Finished this in one night. Beautiful prose and very creepy. A brittle, atmospheric tale that grabs on tight and doesn't let go..

I saw this cover and immediately hunted down an early copy of this book. Suffice to say the story more than lives up to the cover! This was everything I could possibly want in a haunted house story, and I LOVE a horror novel that's self-aware like this one is. Add in amazing characters and wrap it up in GORGEOUS lyrical writing and you have one of my favorite books of 2021!

I loved everything about this book, from the rich folklore and Japanese mythology to the gruesome chaos that ensues.

This book was very well written! I’m not one to get scared reading books but this one had me about to fight my ice maker at 2am!

Five friends plan a trip to Japan for the sole purpose of participating in an exclusive wedding ceremony. After renting a mansion with a dark history involving sacred ghosts and unbridled offerings, the stage is set, and preparations begin not only for the celebration itself, but also for an exploratory alternate ritual.

This experimentation will test superstition against reality and guide the group of friends to a destination that will change their lives forever.

In Nothing But Blackened Teeth, Cassandra Khaw pens a haunted mansion story teeming with youthful compulsions that culminates into a place of damnation. These obsessive urges become an ominous component that swirls within each chapter of the book. Introductions to five friends and how their relationships correlate with each other not only takes center stage, but quickly becomes a crucial portion of the storyline. The underlying theme of true love contorts to the point of being beyond ordinary, and the morbid historical significance surrounding these characters drives the story toward an eagerly anticipated conclusion.

The cornerstone of Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a proposed wedding that embraces spectral images lurking from behind every corner. Any such descriptive features of dark haired possessions, mouth blotted murkiness, and smudge stained eyes stand out as literary intense visions of terror. The author effectively surrounds the story with gruesome practices associated with hitobashira. These customs and rituals carry a sense of melancholy that are filled with trepidation. Khaw’s literary talent of developing ideas around a cultural way of life while simultaneously calling up the dead are written fluently. This, among additional references generate enough unsettling paranormal experiences that it becomes hard to set such a book down.

Sprinkling just enough wit and humor to round out the creepy supernatural vibe adds sufficient relaxation for the reader, only to be unprepared for what’s emanating from the shadows. In addition, the book cover art is beautiful and sets the tone for what’s to come. This creative eye candy begs to be taken from the bookstore shelves and read. From the title to its content, Nothing But Blackened Teeth is one heck of a creepy read.

Final piece of advice: Take heed when approaching an ohaguro-bettari. It may look like a beautiful woman wearing her bridal gown, but upon further inspection you may be horrified to discover… nothing but blackened teeth. God willing, it won’t follow you home.

(originally posted at mysteryandsuspense.com)
(visit me at mysteryandsuspense.com)

That was an amazing tale! Loved the cover; super creepy! Nothing to like about any of the characters, so I didn't mind the comeuppance at the end. Very fitting. Ghost stories are so wonderful when they have a basis in folklore. The back story of the buried alive bride was just awesome! Really scary short story! Who doesn't love a scary story? This one wasn't very long, but boy did it pack in the fright! Kudos Cassandra Khaw!

This novella may be short but it packs a punch that lingers for days. This book is rich in culture and Japanese culture and mythology. A haunted house story that shines a light on some of the worst human traits. If you like stories that tie up loose ends and answer all your questions, this is not the book for you. At the end, you are left reeling and wondering what just happened. I had to let this book settle before I could truly get a grasp on my thoughts for a review. The characters lack a bit in terms of development but I don’t really think this book is about the characters. It’s about the house.

As a seasoned horror reader, I usually explore new authors through anthologies. I am very grateful to have Netgalley as a platform to not only read titles, but to use it to curate the library collection as well.

This book could have been about anything else and I would still have read it. I have never read anything by Cassandra Khaw and the language Khaw uses in this book elevates it to a level that I was not expecting. My Kindle version is covered with highlights and notes. The best part for me is that it gave me a chance to dive into a mythology I wasn't as familiar with so I had an opportunity to learn something new. I did not, however, need to be well versed in it to enjoy the novel.

You start thinking you are going to read a classic haunted house/celebration gone wrong horror novel and you get so much more. Terrifying and beautiful. I will certainly be rereading it over and over again.

Not a full read. There should have been more build up of characters and plot. It was rushed and disjointed.

The creepy AF cover of this book sparked my interest immediately, and reading the premise - a haunted house story based in Japanese folklore - made it a book I had to get my hands on.

The book definitely delivered on the creepiness and the Japanese folklore, but I felt that it was hampered by its novella length. The pacing felt rushed, and it seemed like there just wasn’t enough time for the author to build the tension that the book’s truly creepy imagery deserved, or to make us understand/care about the characters in a meaningful way.

