's, you know, idolized in this way that she just sort of willfully ignores. I don't know. I think there were signs, but I don't know that she saw the whole thing. I think Sabine becomes more abusive to Lottie over time. And I think that maybe Lottie interprets that as her personality changing, whereas I think that's a very common. This was another interesting episode.

Yeah. Is that, like, there's this abusive relationship that is both fantastical and realistic. Really real. Yeah. Really real. Yeah. I think that's a great question, Danica. I think, like, the breadcrumbs of Sabine becoming an abusive partner are there from the very beginning. Yeah. But I haven't put it together until right now. But the way you asked the question is making it really come together for me. Like, I think it unfolds in the way that abusive relationships often. Yep.

That there are little things at the beginning, but that the partner doesn't see them as part of a pattern or an indicator that things will get worse as they go on. Yeah. Because one doesn't know she's being isolated, right? Right. That's the thing that I was thinking for myself. Like, oh, she isolated her, but she didn't realize she was being isolated until the opportunity to meet with other vampires presented itself. And she's like, wait, I thought you said there were none of us. Right. Yeah.

But I knew that. And like in human relationships that might unfold over like weeks or months or years, but in theirs it unfolds over decades and centuries. It's a lot longer. From the beginning, you know, Sabine is like, well, you're different. You're special. I do this to all the other girls, but I wouldn't do that to you. Yeah. Because you're so special, which again is like a very common abuse tactic. Yeah. Yeah.

And we get to see like, I thought the scenes at these like Regency era balls where Sabine is seducing Lottie were some of the most fun in the book. Like that she spots her across the room and goes to talk to her. And Lottie just sees Sabine as this glamorous, beautiful woman who is also presenting herself as a widow. So she doesn't have to participate in the shenanigans of like trying to find a husband or,

But that Lottie sees Sabine as someone who can teach her something. And there's this like attraction and chemistry between them that they're not allowed to name if they're even fully aware that that's a thing you could name because of the time period that they're in. But watching that unfold was both like really exciting and fun. And also just kind of like you're reading it with your hands over your face because you know that this is not going to go well for Lottie. And she thinks this whole new world is opening up for her.

Yeah. You get this like double view of Sabine where you've seen her with her little literal, like collection of, of the trinkets that she's taken off of, you know, she, by that point is specifically preying on only women because they taste better. So she is like specifically just murdering innocent women just for the fun of it and is taking these trophies and wearing them and so

So we know that she is this monstrous figure, but then we're seeing her through Lottie's eyes where she is this, like, sophisticated and kind, like, is taking her under her wing. And we've seen her do this same seduction process so many times, but usually she just immediately...

kills them after like a dinner yeah yeah yeah and that there's even a moment late in the book where schwab asks overtly like why did lottie stay in this relationship and kind of lingers on like why do people stay in abusive relationships i thought was such an interesting choice like there's a lot going on here that's not just vampire stuff

I actually have that quote. I included it in my review, which may not stay the same because it's an arc, but yeah, that stood out to me too, where it says, why does Charlotte stay? That is like asking why stay inside a house on fire. Easy to say when you're standing on the street, a safe distance from the flames harder when you're still inside convinced you can douse the blaze before it spreads or rushing room to room, trying to save what you love before it burns. Yeah.

She's so good. Oh, that one's good. I was trying to find, I think I wrote down that same sentence. I can't find it, but yeah. Yeah. There's a couple sounds like, oh, do you? There's that one. The other one that really like,

Like I had to stop reading and just like look at the ceiling for a minute. When she's in the when she talks to Jocelyn in the garden, that scene is incredible. And her saying, I hope you found someone brave enough to love you. Yeah. Yeah.

I love that scene so much because she, Jocelyn, has been like essentially hallucinating her for years as she is aged and Lottie has not. So she doesn't realize that Lottie is actually literally there looking like she hasn't aged a day because why would you think that was real? They have that whole conversation. Yeah, that one got me too.

