My Darling Dreadful Thing - the sapphic gothic horror you've been begging for!
“Spirits like her are not drawn to the happy and carefree; they want salt, be it blood, or be it tears.”
Roos has had a spirit attached to her since she was a young girl. She works with her mama to hold seances until one day her mama sells her to a seemingly wealthy woman. The two women become entwined as Roos’s sanity is questioned and dead bodies keep showing up.
My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen hits shelves May 14th and is the sapphic gothic horror you’ve been begging for.
“Once inside, she anchored herself to my marrow, then stretched and stretched and stretched. It was like a flooding of the brain, dark and wet, hot like blood. I was no longer my drab little self then.”
Here’s what I loved:
The entire vibe of this book is splendid. It’s so gothic and dreamy and horrific. Set in the ‘50s but still feels slightly Victorian, you’ll find yourself easily lost within these pages running through a house of horrors with spirits biting at your ankles.
The story is told from Roos’s perspective as she tells it to a psychiatrist, and I thoroughly enjoyed the breaks in between chapters that switch to more of an interview style as the psychiatrist shares his thoughts on the story.
I really love a questionable main narrator and Roos is really a great example of this. Do we believe her entire story? Or do we believe the psychiatrist’s theories? It’s hard not to fall into Roos’s story and believe every word of it, and I love how it twists with your brain every time you return to the psychiatrist.
I thoroughly enjoyed the sort of ghost lore presented in this story and I think it adds a very unique take on your traditional victorian vibe gothic ghost story. M.R. James would absolutely be jealous.
“It’s a dangerous thing, to try and give someone everything. One day, you might find you’ve given away things you should’ve kept. Some parts of us must remain inviolate if we are to survive as a person.”
Overall, this was a fantastic read that really helped me escape reality and live within the pages of this super creepy book. The writing is delicious, the characters stay with you for a long time after finishing, and this story also has a lot to say and it says it well. I highly encourage you to preorder a copy of My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen before it hits shelves on May 14th.
