Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Blood On Her Tongue is a vividly violent and sapphic, good-for-her horror story with a strong appetite and ferocious bite. Johanna Van Veen has repeated her success; Blood On Her Tongue is every bit as unputdownable and shocking as her 2024 novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing.
I recently got back into reading “bog horror” thanks to Sadie Hartmann, aka Mother Horror (author of 101 Horror Books To Read Before You’re Murdered) and Van Veen has me eager for more.
In Blood On Her Tongue, it’s 1887 in The Netherlands, when Lucy receives disturbing letters from her twin sister, Sarah, who’s fascinated with a centuries-old corpse discovered in the bog on her husband’s estate. Sarah sketches the bog woman and the horrific relics of her violent death. She senses a strange, inescapable quality about the dead woman, and she is terrified.
The doctor (and family friend) places Sarah on bed rest, and the men chalk it all up to women’s inclination to hysteria and insanity. But Lucy won’t let them put Sarah in a “lunatic asylum.”
Lucy is frightened of her sister’s behavior; still, she remains at her side. With each passing day in this atmospherically rich gothic novel, there are gory accidents and unforgettable disturbances that will haunt readers and have them as desperate for the truth as Lucy. And the real matter at hand becomes less about her sister’s sanity and, instead, if the ailed being is woman or monster.
As an identical twin myself, I’ll say that Van Veen captured the twin thing: the fear and injustice of being forcibly separated, the out-of-body agony as you see your twin suffer, the phantom pain, and above all, the intense bond that can sometimes feel otherworldly or supernatural even.
But more than anything, I appreciated the way the author of Blood On Her Tongue described the sense of oneness of twins, reiterated by misunderstandings and stereotypes, that sometimes leaves one sibling feeling incomplete. Lucy struggles with feeling like a sort of imitation of her sister.
Van Veen takes readers through this shared experience between the sisters that goes off the rails in the best way. It’s undying love at its fiercest. It’s a middle finger to manipulative and evil men, complete with some of the most gruesome eye gouging scenes I’ve ever read.
My Darling Dreadful Thing was my favorite book of 2024. In Blood On Her Tongue, Van Veen has secured consideration for the best horror book of 2025.