While interesting and three dimensional, I found it difficult to get a firm grasp on the relationships between the characters, especially why they would all agree to gather for a destination wedding when there’s such clear enmity between them. This makes some moments that should pack an emotional punch ending up falling a little flat.

That said, Khaw clearly knows their way around a creepy story, and I look forward to reading more of their work in the future!

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for the eARC of Nothing But Blackened Teeth.

Things I really liked about this book:
The culture & folklore embedded in this short novel is really interesting.
I loved going down the Google rabbit hole to find out how to make Baked Pork Chop or to see what a Heian mansion looked like.
She clearly is writing what she knows in these sections.

Things I really didn't like about this book:
The writing style. Oof. So flowery. It's like she chose one word on each page, looked it up in the thesaurus, and chose the most obscure synonym. It drove me crazy! I don't know anyone who really speaks that way or thinks that way in their heads. It was jarring.
The ending was too quick. I think I might have issues with novellas that aren't necessarily Khaw's fault. Just when it started to get scary...BOOM! all done. I feel this way about short novels a lot, but the ending was way too sudden for me.

I would read another book (maybe a longer one?) by this author before I totally wrote her off. The idea was interesting, the setting was fantastic, and I learned a lot more about Japanese culture and folklore than I expected from a 120ish page novel, but her writing just might not be my speed.

Interesting premise and fun plot, but when you get past the first bit the writing gets very flowery and is excessive in a way that I felt detracted from the story rather than added to it. I'm not opposed to reading that requires some teeth, but this got pretty hard to digest.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw is reminiscent of the Japanese Horror, Ju-on. There is an otherworldly presence that wants to take hold and not let go. The characters in Khaw’s story, much like Ju-on, find themselves in an abandoned house/ mansion that is not exactly vacant. There is something sinister still living within the building walls, a living breathing force waiting to take hold and control any who enter. This is what I love about ghost stories; you can have something that terrifies you without having to see it or know what you are experiencing. The author can show you the characters’ feelings and give off a certain vibe of the room to make you realize something is not right.

Khaw does all this with Nothing But Blackened Teeth with the house’s vibe, the visions appearing within, and the creepiness that crawls over your skin on every page you read. I couldn’t stop reading this story; I wanted more. It was almost like a drug needing another hit of horror. I am an avid horror buff and love Japanese horror, so to read a story that brings to life that entire genre with such completeness on the written page and do it so well is just pure bliss for me as a reader.

I am keeping this review as spoiler-free as possible, so I will say that if you love horror and have a love for Japanese horror, this is guaranteed to be a perfect read for you. You will not be disappointed and might have a few nightmares after reading this; I know I did.

After reading the synopsis for Nothing But Blackened Teeth, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That, and the unforgettable cover, too. So despite being the person who screams during horror movies when her dog sneezes, and throws the controller during jump scares in video games, I requested an ARC copy of Nothing but Blackened Teeth. Though I got strong The Ring and The Grudge vibes from the description of the novel and the setting of a haunted Heian mansion, I found that Nothing but Blackened Teeth wasn’t much like either of those films after all. In fact, it strongly put me to mind of the video game Until Dawn, where a group of friends (who are super incestuous and all seem to have dated one another at some point, have lots of secrets from each other, and hold a lot of long grudges), meet up in a reunion and everything goes horrifically wrong.

Much like that aforementioned video game, it doesn’t take long for things to go south quickly in Nothing but Blackened Teeth.  From the very moment narrator Cat sets foot in the haunted house, to fulfill a frenemy’s dream of a wedding in a haunted house, she has a strong feeling that this isn’t going to be like their other forays into haunted houses. It starts with a mysterious, melodious whisper in Japanese that no one else can hear and quickly spirals into possession from there. Before long, Cat isn’t just dealing with the past demons of her friend group, but an undead bride who has been waiting a very long time for company. 

I still really liked the premise of Nothing but Blackened Teeth, but I was shocked at how short the novel actually was. According to Goodreads, it is a mere 128 pages, something I failed to check before getting myself all hyped up for a full-length horror novel. After reading Nothing but Blackened Teeth, I learned that the author, Cassandra Khaw is actually a former screenwriter, so perhaps the shortness of her work, the fast-paced story that hurtles itself to a break-neck conclusion, as well as the lack of a lot of character introduction, is indicative of Ms. Khaw’s former occupation. 

