Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the copy in exchange for an honest review!

Whew. I was so excited for this one but was... so very disappointed. It did not hit the creepy hits that I wanted it to, and the character work fell a little flat for me. I think it could've used the space of a longer work to grow a little, and I would have enjoyed it more. However, I do want to try more by Cassandra Khaw and will keep my eye on their work in the future!

I must confess, I was disappointed by this one. It was a wonderful premise--a twist on the traditional haunted house story, bringing in Japanese mythology alongside very real contemporary problems of mental illness and smaller interpersonal relationship drama, all in the context of a deeply uncomfortable wedding party. There was so much potential...and yet, the overall result fell flat. I wanted to love it. But the end result was less "horrifying experience" and more "this author had too much fun coming up with weird descriptions and getting vicarious revenge on a horrid football player."

To clarify: the descriptions weren't weird in an unsettling way; they were weird in a way that didn't make sense, adding strange metaphors that unduly obscured the meaning of the sentence, or otherwise detracted from what could have been spectacular imagery. Don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction, but the mix with horror here didn't quite work--it felt like the author was trying too hard and/or had fallen in love with a thesaurus. Now, when you got past the odd phrasing, the atmosphere of the book was spectacularly haunting, with a decrepit house, angry spirits, disturbing rituals to quiet them, and a group of ex-friends slowly losing it as yokai, alcohol, and fear escalate their situation from uncomfortable to creepy to life-threatening. The slow unravelling of the relationships alongside the characters' sanity was, at its heart, solidly done.

Similarly, there's nothing wrong with a sort of revenge fantasy (especially on a jock who, deliberately or not, was kind of a dick at times), but that approach here seemed to come at the expense of genuine character development. While the narrator had a good deal of complexity (and, indeed, was some strong depression representation that I found highly relatable--and loved that it included discussion of hospitalization), the other characters felt one-dimensional. I know that in a novella it can be difficult to develop characters thoroughly, but clearly Khaw is capable of it, given how well she developed her narrator. Some of the problems with this development may be a result of the lack of background given; while the origins of the tensions between the characters were gradually teased out over the course of the book, I spent much of my time confused as to what exactly had happened, and still left the book with questions. Again: the potential was there, but the reality fell flat.

I'm not saying this was a bad short story--the bones were good (no pun intended). But the execution did it a disservice, leaning too much into literary pretention when a bit more character development would have helped drive home what is, at its heart, a psychological horror story set in a house full of ghosts.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a short, atmospheric horror story about a group of “friends” brought together by the marriage of two members of the group. The storytelling is creepy and keeps the reader uncomfortable through this short text. The haunted house sets the environment to leave everyone scared.

All the reviews said this was going to be terrible, I knew it was going to be terrible and I read it anyway. And guess what? It really was terrible. Why do the worst books have the best covers?!

Five friends meet up in Japan so two of them can get married in a haunted house. A house where a shunned bride is supposedly buried in the walls. Every single person in this book is awful and there is no way they would actually have come together in real life because they all obviously hate each other. The group dynamics are meant to be incestuous but are honestly just weird and awkward. Japanese phrases are used constantly but without explanation. Perhaps if Khaw had spent a little more time on background and filling out the Japanese culture, the story would have seemed creepier. Instead it felt like a middle school writing assignment. Good thing this was a short novella, otherwise there is no way I would have finished it. The title and cover art are the definite stars here.

What is your favorite ghost story? I really enjoyed Cassandra Khaw’s NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH. It’s captivating, short, and full of unlikeable characters! And much like Catriona Ward, Cassandra Khaw has become an auto-buy author for me. Also, this cover is mesmerizing. I like the UK cover too!

I always really, really want to like Cassandra Khaw's work more than I do. Ngl, this desire is due in large part to the Malaysian connection, which is enforced in spades by the fact that the entire cast of this book is Malaysian as well!

Our five friends -- after a fashion -- converge on a haunted Japanese mansion because Nadia, the bride, always wanted to get married in a haunted house. So Philip, the richest of the crew, arranges for it to happen. The groom, Faiz, is half-Japanese and not entirely comfortable with Philip's largesse, never mind the latter's unsettlingly close relationship with Nadia.