It's interesting hearing about what Vanessa, you were saying at the top of the show that this thing where characters really exist in the gray area is kind of a Schwab signature because like no one here is really good and no one here is purely bad. No.

but also some really human desire that drives that. Like she's lonely and wants companionship. And also I think on a level believes that she's offering Lottie a freedom of a kind in the same way that the original Sabine believed that she was offering her freedom and

I think Schwab is really trying to get at like the real between a rock and a hard placeness of being a woman in the world, being a queer person in the world, especially at various points in history. And I think like I know, Vanessa, you've seen sinners a bunch of times now. I've seen sinners. I was going to bring it up. A bunch of times now. Danica, have you seen sinners yet? I haven't yet.

Danica, I'm going to bet you a ticket price. Oh, God. I need a follow-up of Jessica. Seriously. The comparison is interesting. Let's talk about that for a second. It's just interesting to have both of these stories at the same time. Yeah, especially when Sinners is such a... I feel like I never do this justice when I try to talk about it, but it is a vampire movie and...

I feel like there's a lot of people who are like, oh, I don't want to say because vampires and like, no, you still have to go for it because it is allegory in a way that you are not prepared for. Like there are levels. Frankly, there are levels that even as like a non-Black person, I probably don't understand and that I've started to by like digesting a lot of media about it. But it is such an interesting juxtaposition because these vampires are obviously a also white people in this particular book or movie and the way that they go after vampires.

black folks and try not to spoil the gist of that movie either because I don't know if that's what we're doing but that vampiric depiction is just so different from what we get with these women because the women are

for very different motivations, potentially, yeah, like using it as a form of freedom, whereas on the other side, it is like a meditation on cultural appropriation, on like power, on, again, I feel like my words like fail me here, but seeing those two, and again, I did them like a lot in conjunction, like I watched the movie two or three times in the time that I read this book, was just so interesting to like go back and forth between the two and go, what a different representation of vampirism. Yeah.

But similar arguments get made. One of the white vampires in Sinners tells multiple Black characters, this is the way to freedom. Fellowship and love. Right, yeah, fellowship and love. If you let us turn you, you can be with your friends and family forever. You won't be subject to the kind of subjugation that you experience as a Black person in the South in the early 1900s. And it's a similar pitch to what the...

the older women, like the mentor figures are offering the younger women in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. But it feels like the intentions are purer in the book, in what Schwab is doing, where it's a tool of manipulation in Sinners, I felt like. Ooh, that's good. That's juicy.

Well, it's interesting because to add another layer on it, like we're talking about race and gender, is that another very common vampire, especially, you know, Carmilla, those sort of monstrous queer vampires, like it

there is this mythology around the queer vampire because, you know, they're converting people. They're turning people. They can't, they're not having babies like vampires usually aren't reproducing in that way. So they reproduce by turning people. And so that's like another layer onto the,

The vampire. Like, I always find it so interesting what monsters symbolize and how they can be read as so many different things, just depending on what our current fears are. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And nobody really gets the judgment of like full monstrosity here. Yeah. I appreciated that it is very, these characters are allowed to be

Like Schwab is not endorsing the toxic behavior, but she's also not coming down on the page as like it just is. Right. Well, I think you were talking about it earlier, Vanessa, about V. Schwab saying that this is a very vulnerable book that has characters that are.

inspired by our autobiographical. And in one of these interviews, she talks about Sabine as her most autobiographical character, which I think is so interesting because if anyone is a monster, it's Sabine. But it is this like representation of,

and desire that women are expected to not have and to suppress at all costs. You're not supposed to be ambitious. You're not really supposed to want for anything. You're supposed to just be content with whatever you're given. Maria, in those opening pages, you're just supposed to, with literal desire, be fine with your husband climbing on top of you and never...

having any consideration for your experience or your pleasure. And when she even has the audacity to ask about it, which is, yeah, it's just not good. I love that Maria, even like as a human, even as a child, is defined by that hunger. Like that image of her, you know, they didn't have a lot of food, so she never felt like she was full. And that image of her sucking on the cherry seed for hours because it was like almost like eating, like that is...

just who she is through this entire book is she in the imagery of cherry juice yeah that was so yeah yeah let's turn i guess to alice we haven't talked about her yeah really alice who could be signed up as why am i in it why am i in that why help help y'all can't see me but i'm looking around frantically because poor alice yeah

Alice, it's just, again, spends most. OK, I actually want to know how y'all feel about this, because, again, spoilers. But we know all along we're getting flashbacks to Alice's life. We know Alice is Scottish and she is attending. And I don't know if we know that it's Ivy League. Anyway, we know she's attending a school, a university in the States.

