This was a good horror story, short and easy to read/follow along with while listening to the audiobook.

I wasn’t a fan of Talia, as she was a major instigator in the turmoil that fueled the drama that ensued. Phillip wasn’t a favorite either. None of the characters were particularly like-able to me, but characters don’t have to be liked to be good.

This was an interesting take on a ghost story with using Japanese mythology and legend to fuel the story. I would recommend this book to those who want a short story with Japanese influence.

I found this book to be very well written and enjoyable except for the fact that the characters were mostly unlikable. This made a big difference in how I read it and really drove home how much I was rooting for the haunted creature to win! It was a blast to read and I will definitely recommend it.

Khaw's writing skills are so different that I had no idea of where this was going or where.....however; this book is the tale of a woman from the past SCORNED and out to get revenge. She does and when it comes it will really make you see the images of her and all of her goings on! I was so satisfied and glad that I decided to listen to it instead of read it. Highly recommend....warning: It starts out slow. Stick with it!
Richard

I was incredibly excited to get to this novella because of its haunting cover and ominous synopsis, and I'm quite shocked to see that it is rated so lowly on Goodreads. I quite enjoyed this novella, and I think that the author did a phenomenal job at creating a dark, and horrific, commentary on humanity: how the humans are the real monsters. It highlights how easy and almost innate, in nature, it can be for humans to act sinisterly when it comes to obtaining something that we truly want. The novella was gruesome, well-written, and vivid. The reason I deducted a star was because the ending was a bit rushed and wasn't really where I wanted the story to end; however, it's a novella... so I can't knock it too much for a speedy ending: it's meant to be short.

I think most people rate this novella poorly because of the unbearable characters... but, like... that was the point. I'd highly recommend you give it a shot with this in mind.

This was right up my alley. Love the historic Japanese setting and atmosphere. Chilling and engaging, what else can you ask for?

I started reading this book and found that it was not for me. I didn't want to review a book that I didn't finish.

I really wanted to love this book. I thought the premise sounded amazing and the cover is stunning. Unfortunately it fell completely flat for me. I didn't enjoy the characters, they were quite annoying tbh, not people it was fun to spend time with. Then the story itself felt disjointed.

As much as I wanted to be consumed by this tale, I just could not get into it. I have it try after try but for a few months but every time I picked it up I just couldn't get into the story or the characters. I didn't mind the flowery writing and loved the atmospheric setting but it wasn't enough.

I wanted so badly to love this book. What an outstanding premise - five friends have a pre-wedding gathering in an ancient Japanese manor, full of ghosts and demons and legends to make your blood run cold.

But the characters, our narrator and her four friends, are all completely unlikable and unrelatable. They're juvenile, self-centered, ranging from completely obnoxious to utterly depressing, and the way they behave is so far outside the confines of normalcy that they cross the line into ridiculously unbelievable.

Add to this the author's staggering overuse of metaphor, simile, and prose so purple it's blinding, and the flow of the story is bogged down nearly to a stand-still. It feels like each page contains one pertinent sentence which the reader must pick out word by word from among dozens of flowery descriptions.

I know the author was going for atmosphere and perhaps a feeling of disorientation or confusion, but I feel like somewhere along the way they lost the plot entirely among the descriptive phrases and unfairly expected their readers to search it out for them.


The last third of the book is the best, where the action finally starts to outpace the adjectives, but by the time I got there I just didn't have it in me to care all that much what happened to any of the characters.

I was really looking forward to this novella cause I’m such a huge horror fan! Books, movies... you name it! Give it ALL to me! Lol. Unfortunately, this was kind of a letdown. You look at the beautifully creepy cover and you think you’re gonna get all the scares, but nope! That was not the case.

The biggest issue for me was the writing. It was pretty, but it got old FAST. The flowery writing was just too much for me! But thanks to this book I found out what the meaning of purple prose is 😆 and I also found out that I don’t like it 🙈 It was so over the top that it made me roll my eyes and just took me out of the story. All the similes and metaphors and abundance of adjectives... JFC! It was jarring when we would switch from the purple prose to the dialogue between the characters because it was just so vastly different.

Another thing I feel was impacted by the writing is the action and the horror itself. We were supposed to follow these characters as they traipsed through this haunted mansion, but the action was just hindered by the flowery writing. By the time the book got to the point—that the character was in danger—I had lost interest. And then the horror aspect also got lost amid all the similes and metaphors.

As for the characters, I didn’t like them. ANY of them. I didn’t understand the dynamic of this friend group... Has everyone dated everyone? They don’t even seem like friends... they don’t seem to even tolerate each other! The vitriol between Nadia and Cat? Holy shit! I just didn’t get it and I didn’t care for any of them.

So, yeah. I was not a fan. The writing was too much, I didn’t care for the characters, and the scares were nonexistent. There was some gore, but the book just wasn't scary. I feel like every aspect of the book was hindered by the flowery writing. It just didn't work for me. I did like the somewhat creepy feel of the house and the setting in general. But that’s it. Oh, I was also looking forward to some Japanese folklore, which we did get some of. But I wish it would have been explored more. And maybe explained more. Lol. There were some Japanese terms that weren’t explained that left me confused. And listen, I have been studying Japanese for over two years now, but come on! My Japanese isn't that good! 😆 Lol. But yeah, this was not for me. However, if you like flowery writing with only a touch of spookiness, then this might be for you.

