Rating:

“Dying for someone is easy. If you really want to help her, stay alive.”

Author: Johanna Van Veen

Sarah has always had everything. She got the man, the fancy house, the quasi-independence so unusual in the 1880s, and the freedom to say and do whatever she wants. Lucy is the loyal, lesser twin. The one always left behind. The one with the boring job of companion. The quiet, old maid.

But Sarah, the lucky twin, also got something else, something unwanted: the family penchant for madness. It overtook her once before, but the family managed to keep that little transgression hidden. This time, however, after seeing an unearthed bog body and forming an unhealthy obsession with it, Sarah’s psychosis has bloomed again, and the family needs help. Lucy arrives at the dripping, dank mansion, at the rescue as always, but her own secrets and treacheries are burning a hole in her soul.

Blood On her Tongue is a story of obsession, betrayal, vengeance, and blood sucking. It’s a story of complicated, dare I say unhinged, family dynamics torn asunder by an ancient evil bent on survival at all costs. It’s utterly addicting, both gothic and eerily modern in equal measure, and you won’t be able to decide if you should root for the sisters or run from them.

This book came up in one of my Goodreads book clubs. The theme of that month was, of course, vampires, and honestly, I wasn’t that excited. The concept has been done, and done, and done again. It’s always half erotica, half pat horror, with little originality and enough flickering candles to stock Bed, Bath, and Beyond for years. What I’m saying is: it’s overdone. But the book club must be honored. I bought Blood on Her Tongue and was prepared to give the usual “it was just ok – nothing special here” review. But by the second chapter, I was hooked.

Image by Sandra from Pixabay

The atmosphere is your old, creaking gothic house, complete with rising damp and (of course) candles. But there, the old-world nod ends. The bog body rises into frame but not like you would expect. These aren’t your usual vampires: a person you know transformed into a sexy (but ravening) fiend with a desire for blood. These vampires are more akin to aliens. More accurately, they’re akin to parasites, and they stretch the line between human monster stories and something else entirely. Yet these so-called vampires take on attributes of the host: like old, broken, admittedly toxic family relationships.

So, this evokes the ages old question: if your sister isn’t really your sister anymore, should you kill her or hang on to the simulacrum because an imitation is better than nothing? That’s where Lucy is stuck, of course, and that’s also where her own toxicity and inherent monstrousness will come into play. Because how do you hold on to someone you both hate and love? How do you hold on to someone you’ve been deceiving, and where do you draw the line on a decade’s worth of secretive backstabbing? Also – what do you do with a new species begging your help from behind the face of a withering loved one?

And that’s just for starters. As we get further into the narrative, we get some great female rage moments, a little look into the vampire’s own history and etymology, and some clueless men who think they hold the answers and the control. But there are no simple answers here, and morality is going to get complicated (and gruesome) quickly. Enter some weird feminism, a pseudo forgiveness/pseudo take the world back tale, and a heck of a lot of killing.

Everything about Blood on Her Tongue is delightfully bizarre and original. From the origin of the vampire itself to the sister’s decidedly corrupted relationship, to the ride-off-into-the-moonlight ending, this book is surprising and interesting and disgusting and ingenious and justifiably dark. Recommended on so many levels.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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