She's in school in Boston. It's fancy. Yes, exactly. And we're getting her backstory and we realize that she was really close to her sister. And this I also kind of guessed in the beginning, but we're like making our way towards finding out like how is it that she got from being in Scotland with the sister to like now in Boston. And then again, she gets turned. The sister arc, who we eventually find out towards the very, very, very end of the book, essentially left Scotland.

Kind of out of nowhere, at least in Alice's perspective, even though Alice expected to be able to let go off, they were going to go off together, right? And like go do life on their terms. But the sister ends up dying, right? The interpretation is like dying by suicide, basically. Yeah.

And that's, I couldn't quite connect how that storyline fit into this vampire arc. My biggest quibble was also like every time the Alice chapters diverted into Alice's memories and stuff with her sister. That was, those are the only moments that I really wanted to

tune out but Danica it sounds like you have an insight maybe that we're waiting for well yeah this was when I said like it wasn't what I expected to be is that when I got to the end I was like oh of course this has been a story about grief the whole time like of course this is a vampire novel that's about death that's about grief and and about like

I think what I said in my review was that it's about loving someone who can't stop running towards their own grave because Katty is such an interesting character because Katty is grieving. Katty is overcome. This is the sister is overcome by grief because their mother died and Alice was kind of too young to even really remember her mother, but Katty does. And she,

Does not move on in any way. She is so mired in her grief. And so angry. And like. Refuses anything. Any kind of.

you know, support anyone who's trying to make a connection. You know, this is the stepmom. Yeah, exactly. Who like very carefully is trying to build this relationship and is really by what we learned from Alice. So this is really trying her very best to reach out to Katty and Alice who's constantly running after her and trying to reach out to her and have that relationship. And Katty is so, um,

determined not to and yeah to me she was almost like a vampire character in herself or definitely you know connected to grief and death because it's yeah it's so hard to have a relationship with someone who is so hurt and so consumed in their own anger that they can't

you know, connect to anyone else. And, and the moment where you realize that caddy Alice is like upset that caddy left before when they're supposed to be on this adventure together and that caddy starting this adventure without her. And then realizing at the end that she never actually went anywhere. Like she has been essentially down the road, a town away. Yeah. The entire time. And just completely self-destructing. Like,

To me, that was, in retrospect, that was the story. It was the story of Alice and Caddy and everything else was kind of prologue to that. That's an interesting interpretation, yeah. Because I definitely pick up on that. That's helpful because I think in a way, all of the other storylines are about how there's no escaping from pain. Like this proposition is it's painful to be a woman. It's painful to be queer. Let me make you a vampire and you can find freedom. Yeah.

But it's also painful then to be a vampire. You have to kill people and that's horrifying. You're lonely for centuries and that's difficult. You gradually become a monster and you might be aware of the pieces, the last shreds of your humanity falling away. You can't exist and have those kinds of

connections that there's no, there really is no escaping from this human experience, even if you get yourself out of humanity. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You can get the power you wanted in time and it still doesn't make a difference. Yeah. It's about mortality. Like no matter what you do, you are mortal. Even when they go to these great lengths, become vampires and live for centuries, you in the end are mortals.

mortal and will have to face death because Alice is like trying to reinvent herself and

Partly to try to leave both her mother and Katty's deaths behind her. To try to not be living in the shadow of those deaths all the time. And then she wakes up dead. Like that is her story. Is that Katty died at 17. Alice has like just turned 18. And she dies. And she's just like her whole life is just about death. And how do you...

