Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen ~ a Review

by MK French

In 1887 Netherlands, Lucy's twin sister Sarah refuses to eat, mumbles, and is obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband's estate. It's being called temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain, and Lucy fears that she'll be sent to a lunatic asylum. With secrets of her own, Lucy tries to unravel what happened to Sarah even as she changes. Is Sarah possessed or truly mad?

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

March 2025; Poisoned Pen Press; 978-1728281575
audio, ebook, print (368 pages); horror

Gothic horror invokes a suffocating sense of place, secrets, longing, and often a bloody monster of some kind. Here we have the specter of mental illness and the lack of understanding of it in that time period. Men had power and prestige, and could do whatever they wanted to wives "in their best interest." As a result, asylums were feared places for women, where abuses could run unchecked.

It's in this world that we have Lucy summoned to help her ill sister, who fixated on the bog body found on the family property. Sarah had once been the more outspoken of the two but became a shell of herself. We find out more about the body, the relationship between the twins, the husband, the cousin by marriage, and the childhood friend who is their doctor. It's such a tight-knit cast of characters that secrets are hard to keep, yet they still manage it. The ultimate secret about Sarah is a bit of a surprise and not quite what we think it is. We get the full story about halfway through, and then it's a question of survival, identity, and loyalty. The ending is surprising yet not, and it kept me enthralled until the last page.

Buy Blood on Her Tongue at Amazon

Born and raised in New York City, M.K. French started writing stories when very young, dreaming of different worlds and places to visit. She always had an interest in folklore, fairy tales, and the macabre, which has definitely influenced her work. She currently lives in the Midwest with her husband, three young children, and a golden retriever.

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