The narrator, Cat, is Faiz's best friend but has a much less congenial relationship with his fiancee. But at least Nadia was there for her when she had a mental and emotional breakdown, which can't be said for the last of their group, Lin. Married and busy, he's probably the person least enthusiastic about this entire wedding, not necessarily because of the people involved but because he's sensible enough to know that getting married in a haunted house is a deeply stupid idea.

The rest of the gang discover this firsthand when the dead bride buried on the grounds decides she wants company. But is that really the reason that people disappear and reappear, or the real reason someone has to die?

It's an interesting premise with a cool cast and some truly striking visual imagery. That latter is, unfortunately, a large part of the problem: this novella seems to be built more like a series of descriptions of things you can see, narrated by a bitter, drunk observer, rather than a lived-in haunted house experience. I could see what Cat saw but I barely felt anything of what she felt, besides anger and confusion. Certainly there was very little tension or suspense, just a brain dump of "this is what I saw."

In fact, the experience of reading this horror story was like going through someone's unedited, rambling journal. There's an art to making that kind of thing interesting, but it just wasn't present here. I'm really looking forward to reading more of Mx Khaw's work tho. I bought a copy of their All-Consuming World and it's on my very long list of things to read, along with Jeeyon Shim's accompanying game. This novella definitely wasn't the best of Mx Khaw's work so far (or at least I hope it isn't!)

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw was published October 19 2021 by Tor Nightfire and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9781250759412">Bookshop</a>.

I will say that the cover is absolutely awesome and that is why I wanted to read this book. This story sadly seemed to lack something though. Is it bad to wish that all the characters had been killed by the spirits that were in that house that they so foolishly rented and then tried to wake with ghost stories? Why get married in that kind of setting anyways? At least this was a fast read.

This was a dark and slow story that felt heavy in atmosphere, but now that I'm sitting down to write a review, I am stuck to describe what happened. I would describe the writing as overly worded or lyrical writing, both styles that don't typically work well for me. I am curious about what else Khaw will write and I will definitely check it out, but to me this was all feeling.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a horror novella steeped in Japanese folklore. Part of the story is told in eloquent, sometimes overdone prose, while other parts use modern speech, including cursing, especially the F-word.

It's told from the perspective of Cat, the main character in the story. She's talked into joining four of her friends in a creepy old mansion in Japan for a wedding. The trip and house rental was arranged and paid for by the wealthy Philip, who thinks nothing of doing such things on a whim, in this case without letting Cat in on why: the wedding is for her best friend Faiz and his fiancee Talia. Rounding out the group is Lin, who brings a large spread of food and alcohol to help celebrate the nuptials.

There are vague hints and snippets of information to lead the reader to understand that this group has a past history of exploring haunted places together and that, at some point in time, their dynamics had gotten strained with Cat going through some type of mental breakdown, which she's only starting to overcome. Talia is not a fan of Cat, since at one time she had advised Faiz not to rush headlong into the relationship that's grown into this upcoming marriage. She holds a grudge and didn't really want Cat to be part of the wedding party, to relent only when Faiz and Philip convince her that Cat seems to be the most sensitive to the spirit world and Talia has her heart set on getting married in a haunted house.

The hints don't stop there. Philip and Talia may or may not be having an affair. They certainly used to be an item, though Faiz seems to be unaware of that. Lin may or may not have been romantically involved with Cat before her breakdown and his newly married status. Certainly he seems to have been invited because of her and to round out the numbers. Cat feels beholden to some of these people, which was confusing to me, even though it fed the tension that's clearly there with regard to her fellow companions. They were always there for her, she feels, but I don't believe that they ever were.

I found all this background vagueness off putting and, beyond feeling sorry for Cat and being frustrated that she's easily manipulated by her so called friends, I really didn't engage with or care about a single one of these characters. We don't even know why Cat may have needed them to be there for her. What went down back then? We just don't know and the author doesn't seem interested in telling us.