How do you live with death? And how do you, like, accept grief without it completely overtaking you like it does with Cady? It's a good thing you're here today, Danica. Yeah. Rebecca and I were like, why? Yeah. I'm still thinking about that line about chasing someone who can't stop running to their own grave. Have you thought about being a writer? Super smart. Yeah, definitely. That's what you pay me for. Great.

I actually found this part funny, which is not meant to be funny, but is that Lottie is telling us at one point, when we find out that it wasn't Lottie that turned Alice, she confronts her, she finds her, tracks her down, confronts her. And then she's like, let me tell you the story. I thought it was super hilarious that instead of just taking us all the way through, they'll stop or they each would stop and pan over to Alice for a second, just for Alice to be like, are you still talking? Yeah. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?

for you yeah but like that was kind of the only purpose of that little little interruption is she just basically like you're still you're still I'm still dead and then we go right back and we weren't really getting a whole I just thought that I don't know if that was done on purpose but it made me laugh a lot it is funny and like kind of pointedly just to be like are

Are you done? Do you have to describe all the gowns? I get it. All the gowns, all the sexy times. We get it. She was my dad. Speaking of all the sexy times, this book was not as sexy as I expected. Correct. That's what I was about to say. It's actually very closed door, which I expected it to be a total romp. And it's not as much as I expected. Are the other V.E. Schwa books sexy?

Uh, Shades of Magic, I don't think was in that way. And then, let's see, Adéle Rue. God, it's been a while. And obviously the kids books are not. Yeah, I don't know that they were, but I just thought that the way this one was painted, that it was gonna be. And that could just be me not remembering. It's possible. But yeah, I just, the way it was billed. And again, nothing even knew a lot about it, but I just expected it to go for broke, especially because there is a, and I can't remember the name of it, but there's a Netflix series that V.E. Schwab produced. Yeah.

That unfortunately did not get really great reviews. And so it was canceled after one season. But I feel like that was ostensibly very sexy, even though it took place, I think, at a high school, etc. So I don't know. I just thought she was in her like sexy vampire era. And then we got there was sex, but it was so much more closed door than I was expecting. Like euphemistic. There are some open door moments, though. Yeah, there are. There are. You're right. I wouldn't go into this expecting there to be.

Yeah. No, you're right. Entirely closed door. Yeah. It wasn't. And maybe my brain is just melted because I had to read fourth wing earlier this year.

By comparison. Well, actually, I think my brain is probably melted by the expectations of the Romantasy moment. Since this is coming out in the big Romantasy moment, this is certainly not a Romantasy book, but it's packaged kind of similarly to some of the big Romantasy books. They're like the dark colors. There's a little foiling in the cover. It didn't have spreadges, which I was surprised by. And apparently I say spreadges unironically now. You've come over. I thought it was more like...

gothic was my expectation yeah if I had to describe it to someone I would say gothic now now having read it I think that's a good description yeah matches the vibes including that like there is some sexy moments but it's not like super sexy that's what I would expect from

I think because there was so much like awakening in this, I wanted it to be a little spicier on the page about like, this is exciting for these women that they're discovering this. And it's, yeah. And, and how powerful that is to realize that like this, this little thing that maybe you've had a hint of about yourself is real and other people feel it and it's available to you in some way. And Oh my God.

And those like revelatory moments are really fun on the page. But I was just I was surprised. I was expecting just more sexy times on the page. And I don't this book at a lot of moments felt like it could have been advanced YA to me rather than adults. I wanted to ask you all about what you feel about categorization for it here. Oh, that's interesting. That didn't cross my mind. The YA. Yeah, to me for a second. But yeah, go ahead, Danica.

I think maybe in like the very first Alice chapters, because it is just like, just going to university and like, you know, go into parties and that sort of thing. But yeah,

Once we got into the 1500s and 1800s, it didn't feel like a lot of...

