Book Review: My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen

This post contains affiliate links, which means that we’ll earn
a small commission if you make a purchase through these links.

“I suppose I was, and continue to be, a hungry thing.”

📚

Twenty-one-year-old Roos Beckman exists under trying circumstances. Starved, used, abused, and positioned as the centerpiece of tawdry séances orchestrated by her heartless “Mama,” she’s trapped by circumstance, pigeonholed as town pariah, and suffers from physical and mental illness and deep-seated shame, fear, secrets, and self-loathing. She’s a potentially unreliable narrator whose flesh and psyche are damaged, and whose only friend and protector is an ancient, corpse-like entity who periodically possesses her.

Enter wealthy widow Agnes Knoop, who, after attending a séance, invites Roos to live with her at Rozentuin, the decaying manor she inherited upon her husband’s passing. They experience instant kinship and intense attraction, but when things turn deadly and Roos appears culpable, she claims innocence and blames a spirit. As she attempts to prove her sanity, Roos’s psychologist, Dr. Montague, must determine if she’s fit to stand trial, and whether the spirits she speaks of are real or illusory.

Set in the Netherlands, My Darling Dreadful Thing is a sinister, grisly, beautiful, harrowing, and intensely atmospheric novel that immediately enthralls and captivates. Its unique narrative alternates between “Case Episodes,” backstory, and the story’s present day, gradually unveiling gruesome truths and realities. Spirits are defined by macabre and creative facets, with female rage taking center stage and roaring to life through suffering, injustice, victimization, and a passionate, sapphic love story streaked with blood, body horror, sacrifice, and scars both literal and figurative.

Trauma and hardship haunt and menace, while mystery and doubt simmer beneath the entire storyline. Are Roos’s beliefs and assertions legitimate, or are they coping mechanisms, products of an unsound mind? The Knoop family estate is ambiance at its finest, a damp, dirty, neglected, eerie, moldering place riddled with rot, perversion, death, madness, and darkness, providing a pristine backdrop for the novel’s exploration of numerous themes and elements, including: abuse, exploitation, psychosis, and manipulation; malevolence, fury, autonomy, and visibility; hunger, insanity, stigma, and degradation; envy, longing, hope, and empathy; entitlement, value, worth, and justice; and fantasy, dignity, culpability, and freedom.

It’s a sumptuous, spectral, decadent, horrific, ghoulish, haunting, and utterly magnificent slice of 5-star gothic perfection — a new favorite that this reader absolutely savored from beginning to end.

🖤Amanda

Disclaimer

Many books featured on this blog were purchased by us; however, we do accept publisher-, author-, and other source-provided copies (both advanced reader copies (ARCs) and finished copies) from publishers, authors, and other sources we deem to be a good fit for our reading preferences and blog. Posts and reviews that feature such copies are disclosed. For more information, refer to the Disclaimer & Disclosures section.

Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, which means that when you click one of those links and make a purchase, we earn a small commission paid by the retailers, at no additional cost to you. These links will take you to books and other products that we like, trust, and believe will be beneficial to our readers. Affiliate programs use cookies to track visits in order to assign sale-related commissions; funds earned keep the Site up and running and allow us to continue to share reviews and other content. Thank you for your support!