A review by nightmarebees
My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen

medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

this was deliciously unsettling and exactly what i needed from my gothic summer. a lot of books these days are trying to use “gothic” as a buzzword for dark or eerie aesthetics, but this one truly understands the genre. it’s about being uncomfortable and aroused at the same time, it’s about the rot beneath the polished floors, about the secrets so long buried that the lengths you’ll go to to KEEP it secret become worse than the sin itself. 

i love a horror story that begins with clear foreshadowing that something Very Bad is going to happen, and van veen delivered here. the patient interviews dotted throughout roos’s main story slowly build tension as we spend our days in the steadily decaying manor. this is a slow burn with an excellent payoff, though the last 20% or so got a bit “real world” for me versus the ghostly atmosphere of the rest of the book, i still enjoyed the conclusion.

and oh BOY the tragic sapphics! haunting of bly manor girls, have i got a rec for you. i was also pleasantly surprised not only to have a nonwhite mixed love interest in agnes, but to find that her role as an indo woman in dutch high society was handled with care by the narration. roos tries to understand, but agnes is very clear that there are some things that will remain unique to her experience as a woman of color, and that is respected.

this was just excellent all around. johanna van veen may have just cemented herself as one of my auto-buy authors.
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