Cassandra Khaw

Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists. A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company. It’s the perfect wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends. But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart. And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth

Taiha Morton

Media's all about the gospel of the lone wolf, but the truth is we're all just sheep.

Florence

I thought about corpses. I thought about how many girls were buried beneath us, foreheads together, bodies fused in a cat's cradle of curled legs and clutching arms. 

and smelled instead like such old buildings do: green and damp and dark and hungry, hollow as a stomach that' d forgotten what it was like to eat.

Have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake? The shock of an old memory is kind of like that; every neuron singing a bright hosanna: 

here we are. You forgot about us, but we didn’t forget about you.

Skin is an organ. No one needed to die. They couldve just removed some skin

Amanda Autumn Berrey

One last act of mercy for the man we’d known since we were all sixteen, or have his death matter.

Cat, this is literally the part where the supporting cast dies horribly. You’re bisexual. I’m the comic relief. It’s going to be one of us.”“But—”“Phillip’s white. He’ll be fine. Faiz’s the hero so he won’t die in the first fucking act. And Talia’s, well, maybe Talia’s thoroughly fucked. But I don’t care about her.”

Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists. A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company. It’s the perfect venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends, brought back together to celebrate a wedding. A night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are tested. But the house has secrets too. Lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart. And she gets lonely down there in the dirt. Effortlessly taking the classic haunted house story and turning it on its head, Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a sharp and devastating exploration of grief, the parasitic nature of relationships, and the consequences of our actions. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Valerie

Josephine 

The best thing about this book was the cover. When you’re reading a horror novel, one of the main pulls is the immersive experience. Otherwise, you don’t get that skin-prickling, shivers-down-your-spine eerie feeling. My smallest gripe with this book is that it just name drops Japanese monsters / supernatural beings without physical descriptions. So then, I was tasked with stopping, googling wtf they were, and then resuming. Don’t love that. Mind you, only one of the characters was partly Japanese, so it’s not even like this was primarily for a Japanese audience who already knew the lore. Additionally, the characters were insufferable. They’re supposed to be a close friend group, but all of them seem to hate each other. Fun fact: I hated all of them more. Finally, it felt like it was written by AI. There was very unnecessary description, synonyms, and purple prose. It took me out of the story and felt like the author was trying too hard. This only took me an hour to read, but took a year off my life. I want compensation. 

Nik ✨

The best thing about this book was the cover. When you’re reading a horror novel, one of the main pulls is the immersive experience. Otherwise, you don’t get that skin-prickling, shivers-down-your-spine eerie feeling. My smallest gripe with this book is that it just name drops Japanese monsters / supernatural beings without physical descriptions. So then, I was tasked with stopping, googling wtf they were, and then resuming. Don’t love that. Mind you, only one of the characters was partly Japanese, so it’s not even like this was primarily for a Japanese audience who already knew the lore. Additionally, the characters were insufferable. They’re supposed to be a close friend group, but all of them seem to hate each other. Fun fact: I hated all of them more. Finally, it felt like it was written by AI. There was very unnecessary description, synonyms, and purple prose. It took me out of the story and felt like the author was trying too hard. This only took me an hour to read, but took a year off my life. I want compensation. 



Kris Felger

look, i wanted to like this, really I did. I’d like to say things happened in this but i cant, a group of friends go to a scary place then someone dies. how fun! except it was incredibly predictable. The “fuck” count was insane and probably the only realistic part of the book though

Ryan Mateyk

Just a bunch of immature kids fighting over stupid stuff. All the characters were boring, I can't even remember anyone's name as I write this...

Ashley Stock

4.5 / 5 - some of the dialogue makes this closer to a 4 star, but honestly - the prose and writing is absolutely gorgeous and haunting and I had to stop reading a few times because it was so shocking / horrible in the best way.

Yes good, love this book, wonderful.

“Even if it was a house with rotting bones and a heart made out of a dead girl's ghost, I'd give it everything it wanted just for scraps. Some unabridged attention, some love.
Even if it was from a corpse with blackened teeth.”
--------------------
What do you get when you put a group of dumb people hungry for a ghost story in a dilapidated mansion very much haunted by a dead almost-bride?
Not good things, obviously. We have all seen the movies. 

This story has all the classic horror elements: stories of bodies buried in the walls. Dolls. Paintings that seem to follow your every move. Too much drinking that lowers inhibitions and logical thinking skills.
It also has a great ambiance, and a sense of building tension about to spiral out of control.

