Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

Every once in awhile, you pick up a book that pulls you so far out of reality, the ding of an alarm or your dog barking is like a slap to the face. And then you look up from the page, trying to remember how it is you’re staring at words set in ink when just moments before you were in Spain or Venice or London or Boston. It’s jarring and momentarily overwhelming to not be in the story anymore. And when you find a book like this, the normal bits of your life, like work and exercise and chores creep up like annoyances because none of these things matter anymore (even if they do). It’s the story, the story, the story.

And so when that happens you just read every chance you get.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is by far one of the best books I have ever read, one of my favorites of the year, and one of the most gorgeously written stories in the world. There are not enough words in the universe to shout about how much I love this story, how much it means to me. I didn’t think V.E. Schwab could write a more emotionally heart wrenching novel after The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, but here we are. She’s done it and then some.

This story follows three women, María, Charlotte and Alice. Each of them are pushing against the path life has set them on, wanting more for themselves, wanting to make the life they want rather than the one others choose for them.

It is the 1500s in Spain, and María knows that there is only one way to freedom for her- to find a husband that is rich and powerful enough to take her away from the life she has always known. But she soon realizes she has traded one cage for another and she will stop at nothing to carve out the life she has always wanted.

Charlotte is being prepared for her first London season. The prospect of marriage is like a chain around her neck, dragging her down. She has already loved and wanted and yearned, but because relationships between women are forbidden, Charlotte knows she can never have what she wants. Until she meets someone who offers her freedom, even if it comes at great cost.

And then there is Alice. Alice who has felt true loss and grief, Alice who is riddled with anxiety and panic, Alice who wants to be new. Who wants to become a braver, stronger, better version of herself. Until she meets a girl at a party in Boston that leaves her life forever changed.

These three women are beautiful, empowering, dangerous and determined. They face choice after choice, and it is the choices they make and the ones forced upon them that will change their lives forever.

Don’t walk, run to the bookstore or library and pluck this book off the shelf. Lose yourself for a few days because just like María, Charlotte and Alice, you won’t come out the other side the same person you were before.

And now I will try to figure out how I’m ever going to emotionally recover from this.