I had kind of gone to the YA place and then went, no, but this person is like literal centuries old. Like we're fine to be in the adult place. Like I, yeah, I kind of vacillated a little bit. Yeah. I think for me, it was in the writing that like one of the things I'm struggling with in adult fiction in general right now is I feel like a lot of authors are being very overt in places I would like them to be subtle. And they're like the repetition of women aren't free and this is a way to freedom. People aren't free and this is a way to, like that repetition felt-

My girl sometimes does not edit. Yeah, like maybe a little young for me. And then for as many of like the great sentences, like the ones y'all have quoted so far, there were also things like the world will try to make you small and it will tell you to be modest and meek and you should go boldly instead. And like, absolutely, I endorse that message. But also like stating it so plainly feels like it's intended for a younger audience.

reader. I think that's what I was, yeah, kind of talking about where early on I was like, okay, we get it. They think it's a prior pray. Yes. But then because it sort of

undermines that later I would I kind of yeah you know was able to let that go I would love to talk about the ending because the ending was also not what I would like to talk about the ending and then I'm going to be cranky after we talk about the ending about something but let's go to the ending first I would just like to say we got to a point where like a thing happened and out loud I went just kill her and then she did it was great I literally was like oh look

Danica, what about the ending are you wanting to talk about? Please. Well, okay. One small complaint I will lodge before we talk about the ending is that I did think it was like a little too not trusting us as a reader, but I was like, remember how I've been keeping grave dirt in my necklace? Yes.

I'm like, yes, because you've described it multiple times. You don't need to describe it. Yeah, Chekhov's grave dirt. Out loud, I literally went, oh, F off. Like, when I read that part, I was like, come on. It would have been a great reveal if everything before it had been the same because it's been mentioned a few times. Like, not in a super overt way, but that you didn't mention it again right before I used it. Yeah, you didn't need to bust the PowerPoint out. I was paying attention before. But...

other than that just it ending with alice killing both of them i was not expecting and it was sort of for me like it happened pretty quickly that i realized like oh lottie is not the righteous character she thinks she is i love this and then and then that she's killed and i like i

I think at the time of reading it, I wasn't quite sure. But looking back, I think it's pretty obvious that Lottie was going to kill Alice after Alice killed Sabine. I felt really silly for buying. And this is just because, I don't know, I was distracted also. But she literally was like, yeah, and by the way, Alice, if you kill Sabine,

your maker you go back to being alive and i knew she was like and of course she was right but for the second i went oh that's weird why would you oh okay but you're sure like that is i was so submerged in the story that i was like oh she's going to alan i was like alice look alive like come on we know better than this yeah no i reacted like 30 seconds later like kill her maker like three seconds after exactly that's i was like hello i felt silly

But again, I was very much like, as soon as you figured out, you know, I mean, again, we saw this coming at this point, but when she kills her and is like, well, I'm still dead. Alice is still dead. And, you know, looks over at Lottie's like, yeah, I know. Sorry. I just kind of can't do it myself because of like this problem. And I literally went, just kill her. Just kill her already. When Alice is like, say less. Yeah. Here, have this toxic dirt juice. And again, like, I mean,

What I blame Lottie for the most is her killing the vampires that Sabine made. But that moment, I couldn't even really blame her because she is like, Sabine is just going to continue to do this for centuries. Yeah.

And if it wasn't like, you know, even if Lottie just was like, I'm just going to kill myself. Like, yeah, it's probably still going to still leave her untouched. Yeah. So it makes sense. But it's not forgiving. It's just that messiness that makes the. Yeah. So toxic. V, what's your complaint? Let's hear the cranky. I just. OK, I did this on audio.

It just worked better for my schedule. And the audio narrators, like, ostensibly are really talented. They include, I can't remember the third one right now, but Julia Whelan. Ostensibly really talented means that something great is about to happen. Because, again, it's Julia Whelan who is, like, audiobook narrator royalty at this point. And then Katie Leung, who is the Scottish actress who played Cho Chang in the Harry Potter books. And I cannot remember the name of the third one, but I've also read, like, again, good work. I am so sick and tired of...

