Bury our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Characters, spice & triggers
Whether you're here for the toxic vampires, the sapphic tension or the gothic and light horror fantasy vibes, this Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil book guide has you covered.
This post covers everything: a full character guide and list, spice levels by chapter, spoiler-free review, plot synopsis, and content and trigger warnings.
Happy reading friends!
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil synopsis.
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532.
London, 1837.
Boston, 2019.
Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.
One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.
And all of them grow teeth.
Get Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil here.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil characters.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is narrated from a third person point of view, from three different perspectives.
There are three central women: Maria/Sabine, Alice, and Charlotte.
Here is a breakdown of our three main characters, Maria, Alice and Charlotte, followed with a list of all Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil characters we meet.
Main characters.
María / Sabine.
We start with Maria in 16th century Spain. Shackled by her gender and class, Maria’s life is dictated by a Viscount named Andrés who views her as a glorified womb. Lovely! Her longing for more love, freedom and escape leads her to Sabine, a mysterious widow who is both healer and vampire.
Alice.
Alice’s storyline is modern in contrast, set closer to our era in 2019. She’s a Scottish uni student who has moved to America to have a fresh start from her old life. She is dealing with anxiety, panic attacks and then she hooks up with a mysterious, purple-haired stranger named Lottie and wakes up undead.
Charlotte, aka, ‘Lottie’.
Then there’s Charlotte (Lottie), our emotionally tortured third protagonist whose main story arrives halfway through the book and feels like the emotional keystone. Charlotte Hastings is sent to London to be polished for marriage, but she wants more. Falling in love with her best friend Jocelyn, only to watch her marry Charlotte’s brother, is gutting and leads to the rest of the story unravelling.
Supporting characters.
Here’s a list of all the characters in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil who aren't Maria/Sabine, Alice or Lottie including on-page characters and off-page mentions.
Ysabel
Andrés
Sabine
Hector
Renata
Matteo
Alessandro
Bianca
Giovanni
Carmina
Catty (Alice’s sister)
Eloise Martin (Alice’s stepmother)
Alice’s dad (unnamed)
Fin (Alice’s half brother)
Sam
Colin
Amelia Hastings (Lottie’s aunt)
Ezra
Melody
Derek
Edith
Margaret
Jocelyn Lewis (Lottie’s best friend)
James Hastings (Lottie’s brother)
Eleanor
Albert
Olivia Finch
George Preston
Jack
Antonia
William
Giada
Grace
Renee
Hannah
Penny
Maddy
Jess
Chloe
Review: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab.
View my review and follow me on GoodReads here.
Spice level: 🌶
1/5, mild, non-explicit spice
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil feels like V.E Schwab opened a vein and wrote with whatever came out. Blood, memory, desire, rage and regret, perhaps.
But this book goes far beyond vampires. Schwab writes of women who are not just full of fangs, they’re full of want, fury, contradictions and a yearning for freedom, selfhood, safety, rage and sometimes revenge. And the freedom to love who they love.
She writes of women who’ve been consumed their entire lives by patriarchy, by silence, by roles they didn’t choose and what happens when they begin to consume in return. Schwab explores predator and prey. Who’s dangerous now? I support women’s wrongs.
Subsequently, this leads to a meditation on humanity, power, consent, hunger (literal and metaphorical), longing and grief. It’s V.E. Schwab at her most raw, her most autobiographical and maybe her most damning.
If you’ve read Schwab’s coming out story on Oprah Daily, you’ll recognise the echoes. There is a sense throughout that Schwab is cracking herself open.
Her prose is rhythmic and deliberate. For some, it will read as purple. For me, it read as lyrical and poetic even though it sometimes teetered into too flowery. I embraced it anyway.
Anyway, I’d take a guess that if you loved The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue’s wandering lyricism, you’ll vibe with this book too, and if you disliked it, then you may not. I’d say it's character-driven over plot, and meanders before the stakes (🧐) get tighter. But if you’re drawn to character-led stories and can surrender to the cadence, the rhythm of metaphor-rich prose laced with queerness, gothic tones, and a touch of light horror, you’ll be swept away.
For me this was ferociously alive, even when dripping in death.
View my review and follow me on GoodReads here. I chat about books a lot.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab FAQs.
SPOILER ALERT:
Some answers may spoil the book if you haven’t read it already. Proceed with caution.
Is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil a standalone?
Yes, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a standalone gothic fantasy with light horror elements.
What are the content and trigger warnings?
Blood
Blood drinking
Toxic relationships
Violence
Death
Death of parent
Injury and injury details
Murder
Gore
Alcohol use
Grief
Suicide
Sexual harassment
Misogyny
Sexism
Sexual content
Child death
Fire injury/fire
Homophobia/Lesbophobia
Misogyny
Sexism
Domestic abuse
Panic attacks
Gaslighting
Physical abuse
Toxic friendship
Emotional abuse
What is the age rating for Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil?
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is classified as adult, so ages 18+, due to adult themes. Please also see the trigger and content warnings listed above.
What is the Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil spice level?
Is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil spicy? Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil has sexual content and mild spicy sapphic scenes, but it’s not explicitly or gratuitously described. Schwab doesn’t write sex as titillation. She writes it as connection or consumption. It’s intimate in the way hunger can be.
Spice level: 🌶
1/5, mild spice, with much of it being poetic and metaphorically described without being explicit.
What are the Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil spicy chapters?
Capsicum means mild, chilli means a little more detailed.
Alice: Chapter 2 🫑
Sabine: Chapter 26 🌶
Charlotte: Chapter 55 🌶
Charlotte: Chapter 69 🫑
