I know this novella was hit or miss for a lot of people, but for me it was a hit! I've since read and loved Khaw's follow-up novella as well, so I'm just assuming I'm the right kind of reader for their work. Anyway, this was creepy (and slightly terrifying) in all the best ways, and I would absolutely recommend it if you're looking for a quick, spooky read!

Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for granting me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I was disappointed with the ending. I was also disappointed by the basic nature of the characters and their relationships to one another. This almost read like a movie script instead of a novella and I think it would've been a better movie. There was some genuine creepiness to it and I appreciated that it represented different cultures than America, with both Japanese and Malaysian focuses. Just not necessarily what I wanted or expected, but a lot of people are going to love this story. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC copy!

This was fun. Love a haunted house. Wish this was longer so we could’ve had a little more build & suspense & really linger in the house awhile. Really looking forward to reading much more of Khaw’s writing.

Wow, this book does a lot in a short time. I kept wanting/expecting things to play out a certain way, but once I let the story do what it wanted to, I enjoyed myself a lot more. I think if I reread it, I’d like it more. A unique, engaging page turner.

Talked about this book on Scarred for Life and would love to connect with Cassandra on the podcast. Fantastic story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for this free ARC.

This book was choppy at times. I wanted more and wished this was more then just a novelle. I did use this for my Horror book club.

I loved this book. One of the only books in a long time to genuinely give me nightmares. I'll be citing it as a horror favorite for a GOOD LONG WHILE, for sure!

‘Nothing But Blackened Teeth’ by Cassandra Khaw is a horror novella that is part haunted house, part Japanese ghost story.

A group of distant friends (they were all once closer, but things change) decide to hold a wedding in a creepy venue, a haunted moldering Japanese mansion. The five people all have different motives for being there, but there is a presence they didn’t count on, and once she shows up, all bets are off on who will live and who will die.

This book had a great atmospheric vibe to it. The story builds slowly, like a roller coaster climbing the first hill. Once the story starts with the spooky stuff and the yokai, it is relentless and a bit unpredictable.

When a group of horror-obsessed friends arrive at a remote haunted Japanese mansion for a creepy wedding, they're *hoping* something supernatural and scary happens. After all, they love having the wits scared out of them. But no matter how much they say they expect it, they certainly can't handle it when the ghost of a buried-alive bride-to-be manifests and begins wreaking havoc. This is a short and scary book, full of horrific Japanese supernatural beings and division among friends. It's great, and fully worthy of that creeptastic cover.

Musings:

This is a horror novel that suffers from using the title in the story itself way too much. While it is an intriguing line and it does make an interesting title, I felt like it cheapened the story a bit to where I read it and felt like it was just ok.

There’s different kinds of horror for different seasons and this felt like turning on the tv to watch a horror movie hoping it’ll get to my bones and instead it felt like the wind barely tickling my skin. This novella is not very scary. It feels like it wants to be with the bones and yokai trapped within the house, but it felt like a scenario they should’ve been able to get out of way sooner and it suffers from protagonists that make you yell at the screen to just turn around and go home, but even knowing the risks they go straight on ahead anyway.

The characters were all flawed but, there was not enough time spent with them for me to really care about their fates at all. They all seemed to want to lie to each other about one thing or another and it created a situation where when they decide to not leave each other at the end I didn’t really understand why? The only thing I could come up with is a basic care for human life, but with the way these characters act they don’t really seem to value that in actuality all that much. They also really don’t care for each other at all.

I enjoyed moments of this story enough to recommend it to people like me who read and watch all kinds of horror because that’s what feels fun regardless if it ends up being great or not. It’s fun to talk about either way. I’d even buy a physical copy just for the cover alone. In the end though, if your looking for really bone chilling horror then this novella is a skip.

This a pretentious horror novella that was full of characters who couldn’t stand each other. Why are they friends? Why should I be nervous for them when they clearly don’t care about each other or themselves? Why is so much backstory hinted at but never explained? There was potential here for an interesting story, but unfortunately it never quite gained its footing before it plummeted into ridiculousness.

I've tried coming back to this one multiple times, and I finally finished it, but it wasn't the most enjoyable experience for me. I felt like there was too much exposition describing everything to me, without letting me fill some things in to help capture that eerie feeling that I love about horror titles. It's a quick read and a unique story, but it just left me dragging and took me forever to finish.

i wanted so badly to like this one, but the whole thing fell so flat. it was such a short read but it just seemed to drag on and on, mostly because it did a lot of telling instead of showing. i wanted so much to get more lore about the manor but instead we just got all of this information about characters that i really didn't care too much about. additionally, the characters swore FAR too much. even if it's colloquial and it's how people talk in the real world, it didn't translate well to the page at all and just made them come across as more one-dimensional than they already were.

This was SUCH a compelling and creepy little book. It genuinely left my skin crawling and itchy and all around uncomfortable -- all the marks of a great horror story! A really shining example of an ARC that had me racing to the bookstore to pick up a physical copy. I can't wait to reread this later on and pass on to friends!

Nothing But Blackened Teeth, a novella by Cassandra Khaw, is a chilling and atmospheric horror story that will leave readers with goosebumps. The setting is a decaying Japanese Heian-era mansion, which is described in visceral detail, and adds a haunting backdrop to the tale. Khaw's prose is sparse, yet evocative, making for a chilling and engrossing reading experience.

The characters are a motley crew of old friends with long-standing grudges and unresolved issues. Khaw masterfully captures the tension between them, which adds to the sense of unease permeating the story. As things start to go awry, the characters' personalities begin to unravel, and Khaw unveils their dark sides with gruesome delight.

The horror in Nothing But Blackened Teeth is not just in the acts of violence that occur, but also in the psychological terror that the characters experience. Khaw presents a bleak view of human nature that is both thought-provoking and terrifying. The ending is deeply unsettling, leaving readers with a feeling of unease long after they've finished reading. Overall, Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a haunting and chilling horror tale that is not to be missed.

*******Many thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Tor/Forge for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I enjoyed Nothing But Blackened Teeth immensely, A fun romp through a dark mansion, great imagry, solid characters, and good dialog.

A novella that feels like a short story, which is to say, it doesn’t have a ton of plot or character development. But it’s fun if you want something dark, lush, atmospheric, Halloweeny. The crumbling abandoned Japanese mansion overgrown with greenery and ghosts is a great setting, and I’d love to spend more time there, especially in a story that’s more fleshed out.

The prose style was hit-or-miss for me: I like lush prose, but sometimes it felt overdone or clumsy here. There’s a fair amount of gore and other gross body stuff described in poetic detail, which reminds me a bit of K-Ming Chang’s writing, though Chang does it better.

This book was...something. Maybe it was the point for the friends to not really seem like friends, but everything seemed so badly paced. Not even to mention the overuse of big words like every other sentence. It just felt like some more edition could've happened maybe to create a better, more believable story for the characters. The few parts that actually felt like horror were barely scary. The cover art was amazing though.

Super creepy read. Dark and ominous. Highly recommend!

An old castle set for a wedding and far more than what anyone would look forward to when attending one.

Khaw has packed a whole lot of scary into one novella. This is dark, gruesome, and atmospheric, with characters that aren't all likable in a setting that is creepy as all heck.