Maria, we didn't say this as much, but Maria slash Sabine is Spanish. She is born in Spain in the 16th century. And for a lot of it is speaking either in Spanish or saying Spanish words. They chose people who obviously don't speak Spanish. And I'm not trying to pretend like I know what Spanish in 16th century Spain sounded like. But literally, it was like this when they were talking. And I am not exaggerating even a little bit. Like, it was where I was like, shut the fuck...

Jamie messaged me like are you listening to the Vichois book and I just wanted the messages to pour in and she was like what is happening like because it was and then every one of the narrators to be fair it is mostly Julia Whelan that had to do the because she's the one who voices Maria Slash Sabine

But then Katie Long, who has a very thick and beautiful Scottish accent, and then this other woman who is, I think, English, also had to do, like, Sabine voice at times. Oh, God. And it was just very weird the whole time where it was always a little bit like this. And I was like, even when she was talking about something super boring, I was like, what are we doing? You could have just, at least for the person who voiced her, gotten someone who speaks Spanish. Like, it's not that hard. Where was Frankie Corzo? There's a lot of other women that could have done it.

It was so distracting to the point where it almost stopped and yeeted my phone. Oh, man. That... Oh, exaggerated. Your version of that sounds like Hank Azaria doing Agidor Spartacus in the burn cage. Yes, and that is what I'm thinking of. I'm not even kidding. It was that and this other woman. Anyway, it doesn't matter who they sound like. But it was so forced that...

And then also they weren't pronouncing certain words, right? And like, I just get really cranky about that kind of thing. That's so valid. Shwab is a big name, right? It's not that she would have maybe clocked that, but that's part of the reason why when you're writing outside of your own experience, you need to do a little research. Like she has the clout to have been able to

But like, anyway, it was I really, really need you to both promise me that you're going to go find out a sample of this because they need you to hear it and then call me back and be like, you weren't exaggerating. I'm surprised you liked it as much as you did French.

from listening to that because I would find it very difficult to if it wasn't for the fact that I had a wild travel schedule on this time I would have gone because it was that distracting where I want it actively made me angry because it isn't just a little you know they had kind of done this and but they ultimately okay fine but I'm like you couldn't have like listened to some Penelope Cruz or something and gotten

to like a better arrival. It was so forced. I feel like you have a good, justifiable, strongly worded email in you about this. I do. I just... Anyway, it really... That's a bummer. What I would like to say, I guess, basically, is that if you're going into this and you are an audiobook listener, either kind of just prepare to have to get over that part or maybe switch to print because it is very distracting and how...

Again, it's not just like pronunciations and stuff because I could maybe get over that, but it is this really exaggerated character that they give her that like takes you out of it. And yeah, that's, I think, also one of the reasons why I landed at like, not love because that's too bad. Yeah. That's such a strange choice because...

Obviously, it should have gone to a narrator who can speak Spanish. But if you weren't going to, her being from Spain doesn't really, at least when I remember, doesn't come up that much. If you weren't going to do the right thing, you could at least do the less wrong thing. And just play it straight. For most of the time, for me in Spanish, I don't necessarily need you to say Spanish.

Like, I don't need you to say tortilla, but I need you to say tortilla and not like tortilla, right? Like, as long as you have like this phonetics of it that you're kind of trying. Don't be the Great British Bake Off's Mexican food episode. Like, that's... We don't have time for the rage that I'm about to feel. So we're going to move on from taco. But...

I've never been so offended in my life. Anyway, you know, like, you don't have to get it perfect. This is so funny because my first piece ever for Book Riot, like, when I was just a wee contributor, was specifically about representation in audiobooks because I was so sick of hearing people narrate books that either didn't speak Spanish or that did, and then they clearly just weren't checking them on the pronunciations of some very basic Spanish words. And I was like, come on, we can do better. It used to be much worse. Like, it has gotten...