According to lore, the mansion houses the remains of a bride who asked to be buried alive when her husband-to-be never made it home for their wedding and, each year, a new girl has to be buried alive in the walls and sacrificed to the house to keep the bride happy. Talia is ecstatic to hear the history and hopes to contact the spirits to join in on her upcoming nuptials but, as the evening progresses, Cat starts hearing a voice and realises that it's not going to end well. Of course, with the tension building the more people drink, nobody except Lin wants to listen to Cat.

The ghost, an ohaguro-bettari, is really cool, being a female yokai similar to the noppera-bo but with a gaping mouth of blackened teeth. The cover art is nicely done. However, I had to look up a few terms that the author didn't explain because she seemed more interested in fashioning eloquent prose. Some of this is well worded, especially with regards to kitsune and other spirits who close in on the living characters and mentally suffocate the group with terror as the story progresses.

On that note, I'll stop, since this is a short book and I don't want to give everything away. I liked parts of the story, especially the Japanese folklore. However, I had problems with it too, especially with regards to the ending, which I thought was a bit of a cop out. I certainly wasn't a fan of the modern characters, their conversations and the vagueness of their back stories. The F word is certainly overused, in my opinion, and, if you're offended by swearing, this might not be the book for you.

AMAZING quick and beautifully written story for those who want to celebrate spooky season with haunting prose.

The cover of this book let me to believe I would be reading a classic horror story. The book itself just didn’t do it for me. If you decide to read this book please make sure you have a dictionary at your side because you’re going to need it.
Full review on YouTube

Unfortunately, NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH is a DNF for me at 31%. The cover art is fantastic, and the story's premise is horror perfection; however, the execution and characterization felt confusing and off to me.

Though this book didn’t work for me, I look forward to reading what Khaw comes up with next.

Thank you, NetGalley and Macmillan (Tor Nightfire), for providing me with an eBook of NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH at the request of an honest review.

I wanted to like this. I requested the ARC before the mixed reviews came in, and horror isn't my genre, but both Ursula Vernon and Seanan McGuire (two of my favorite authors) liked it, but...I found it to be just okay. It's a quick novella with some creepy visuals, but I'm more disturbed about the rabbit hole of human sacrifice that it led me down online than the book itself.

A haunted house horror novel about five friends staying in a Japanese mansion rumored to be the final resting place of a lonely, jilted bride who longs for company. And only four of them will leave alive. A quick read that's perfect for October.

I really wanted to like this book because the concept sounded really interesting. But I could not get past the extremely poor writing style—especially the handling of the dialogue. I would have just straight DNF-ed after 50 pages if this wasn’t an arc, for which a review is semi-mandatory, but I speedread the whole thing and my feelings were confirmed. The plot did not justify the poor writing style and the characters’ lack of depth and development will keep me from revisiting this book at a later date. This one was definitely not for me.

This one was creepy and quietly clever. The writing was vivid and I could have spent ages longer in the house with the characters. Unfortunately, I did have some trouble with the metaphors/trippy-ness versus actual plot movement/action. It was hard to understand what exactly was happening sometimes.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this galley.

I'll be brief since I'm already very late: the premise of this novella was cool the prose didn't endear me to the story. It was at times so florid it obscured meaning and detracted from the storytelling.

Short and "sweet"... if you find creepy enjoyable. Very atmospheric with an interesting setting and characters. There is so much to take in with such a small page count, but it keeps you reading.

This was such a creepy read. A haunted house with secrets and friends with animosity and secrets as well.
Two friends that hate each other because of a guy, and one is getting married to him, so they meet at a house with other friends in their group to celebrate the two. But instead the house has a different agenda. The legend of a bride buried waiting for her husband and taking the soul of others to keep her comfort till her husband comes.
Really good storytelling!

This was a really interesting read. One of the aspects of it that I enjoyed most was the character dynamics. In this novella, we get a glimpse into their lives and what brought them to this venue. I was invested in how each of them would act in this situation and their motivations. I like when characters are knowledgeable of horror and its tropes. Due to this, the dialogue was self-aware and at times even meta. The commentary provided on queer characters in horror was great. The monster was creepy, but not terrifying. I had fun reading it and would recommend it to readers who want to read queer horror or horror set outside of the US.