“Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth”
1532 Spain: Maria wants more out of life than to be stuck in her small village, and the combination of her great beauty and wily mind may be the ticket to get her out of there. When all it does is throw her into a man’s world of men’s games played by men’s rules, she longs for yet another escape. When a mysterious stranger from her past offers her a way out, Maria vows to take it with no regrets.
1827 London: Charlotte is sent to her Aunt’s house for her first Season. Only it’s not the prize some would expect; it’s a punishment for an act of intimacy that can never be accepted in her world. Feeling the walls of societal pressures closing in, Charlotte is eager to jump at the chance at freedom offered her by a beautiful widow. But is the price one that she won’t find too high to pay?
2019 Boston: Alice needs to escape Scotland, and her memories of her sister Catty. Boston is supposed to be the place where she’s able to start a new chapter, and maybe become a new person. But when a fateful one night stand after a party turns her into a new Alice she didn’t expect, Alice wants answers. And revenge. Mostly revenge, with a small helping of answers.
I went into reading this book because the concept sounded interesting; lesbian vampires and their trials and tribulations throughout the years. I was a bit wary because I absolutely loathed The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue; I consider that book to be firmly on the list of books that I regret reading because I could have spent the time reading a far better book. But I figured I’d try Bury Our Bones, because I had hopes that maybe Addie LaRue was just a bad book (and not a sign of the author’s writing caliber), or at least I could think of Bury Our Bones like I’ve thought of a few fanfics over the years; great concept, it’s just a shame it got a shitty writer. In the end, I’ll say that Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is an okay book, but I won’t go any warmer than that. Despite this almost apathy, I still picked up an autographed copy, but that was mostly because those were the editions my local bookstore had out and I was too lazy to find another copy.
I am curious how Alice would change as the years went by, because Maria (sorry, Sabine) and Charlotte just got more entrenched in their original personalities. Maria started out selfish, greedy, grasping, and destructive, like a petulant child, and that just cemented the longer she existed. Charlotte, meanwhile, always wanted the world to take responsibility for her problems, because she was sure as can be not going to take any responsibility for herself. What she does (or plans to do) at the end of the book to Alice is a prime example, as is condensing women down to one line bios in the back of a book (and The Secret History at that; realizing that apparently Schwab thinks that’s a good book almost made me quit reading.) Or her need to not be alone, never mind what happens to the women once she’s left.
(Me towards Lottie by the end of the book)
Maria/Sabine and Charlotte are both really unreliable narrators, which Maria wouldn’t care about, and the sad fact is that in my opinion, Charlotte wouldn’t be able to see. I wanted more of Antonia and Jack, and maybe Ezra as well (though his inability to see the cracks in Charlotte make him a little on the fence), because after, or possibly more than, Alice they were the best characters. I did have some questions still at the end of the book: how will this affect Alice going to University? Seeing as they’ve basically taken Catty’s personality and split it between them (all the selfishness and the damage), why did Alice do what she did with Sabine and Lottie, and why didn’t she just get them into a throuple? She’d get her sister’s personality with the joy of sex. And yes I know, Catty was a tragic and hurt child, and she had a reason for her trauma and her behavior, but in the end, I just think she was the first of the Unholy Trifecta of women in Alice’s life to think only of herself and not care a whit for the damage her actions cause to other people. If I was Alice, I might go to therapy to try and come to terms that the source of a lot of my anger that was now coming to the surface can be traced back to Catty, even if I wouldn’t want to acknowledge it. I also wonder what, if any, trophy Alice might start collecting: Maria/Sabine had her necklaces, Lottie had her lines in a book; maybe Alice will just be a modern woman and decide she just doesn’t have time for that crap. I also thought we were leading somewhere with Alice’s roommate’s collection of silver jewelry, but that went absolutely nowhere.
I do wish the song that Catty and Alice sing together was real though; it reads like it would be one heck of a rock folk song.