Wow, sadly I had to DNF this one, even though it is only about 125 pages long! I couldn't get past about 30 pages. These characters are just shells, the dialog is so stilted and unnatural, the prose is so purple I don't think I'll be seeing any other colors for a while now. This could be creepy and some of the imagery almost got me there, but I really felt like this was a barely-there story outline with incredibly flat characters that the author was trying to fill out with over-the-top prose. I was constantly being taken out of the story by the writing style. I know that this got generally positive reviews, so clearly that's just a personal preference for me. When I read that the author is a scriptwriter it suddenly clicked why this is so bare bones. I'd love to see this concept in the hands of another writer who also wants to give it the full length novel treatment. Just not for me. I did actually purchase this title for my library because we had a patron request, but sadly it has only circulated twice since November of 2021. Hopefully there will be more interest in the future.

Spend the morning with this, it's a short read! I had a bit of a time getting into it (5 characters, unique setting) but once I figured everything out, I was all in. And it takes off quickly. So much horror! Loved it.

Gave 4.5 stars on Storygraph, recommended for horror lists.

As a fan of Asian horror novels, this is beautifully written. It's so sad and very spooky. A great, quick read for the season

I really wanted to like this book - I’d been looking forward to its release all year so I could use it to kick off my Halloween reads. The story sounded so creepy and I love Japanese folklore! But this fell flat. It’s a novella and it could barely keep my attention during it’s 128 pages. The ghost story had so much potential, but I was constantly distracted by all of the prose. It felt like the majority of the time it was just the main character thinking about the other characters in the book. I think I heard more about the complicated relationships between the characters than I did about the horror they were facing. I just couldn’t get invested and I didn’t care about what happened to anyone in the book.

Oof. This was a letdown. I went into this knowing it has very low reviews on Goodreads but was still disappointed. I'm not sure if it's a case of "it's just me" or if the story is literally a mess. The writing was too complex and I think Khaw was trying to make it sound more elegant and beautiful than was needed. I had to reread a lot of sentences to fully understand what the point was. It was too much unnecessary filler. Secondly, the characters. They were atrocious! I didn't care about any of them and that made this is a difficult read. They had no dimension. The story overall was just okay. I wasn't scared and I didn't find anything creepy about the plot. It had potential but never got there. The only part I liked was the gore but even then it felt rushed and unfinished.

This is a very short novella, and if it wasn't for that, I would've DNF'd right away. I'd say give this one a go if it intrigues you - it's a super quick read. But don't expect too much from it.

A creepy ghost story! I was expecting this story to be more about the haunted house and the ghost bride, who was definitely present and vividly described, but ultimately the book is a great commentary on human nature under stress and desperation. The friends in town for the wedding quickly descend into their most primal instincts of survival against the house and each other. It's a chilling 120 pages! Highly recommend!

TITLE: Nothing but Blackened Teeth
AUTHOR: Cassandra Khaw
128 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250759412 (hardcover, also in e-book and audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from the publisher): 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.

MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS: Cassandra Khaw’s novella Nothing but Blackened Teeth is lushy written, full of physical and sensory detail. The horror starts out subtle – just a whisper the narrator thinks she hears – and by the time it turns obvious the reader knows more about the characters involved than they probably realize about themselves.

Narrator Cat is unsure of her place in a group of friends she used to lead, back when they were a sort of “Scooby gang” investigating haunted houses, abandoned hospitals, and any sewage pipe large enough for a body to crawl down. She’s been absent from the group for several months, working on her own problems, and has been drawn out to attend a wedding of two other members of the group (Faiz and Nadia) organized by a fourth member (Philip). There’s some question about whether the fifth member of their group, Lin, is even going to show up. There are a lot of dynamics at play here: the characters either seem to like each other too much or not at all, and their interpersonal histories turn out to be easy for the ghost haunting the house to use to her own ends. I must admit, I didn’t find any of these characters particularly likeable. They’ve all treated each other badly in the past and in the present. But I’m a firm believer that you don’t need to like everyone – or even anyone – in a horror story. I enjoyed watching their personal issues play out against a growing sense that the evening spent in this house is not going to turn out well for some, if not all, of them.

The house itself is just as much of a character as the group of friends renting it, and Khaw’s descriptions of the rooms the characters move through are at turns beautiful and disturbing, especially as the actual threat – the ghostly bride and those that surround her – become more apparent. At points, the mansion reminded me of the house in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves: hidden depths, extra hallways and rooms that endlessly loop on each other, that aren’t discovered unless an occupant makes just the right turn at just the right time, none of which are visible from the mundane exterior of the building.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a fast-moving but deeply immersive reading experience in which a group of unhappy people barrel blindly towards an overwhelming supernatural presence. To say too much more would be to spoil the twists the story takes.

The plot is as superficial as a horror movie, and horror movie fans will enjoy the many nods to the genre tropes. Khaw's style is eccentric, and the number of f-bombs is too realistic (nearly every sentence).

This is a quick and interesting read. Khaw does a good job of building suspense, but ultimately I think the writing gets in the way of the story. Horror novels need to be descriptive in order to give us the imagery and set the tone that's supposed to scare us. Khaw does a great job initially of establishing a spooky environment filled with tension, but this quickly became bogged down by the petty interpersonal arguments between the group. The prose are also excessive and pretentious to the point were its difficult to get through a paragraph without a dictionary. She uses a lot of Japanese terms as descriptors without offering any explanation as to what they mean, I found myself constantly having to look things up to understand what was happening, which took me out of the story. The conversations between characters become very "meta" leading up to the climax. they're constantly predicting what's about to happen because "its what always happens in horror stories". Because of this, when the climax actually happens, there's no element of surprise. Its certainly gory, but the characters had just discussed how it was about to happen so I wasn't shocked or scared.

nightmares for the rest of my life. seriously. the scariest book. why would you have your wedding in a haunted house? quick read, but so so terrifying!