Unfortunately, what it does not have are interesting characters or any sense of logic. Firstly, I did not connect with the narration style or any of the characters. It was all paper thin, two-dimensional, and messy for the sake of being messy. There was some interesting potential for the dynamics between the characters, yet none of it was explored. Instead, what we get is a sense of listening in on a group of friends arguing, where you don't know anyone, any history, it makes no sense, the conversation does not involve you. Except, when it’s a book, this becomes a bit of a problem.

Although the book was studded with fascinating Japanese mythology and folklore, it just wasn’t enough for me to enjoy the story.

10/10 for the amazing cover. Not so much for the rest.

Iman Kamil

I hated every single character in the book like how is that even possible?

Geoffrey Froggatt

It’s hard to write a novella with a fully fleshed out story and cast of characters. None of the characters in this novella are interesting and they all felt one note. I couldn’t picture their faces. I wasn’t expecting deep and complex characters from a short novella, but I was expecting more than this. I loved the premise. I loved the setting of an abandoned Heian-era mansion in rural Japan. I loved the use of Japanese folklore. The story has plenty of classic horror tropes but the setting and use of Japanese folklore gives the story a fresh feel. The characters also had some decent self-aware horror movie character moments. There isn’t much to say other than I feel like this could have been better fleshed out had it been fully expanded into a novel. I would have loved to have read this story if it had been a full length novel with a tone and story similar to The Grudge.

jess larry

i don't like the writing style, like really don't. it sounds really superficial & boring. and i hate books with metaphores in EVERY sentences please it just gets really tedious to read

dnfed at 28%

I liked this so much I read it twice. What a fun, spooky tale filled with drama and lore and creepy af imagery. 

erin alise 

This book moved so fast it doesn't give you time to think about what's happening. It isn't until the end that you stare up at a wall and wonder wtf you just read. Definitely recommend if you're looking for a short, gory story to rattle you a bit.

Kimberly Masse

Lara Engle

This was super creepy and odd. Sometimes it was too slow and esoteric, and sometimes I wasn't sure if things were really happening or not (but that might have been intentional). A short but effective meta haunted house tale.

Alexis Donahue

Ehhh— a read out of my comfort zone. Not scary and the plot line was kind of corny. Everything was well wrapped up at the end though.

Kei demand 

Gory and creepy without much suspense. This felt like entertaining horror rather than scary horror. Don’t be dissuaded if that’s your thing, just one I probably won’t recommend to anyone 🤷🏻‍♀️

Lacy W

Find this review and others like it at https://aravenclawlibraryx.wordpress.com

tw: burying alive, mentions of hospitalizations, stabbing, body desecration, death, bullying

I’m going to be in the minority here but I did not like this book as much as everyone else. I still gave it three stars and I’ll explain why in a little bit but I just didn’t care for this book. I’ve seen this book all over Goodreads and Twitter, singing this book’s praises but I just couldn’t get into it. There were some problems with it that I just couldn’t overlook.

I can certainly see why people love this book. The way it’s written is beautiful and haunting. I got a lot of chills. It reminded me of watching a haunted house movie. Cat, as the MC, is very much a haunted and troubled girl. I felt for her but I didn’t bond with her the way I wanted too. We never got an explanation about what happened to her to make her so troubled. I didn’t understand why her friends acted like they weren’t even her friends. They were pretty dismissive of her most of the time. 

The major problem that I had with this book was that it was just too short. I couldn’t bond with any of the characters because we were just immediately thrown into the story. It felt more like I was reading the middle of the book as opposed to the start of a book. Things happened so rapidly that I didn’t have time to be properly spooked and if I’m being honest, I was kind of confused about what was happening. I couldn’t even appreciate the scene of the story because I wasn’t given enough information. I know it takes place in Japan but that’s it. Is the setting like a haunted mansion? I have no idea.

Also, I am going to point out one thing that absolutely drove me bonkers. Cat had to mention in almost every paragraph how handsome Phillip was. Okay, I get it. You got a small crush or something. But it got so old after a while. Literally every single paragraph had something about how handsome Phillip was and how he was such a lady’s man. This is supposed to be a spooky story and it certainly wasn’t spooky if I’m constantly hearing about handsome Phillip. 

Overall, while I can respect that others loved this book, it just wasn’t for me. I am more for a story that is more fleshed out. I do like some short stories but as long as I have some sort of context to them. I just didn’t get that with this book unfortunately. I truly wanted to like it. But I am so glad that a lot of other people seemed to like it.

