Book Club June 2026- Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
By: V.E. Schwab
Published Year: 2025
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 535
Summary (Provided by Goodreads) This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.
This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.
This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.
This is a story about life—
how it ends, and how it starts.
What I thought
I was a little hesitant when Meghan picked this book. First, it’s long. Second, it has a decent amount of hype. Third, lesbian vampires. I enjoyed Invisible Life of Addie Larue, but not as much as the general public did which made me hesitant about this one.
Bury Our Bones follows 3 women, Mary, Lottie, and Alice. Each woman’s story takes place in a different era. Mary starts in the 1500s followed by Lottie in the 1800s and finally Alice in 2019. Each of these women is a lesbian and each of these women becomes a vampire.
I don’t really want to give too much away in my summary because not a lot happens in this story and I don’t want to give away anything enjoyable. I did enjoy this book more than I thought I would. It wasn’t necessarily unputdownable, but I was invested in each of their stories and wanted to see how they tied together and played out.
Schwab writes beautifully. Everything in this story is very well written. Admittedly, I think if she wasn’t as good of a writer as she is, this book would’ve felt drawn out and boring. Like I said, not much happens. I did enjoy the different perspective of vampires and how they lived. It was also interesting to see how they changed over time, from the 1500s to present day.
In that way it’s not your typical fantasy/horror novel. There isn’t really a lot of world building and a lot of the lore is based in vampire history we already know. It is more so a story that focuses on women, how they have suffered at the hands of men throughout history, and love. If that isn’t what you’re looking for or what you’re expecting when you pick this one up, I do think you’ll be disappointed.
What Book Club Thought
This was a really fun one to discuss. The more we talked about it the more we realized there was to discuss. We all agreed this isn’t a book we would’ve necessarily picked up on our own but that we ended up liking it more than we expected. I do think it was interesting because we kind of spanned from one member feeling bored by the book but still enjoying the reading process, to people not being able to put it down. Another interesting thing that we learned is that Schwab describes this as being her most autobiographical work, so that lead to an entire rabbit hole of discussion. I think this book was a pleasant surprise. I would not have expected it to lead to the type of discussion that it did. I would highly recommend this book as a book club read as opposed to a solo read.