Oddly enough, despite having what feels like a very tight script, the novel is filled with ornate, sometimes bewildering and jarring descriptions. The fact that I spent much of the time I was reading trying to decipher the extremely loquacious purple prose, made it seem like not much was really happening, and consequently made the work feel even shorter. Plus, many of these extreme descriptions were not even of something scary, but they definitely possessed the entire page in a different way. Though I respect and even commend the author for her unabashed use of such purple prose, it is really not a writing style that I personally enjoy reading. 

“My laugh was just bones knocking together, without any meat to cushion their clamor. Hateful, hollow.”

I find that this writing style really distracts me from the overall plot of the novella, but the often dark imagery the author weaves certainly does add to the heavy atmosphere and the unique, especially in the cases when she uses it to describe the yokai and undead bride. I also did not really care for the repeated breaking of the fourth wall in the novel, but other readers may find it refreshing or entertaining. Characters remark on whether they are minorities, virgins, bisexuals, etc., and what those categories mean for their survival chances within classic horror scenarios. While humorous, and undoubtedly there to add some levity to a rather bleak tale, I couldn’t help feeling the jokes were completely out of place with the oppressive imagery and darker themes of cheating spouses, ruined relationships, ended friendships, and the actual haunting of the novel. Plus, it seems like it took up a lot of unnecessary space in such a short work. 

“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.”

Unfortunately, despite the characters’ very real fear and the creepy atmosphere, I just didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. I honestly don’t understand why any of them are friends. The narrator, Cat, is a mess, and the others aren’t much better off. Like seriously, why would someone want to get married in a haunted house, let alone one famous for its undead brides of all things? They’re constantly at each other’s throats, usually over vague ancient history,  and I honestly couldn’t help but to root for the creepy undead bride to come and murder all of them so I could finally have some peace. That made it somewhat hard for me to be scared by said undead creature, which one would argue is the entire point of a horror story. 

Despite not being a big fan of what I felt was a strange mix of modernity and recognition of the horror tropes with the dark imagery, I really do think Nothing but Blackened Teeth would make a great horror movie, or even video game. It would certainty need to be a bit more fleshed out for either kinds of those adaptations, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a story and so strongly pictured it as another medium. Perhaps that’s due to the unapologetically purple and descriptive prose. If you are a very big fan of horror or prefer to read short stories, I think you will enjoy this novella. If you enjoy longer tales, with lots of build up, suspense, and character development, Nothing but Blackened Teeth is not the read for you.

This was a very creepy and unique horror novella. While I wasn't outright scared, there was something about the slowly encroaching and escalating horror that had me reading this with my lights on.

The book cover art for Canadian writer Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing but Blackened Teeth is compelling, if not garish, to say the least. If you look to the left of this paragraph, you’ll see the frightening image conjured up for this horror novella that will probably give you bad dreams for days, if not weeks. Well, just like Malcolm Brooks’ recently reviewed Cloudmaker, the cover art sells what is a bit of a crummy book. That’s not to say that there are things to like or admire with Nothing but Blackened Teeth. However, the parts don’t add up to much of a whole. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about it is that the time investment in reading this work is negligible. You can easily read it in one sitting. In fact, it can be read in the space of about an hour.

The story is about five young American college-aged adults who travel to a haunted mansion in Japan as a bit of a dare before two of the five get married. The mansion, it turns out, is home to a ghost (a bride) who was buried alive on her wedding day when it turned out that the groom had gotten killed before the wedding. While the bride waits for her groom to return in spiritual form, she has other female bodies buried with her to keep her company. Meanwhile, it turns out that the five friends are, in truth, not too friendly with each other, and some of them have actually slept around with each other before coupling with their current significant other. In any event, this being a horror novel, bad things start to happen, and you can expect people to start getting killed off.

While I did say that the best thing about this book is that it’s short, I must say that I’m impressed with the level of language in Nothing but Blackened Teeth, which is filled with all sorts of $50 words and Japanese terms. However, this is also a liability in so much as it is an asset. It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on with all of the flowery language. It winds up detracting from the plot — especially since there’s a bit of a cultural disconnect with certain characters. (The only reason some of the characters think and speak these words is because they have Japanese heritage, it seems. But some don’t. This only adds to the confusion.) Meanwhile, I found the dialogue used in the book to be conversely pedestrian. It’s the sort of thing you’ll find in manga or anime. Some of it is laughably juvenile, which is probably not the thing you’ll want to convey in a book that’s supposed to be scary.

And that’s the thing: Nothing but Blackened Teeth isn’t too scary at all. At best, it’s kind of creepy. It is filled with all sorts of imagery of decay and disuse. But that’s about as far as the book goes in terms of psyching the reader out. The book isn’t scary at all because the characters are all so unlikeable in many ways. Since everyone is at each other’s throats for the entirety of the novella, it’s hard to get invested in their plight. Thus, when bad things start to happen to them, you’ll wind up finding yourself not caring about what happens to them or even not caring when some of them seemingly wind up dead. You may find yourself applauding their deaths.