They used to not even think about hiring narrators based on the characters or the writer's voice. And I thought we were doing better, but...

like all things apparently we're regressing it just sort of feels like they kind of chose to go again because julia whelan for those who don't know is a little bit of a prestige audiobook narrator and i totally understand that but again if she had just at least delivered it a little bit more like this where she was talking in spanish accent but instead again it was this weird where i'm like i literally did this like y'all can't see me but i just did like a jump scare because i was like what is happening it was like a little bit transylvanian a

a little bit Spanish, a little bit smoky in a way that it didn't need to be. It sounds like cartoon crone. Yeah, and keep in mind, she's, you know, a really young girl. I don't know. It just really, again, it will take you out because the rest of it, she'll be talking like this in this normal voice and then we suddenly get to this portion and this is when the accent comes out and you're like, what?

Why did we make that turn? Like it didn't need to be this way. So that's my crankiness. Glad you got that off your chest. That's super valid. Very valid. It sounds to me like we would all recommend this. We all liked it. Maybe you read it as an e-book because it's a heavy hardcover. So I did not realize going into this that this was more than 500 pages. I didn't realize it until well into the e-book because I was just reading the e-book. It's still going. That percentage is still low. Yeah.

I did not know I was committing to like. You got to look at how much homework you're taking on. Yeah. And then I was like, man, I feel like I'm reading this pretty fast. It does read pretty fast. Are there? Yeah, it doesn't feel like it drags, at least to me. Yeah. What type of reader? Who are you recommending this to? Let's do the hand sell before we get out. Want to go Danica?

I mean, toxic lesbian vampire says it all, but also fans of like gothics, I think, would enjoy this. And just if you like a morally gray main character, if you're the kind of person who needs to really, you know, be behind the main character's choices, I would not recommend this or really any vampire book. Great point. That's a great point.

I was definitely going to lean into the like morally gray. I hate to even do the unlikable because that feels like it was its own tropey thing that got weird for a bit. But yeah, obviously, if you have an interest in like vampires, great. But specifically, yeah, that like morally gray and just getting to this is not at all the same kind of book, but there's a book by Jess Zimmerman. Is it Women and Their...

monsters that is like I think that's what it's called like I have to check that but it's all about the monsters from Greek and Roman mythology and like a deep dive into like what makes them monstrous and like weirdly if you are interested in like that sort of thing and like that definition of monstrosity and yeah like unchecked desire etc then this is I think

And yeah, the gothic, because I love music. I think it's partly like... It's easy to recommend in that I think a broad audience would enjoy this. But then you've got to sell it. But at the same time, it's kind of... It's hard because it does have sexy moments, but not a lot. It does have some gore and blood, but not a lot. I think that's...

I think that's why it's easy to recommend to a broad audience. It's not like a Swiss army recommendation. Like I can't give this to my mother-in-law for Christmas. Hey dad. Maybe,

Maybe you have a cooler mother-in-law than I do. But you can, like, when Twilight was big, one of the selling points was that it was pretty clean. You know, like there wasn't a lot of sex on the page. And we can have a different conversation about whether that's a selling point for a book or not. But like, I think readers who want the yearning and the intrigue of romance and don't mind a little sexy time on the page, but don't want it to be super explicit. Like this is maybe a nice counterpoint to some of the romanticism that is really explicit. Yeah.

But it also isn't very romantic. Like this, you know, the main relationship is abusive. So this is why it's emotional. Yeah.

Ain't nobody getting out of this one with happily ever after. Yeah. If you're like want vampires, but don't want it to be like that kind of, yeah, I guess everything that we said it's not is almost it's best selling because I, again, romantic is great. This is not me, you know, crapping on it in any way, but like if you were specifically wanting to spend time with like, yeah, monstrous vampire characters that are like not wanting a ton of sex and you're also just not really wanting a lot of romance period. I'm like, great. Everyone here is terrible. I do.

I think the ideal reader for this is the people who, while this was a social media trend, said, I support women's rights, but I also support women's wrongs. There you go. That's perfect. I think that's a perfect note to end on. Yes, I think so too.

Thank you both for joining me. Show notes will be, as always, at podcast at bookriot.com. You can email us, podcast at bookriot.com. Join us on the Patreon at patreon.com slash bookriotpodcast. And Jeff and I will be back with the news on Monday.