Leisha Chadwick

honestly, did not enjoy this book at all!😩 i read for horror but did not get any aspect of the sort.. every line seemed poetic & it completely threw me off. if the cover hadn’t of been so pretty then it would of been a 1 star! also, none of the characters were likeable in the slightest & i hated talia 🫠

Ryan LaFerney

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is the story of a group of five “friends” who travel to Japan, as two of them are getting married. Faiz and Nadia are set on having a borderline sacrilegious wedding ceremony an abandoned Heian-era mansion that turns out to be haunted. However, little does the party know that this is a house that yearns for blood. You see, the "friends "are a complicated group who are constantly bickering and fighting, and the house, and the yokai who haunt it don't have time for their crap. The mansion is known for being built on the bones of a bride who took a maiden sacrifice with her for many years. So basically these Ohaguro-Bettari are ready for another sacrifice and the new bride to be will do just nicely.

This was a good ghost story full of Japanese folklore. It was quite atmospheric too. Khaw's writing can be a little dense at times but is always eloquent. There were many lines that I drooled over and wondered "wow, that was such a fascinating way to write that sentence." However, at times I found Khaw's prose to be a tad bit overindulgent and this distracted me from the plot of the story. 

This being said, this novella is still worth reading, especially if you're a fan of ghost stories, haunted houses, and Japanese folklore. 

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for providing me with the eARC.

Also, as many have mentioned, that Ohaguro-Bettari cover is sooooo creepy! Love it!

#NothingButBlackenedTeeth #NetGalley

Interesting story. I feel like if it was a longer book it would have been betters since it was only 124 pages I feel like a lot was rushed with the storyline. Visual language was pretty great! 

Katelin Hippe

The only thing I will say I didn’t like is the use of language without explanation. Different characters or things said in Japanese is not given an explanation and the reader is assumed to know the references. 

Jessi

kris

Janice Hopper

This book was hyped pretty hard earlier this year, and that almost always leads to disappointment for me. I should never read overly-hyped things until WAY after the hype period has passed. But that's a personal quirk, not a recommendation for anyone else.

This is basically a ghost story. I found the writing a bit over-wrought (see above re: hype) so I went through it fairly quickly. I think it's fairly effective as a ghost story/horror story though. There's a lot going on with the main characters that isn't really explained, so you have to make a lot of inferences about their past relationships that led up to this point. I didn't like the characters, which didn't help my appreciation. But that's probably ok for horror.

3.5 stars, rounded up. It was a quick read. And the cover... pretty damn creepy.

The story was good but the writing was incredible. She writes so lyrically and it just flows so well. It’s a short book but the beauty of her writing makes it fly by even faster. 

Emily Salazar

A dizzying slam of a horror novel. Wordy sentences that sound like slam poetry —  jarring at first, but in the end it forms a rhythm of madness that fits the haunting.

I’m glad I gave this novella a chance; I suspect the audiobook is easier to swallow, and satisfying in a different way.

I could see the scenes play out like a fast-paced horror movie, I would totally watch an adaption of this. The characters are superficial and messy, and get into the fighting SO quickly, you wonder if it’s the mansion’s influence.

Cat and Lin seemed to have the most depth, and played the interesting role of almost-outsiders to the horror unfolding. (They were the best part of the story, in my opinion.)

In the end, it’s almost a warning about the proximity of friendships and how people drift apart.

The vibes made me very much want to watch Hausu.

Caroline Clutterbuck Kapulkin

A dizzying slam of a horror novel. Wordy sentences that sound like slam poetry —  jarring at first, but in the end it forms a rhythm of madness that fits the haunting.

I’m glad I gave this novella a chance; I suspect the audiobook is easier to swallow, and satisfying in a different way.

I could see the scenes play out like a fast-paced horror movie, I would totally watch an adaption of this. The characters are superficial and messy, and get into the fighting SO quickly, you wonder if it’s the mansion’s influence.

Cat and Lin seemed to have the most depth, and played the interesting role of almost-outsiders to the horror unfolding. (They were the best part of the story, in my opinion.)

In the end, it’s almost a warning about the proximity of friendships and how people drift apart.

The vibes made me very much want to watch Hausu.

Quick spooky read with great scene-setting descriptions & some good scares. I didn't relate to, empathize with or care about the characters very much. But I was into the bride ghost!

Nothing But Blackened Teeth

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