I want to get one very important spoiler out of the way right now: there is a dog on the cover of this book. There is a dog in the book. The dog does not die. The dog is occasionally in peril, and injured, and I did a lot of anxious digital page-turning worrying she was going to be killed, but the dog survives.
The same can not be said for many of the humans.
Blood on Her Tongue is a Gothic horror novel from Dutch author Johanna van Veen. This is the second book I’ve read by van Veen and I’m really enjoying her style, which is just at the edge of how gory I can handle my horror. I’m also enjoying that her books are set in The Netherlands, as opposed to the usual UK or US settings of a lot of Gothics.
The setting may be different, but many of the elements of a traditional Gothic are here. A woman coming to an isolated house; secrets; a man who probably can’t be trusted; a more upstanding man who clearly cares for her; and of course, scary and potentially supernatural happenings.
Lucy has come to her twin sister Sarah’s home after receiving a series of increasingly alarming messages. She finds her sister unwell and obsessed with a recently unearthed bog body. She’s also hungry, but refuses food and water. Is this mental illness, which runs in her family, or is something more eerie amiss?
I read a medium amount of horror — it’s not my preferred genre but I’ll dip in, especially for a queer Gothic (or a T. Kingfisher book). I have just enough familiarity with the genre and with both classic tropes and recent trends that I thought I knew where this book was going, but it did manage to surprise me, which made it just that much more enjoyable. I did guess some of the plot twists, but not the primary mechanism of Sarah’s illness.
Lucy is not, as far as I could tell, queer, but this is still a queer book. Queer relationships play important roles in the story. It is also a very feminist book, with the most central relationships being between women. The story is concerned with the limitations presented on women in the 19th century. We see most of the options for a woman of the time:
- Sarah has chosen the most common and respectable path, marrying a man who has the means to support her, and trying to start a family.
- Lucy serves as a paid, live-in companion for a widow.
- The widow herself shows how even a woman of means might have to pay for company after her husband passes and society isn’t quite sure what to do with her.
- A poor relation of Sarah’s husband lives with them, subsisting on their charity and existing in a position somewhere between a paid companion and a maid.
- And of course, Sarah’s lady’s maid shows the lot of the working woman, fed up with the behavior of her so-called betters.
- Lucy and Sarah’s late aunt tried to forge a different path, living with the family while pursuing a life of curiosity and science, ahead of her time and ultimately punished for it.
It’s hard to argue that any of the women on the page chose the life they’re living; they were railroaded into it by societal expectations and the class they were born into.
There is, unfortunately, no real class solidarity in this book. There is a real clear distinction between the upper-class women and the maid, and honestly, the widow gets a pretty short shrift, too. But our three youngish women end up realizing that men ain’t shit and they’re going to have to find a solution to Sarah’s situation.
I found this book really well-paced and tore through it pretty quickly. There’s something about a good Gothic that keeps you hooked, wondering what eerie or terrible thing will happen next. van Veen is really good at keeping the tension going, allowing enough time for the atmosphere to really breath but compelling you to keep reading without feeling rushed.
If you enjoy Gothic horror, I definitely recommend this. Just make sure to read the handy list of TWs/CWs below!
CWs and TWs: Parental death, infant death, sibling death, mental illness, involuntary institutionalization, sexism, sexual content, violence/gore, cannibalism, animal abuse/dog in peril. I especially want to highlight that there’s a significant amount of eyeball stuff, which was almost too much for me to handle.
Source and Format: I borrowed the ebook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Reading Challenge Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): Something Wicked. I don’t want to give away too much, but this book asks some interesting questions about how you’d feel if your beloved sibling did or became something wicked.
SAL/SPL/KCLS: Flowers on the Cover/in Title. Floral covers seem to be a big trend right now, but oddly, the only two floral books I’ve read so far this summer were horror novels! I really like the moody red flowers of this cover, which suggest the titular blood.
Reading Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 10 of 25, no bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 15 of 25, 1 bingo.
Book Riot: 12 of 25.
Physical TBR: 6 of 12.
World of Whimm: 17 of 24, 2 bingos.
SAL/SPL/KCLS: 8 of 23, no bingos.