Blood on Her Tongue – review

Author: Johanna van Veen

First published: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: "I'm in your blood, and you are in mine…"

The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy's twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband's grand estate.

The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister's condition, but it's clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harbouring secrets of her own, too.

Then, the worst happens. Sarah's behaviour takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry…and hungry.

Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth – or risk losing her forever.

A haunting gothic tale for fans of all things supernatural, Blood on Her Tongue is refreshingly biting and unashamedly chilling, taking its place as a horror story for the ages.

The review: This novel by Johanna van Veen is, first and foremost, a masterclass in Gothic literature. Whether the theme was vampirism or not, the prose, describing events out by Dutch peat fields, drips with a heavy atmosphere, the novel conjuring the thick black waters of the bog. Told from the point of view of identical twin Lucy, the book contains a Byronic character in the form of Sarah’s husband Michael, with overtones of Heathcliffe in his character. It is a novel where the overtures of madness, and fear of being mislabelled an hysteric, haunt the primary female characters. It also has a vampire.

And yet, what a vampire… though it is a spoiler, I trust not too much, that the vampirism comes from a bog woman, found with brick in mouth and stakes pining her to her boggy grave. Yet, as we discover more we discover that it is not the outer body but an intelligent, sentient parasite, dependent on human blood and flesh, which eats at the host’s brain assimilating thoughts, memories and personality. From the blurb you’ll be able to tell that it is Lucy’s twin, Sarah, who becomes infected but Lucy, as close as she is to her sibling, struggles to see where the human ends and the parasite begins. Weak and starved, after enforced hibernation, we discover that the parasite can, when recovered, heal the host and prolong the physical lifetime of the body. A starved parasite can eat a whole victim, and quickly, which includes bones as well as flesh. However, it is not drawn as physically overpowered, which was a nice touch. The parasite is a separate species but there are overtones of vampiric possession.

The book does have a queer aspect, which doesn’t reveal until late in the narrative, and explores themes of betrayal and secrets within the Gothic wrapper. This was a fabulous discovery, and I really did enjoy it. 8.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK