Johanna van Veen’s horror debut, My Darling Dreadful Thing, was a Goodreads favorite when it was first published in 2024. Now, the writer has a new gothic story on the way.
PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at the author’s sophomore novel Blood on Her Tongue, which will be published later this month from Poisoned Pen Press.
Set in the Netherlands in the 1880s, Blood on Her Tongue follows twin sisters Lucy and Sarah. After Sarah falls ill, she becomes concerningly interested in a corpse that’s been found on her husband’s land — an obsession that leads her to be diagnosed with temporary insanity.
But when Sarah’s condition grows stranger, and she becomes increasingly angry and ravenous, Lucy must must discover the true meaning behind her sister’s behavior in this chilling novel compared to Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Publisher’s Weekly.
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Intrigued? Read below for an exclusive excerpt from Blood on Her Tongue.
TELEGRAM FROM MR. MICHAEL
SCHATTELEYN TO MISS LUCY GOEDHART
RECEIVED AT
VEENPOORT 11:06 28/09/1887
SARAH DEADLY SICK. PLEASE COME
IMMEDIATELY. NO NEED TO SEND
WORD AHEAD. WILL ENSURE SOMEONE
THERE TO MEET YOU AT STATION NO
MATTER THE TIME. JUST HURRY. I
FEAR FOR HER LIFE.
MICHAEL
But Sarah did not die that day, nor the one after. Arthur gave her some of his blood the same night Michael had; the next day, Lucy donated some of hers, and the day after that, Katje did the same. The blood seemed to do her good. It brought a little color back into her face, which made it look heartier.
Less like the face of one dead or dying, and more like the face I’ve known since the womb, Lucy wrote in her diary. She balanced the book in her lap, wrote with her right hand, and held her sister’s with the left.
She still sleeps most of the time, but Arthur tells me that this is only to be expected with one who is as ill as she is. “It’s not a bad sign, Lucy,” he told me just now. “Her body is fighting the infection and needs all its energy to do it, energy she would otherwise use in being awake. She might yet pull through.”
Dear Arthur! I’ve no doubt he would lie to me if he thought it would spare my feelings. That man lives to be kind. But I don’t think he’d think it a kindness to deceive me about the severity of Sarah’s condition, and if all hope were lost, surely he would not have continued with the transfusions, dangerous as they are?
Oh, but the mind can be such a dark place to be caught up in. If only I could unburden myself to someone other than these pages! But that must never happen again; well I know it. And yet, I can’t help if I sometimes desire for Michael to
“You’ll ruin your eyesight,” a weak voice said.
Lucy sprang up. Her diary fell to the floor, splaying open, bending some of the creamy pages, and her pen rolled underneath the bed, but she didn’t care. “You’re awake,” she said stupidly, pressing her palm against her sister’s brow. It was still warm but no longer searing hot. A good sign. With luck, the fever would soon break completely, and then the worst would be over.
“I’m thirsty,” Sarah said. She was still so weak that she could scarcely lift her own hand. Lucy helped her sit up and held a cup for her, stroking the matted hair at the back of her sister’s head. It was greasy from where it had touched the pillow but strangely brittle and dull everywhere else. There was a smell to it, animalistic. Strands of it came away, which Lucy tucked into her pocket so Sarah needn’t see. Perhaps they should have shorn her head.
Sarah drank quickly, noisily. She finished one cup, then another.
“No more for a few minutes, or you might be sick again,” Lucy said. “Is there anything else you’d like me to get? I could ring for some broth if you’re hungry. I could even toast a bit of bread for you, if you think you could hold it down.”
“Not yet.”
“How’s your head?”
“Better. It doesn’t throb so abominably anymore.”
“That’s good. You seem very lucid today. That, too, is good.”
“Lucid for Lucy,” Sarah joked.
“And the fever hasn’t burned through your terrible sense of humor either. Better and better! I shall have someone fetch Arthur. He’ll be pleased to see you’re yourself again. Michael, too, of course.” She made to move across the room to pull the bell rope, but Sarah gave a little cry and grabbed her hand.
“No!”
“What is it?”
“I…I just don’t want to see anyone but you yet—and Katje.”
“All right,” Lucy said slowly, sinking onto the edge of the bed again.
“It’s because I’m not well.”
“But, Saartje, everyone knows that. You’ve been very ill for over a week now. You had us rather worried.”
Sarah swallowed. Something clicked in her throat. “But I’ll have to put up a brave face for them, Lucy. With you and Katje, I don’t have to pretend.”
Lucy took Sarah’s hand in hers, brought it to her mouth, kissed it. “Do you want me to read to you? I could get a book from your room or one of those treatises you love so much.”
“I just want you to hold me for a while,” Sarah said, so Lucy did. Their hands slotted together as they always had. It felt wonderful to sit like that, not saying anything, just holding each other as they had done even when in the womb, sharing a placenta.
Sarah toyed with Lucy’s index finger, squeezing the joint, bending it. After a while, she asked, “Have I really been that sick?”
“Oh yes. Can’t you remember?”
Sarah shook her head, winced. “My limbs are heavy, I’m dog tired, my stomach is a sore pit the size of a walnut, and my head feels strange, so I know I must have been, but I don’t remember being sick.”
“What do you remember?”
Sarah’s brow ruffled as she racked her brain. In combination with the pallor of her skin, which spanned across her skull tight as the skin on a drum, this made her look almost ancient. “I was reading a book and making notes in the margins. I already had a headache then, absolutely splitting, so strong that I felt I’d faint. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever had before: It was sharp, like being stabbed. It was persistent and almost continuous. Does that make sense?”
Lucy thought of telling Sarah what she had written in her letter, how she’d thought the bog woman was giving her headaches and was doing things to her brain, but Lucy kept quiet; if her sister didn’t remember, perhaps that was for the best.
Sarah spread Lucy’s index and middle finger out as far as they would go, then snapped them shut. “Initially, the pain was focused in one part of my head, but it began radiating out in tendrils, as if something were digging its roots into my brain. It had also started to affect my vision, like those migraines mother suffered from, but there was no nausea. In fact, I felt ravenous, but I knew somehow that it was imperative I didn’t eat, as if a headache is something you can starve into submission. Well, I was trying to read, but the words danced on the page. I threw my pen down because I couldn’t understand what I was writing anymore, and the pain was such that something had to give, and then I woke up here and saw you scribbling away in your notebook.”
“Nothing in between?”
“Only dark dreams, disturbing but already fading. I believe I dreamed that I bit Arthur.” She laughed at that.
Lucy said nothing, just dropped a kiss on her temple. A chunk of hair had fallen, leaving only the little wisps of baby hair, delightfully soft.
Sarah still toyed with her fingers, gently twisting some of the flesh at the base of Lucy’s ring finger. The frown had crept back onto her face.
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“What are you thinking so hard about, hm?” Lucy asked, pressing her free thumb between her sister’s brows to smooth the skin there.
“I feel like I’ve forgotten something important.”
“Any leads? Anything I might do to jog that memory of yours?”
“It was from before I fell sick. I had this realization. It really was frightfully important. I remember my heart beating so fast, the blood pounded in my ears, and it hurt because all sound had started to hurt at that point.”
“Such an exciting discovery, then?”
“No, I wasn’t excited. I was frightened.” Sarah shuddered suddenly, with such force that her elbows drove painfully into Lucy’s rib cage. “Lucy,” she asked slowly, “what book was I reading when I became ill?”
Excerpt from Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna Van Veen, published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks. Copyright © 2025 by Johanna Van Veen.
Blood on Her Tongue will be published on March 25 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.
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