It seems that all that this book accomplishes in the positive realm is exuding a sense of atmosphere. However, the author could have gone much further in mining a particular mood. The novella could have been a bonafide novel with perhaps more of a backstory about the ghosts and more of an explanation for some of the Japanese terminology used in telling the story. I’m not sure what having this at a novella’s length accomplishes, other than thinking that the author does seem to be rather young — a quick check reveals her to be in her 30s — and writing a novel might be biting off more than can be chewed at this point in her career. That said, there’s a great story waiting to break out of this book, and a longer length might have achieved the goal of giving us more of a sense of who these characters are and why they might like and dislike each other all at the same time.

Even though Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a bit of a failure as a novella, it’s clearly apparent that Cassandra Khaw has talent and is a name to watch. She does succeed at some aspects of writing horror fiction and did think that as much as I generally disliked the elevated language, it gave a shot in the arm to a maligned genre of fiction. Horror novels get shafted even more than science-fiction in the literary community it seems (unless your name as a horror author was Shirley Jackson), so it’s good to see someone trying to rise above convention and do something rich and rewarding. That it doesn’t quite pan out in the way that might have been expected here shouldn’t detract curious readers from checking out future works by Khaw.

Indeed, Cassandra Khaw certainly has a promising future in front of her. It’s just too bad that Nothing but Blackened Teeth doesn’t quite excel. There’s a terrific premise here in setting the haunted house genre in Japan, so having more detail spent on creating quality dialogue and amplifying the atmosphere so that everyone can understand it would have gone a long way in helping the author achieve the goal of worldly success in the horror genre. In the end, it will also make Khaw worthy of that damn scary cover art that her publisher is investing in her work.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC. The opinions expressed herein are mine alone and may not reflect the views of the author, publisher, or distributor.

At a young age, I fell in love with Japanese culture. My mom exposed us first to the original Iron Chef shows when they came to American television, then my brothers introduced me to manga when I was 7. I already watched Pokemon, but I didn’t know it was Japanese. I was like...6, okay? Then I got the original Pokemon comics for my birthday one year--still in the single digits--and everything tumbled from there. I started learning how to sing the opening songs to anime in Japanese, started reading about samurai and history of the place, and when I got older, I dove into the mythology and horror of everything.

You know how long I’ve waited for straight-up, inevitable-doom, nothing-you-can-do-to-stop-it type of horror to make its way to the world of mainstream publishing over here? Yeah, I’m almost 29. It’s been about a decade.

Five friends from North America (well, “friends.” They’re all kind of terrible except poor Cat) make their to way to Japan to celebrate two of the group getting married to each other, and what do they decide to do? Stay the night in a haunted Japanese mansion from the Heian era. Why is the era important? Oh-ho, let me hit you with some history.

So until about the 8th century CE, Chinese ideas and influence had been flooding into Japan and helping to shape its culture, religion, script, and art. Suddenly in 794CE, Japan decided, ”You know what? We’re totally our own thing now. Peace out.” And their personal identity and culture as a nation began taking serious, hardcore turns toward the unique. You know those often-portrayed kimono that have a bajillion layers, and the women are wearing brass headdresses and jewels and make up? That’s from this period, and the style is junihitoe. So when you think “old school Japan,” this is probably what pops to mind besides samurai (who didn’t really come about until the 11th century or so, when feudalism took hold as the popular thing to do).

This in mind, the friends embark on staying in this crazy haunted place that has a legend behind it. On the day of her wedding, a bride received word that her fiance had died on his way to marry her, and she in her grief decided to go ahead and be buried in the house’s foundation. Human sacrifice was considered a normal practice (called Hitobashira) in this era. With THIS in mind, the least enjoyable character and bride-to-be, Nadia, takes it upon herself to think it’s a good idea to go ahead and play an old game from Japan where you light a hundred candles, tell a hundred ghost stories, and for each story, blow out one candle. Because it invites the spirits in.

Now, this is the important part where I started saying, “NO STOP WHY DO YOU DO.” (Disclaimer: I know it’s a horror novel. Humor me.) Asian spirits, and in particular the Japanese ones, are NOT forgiving. You can’t put down salt and call it good, or burn a little sage and think you’re fine. A vengeful Japanese ghost will follow you until it gets a moment to kill you. There’s one that if you even look at it too closely, you turn into one. Don’t even get me started on Aka Manto, the spirit who lurks in the unused bathrooms of high schools and offers you toilet paper, then proceeds to kill you no matter what type of paper you ask for.

But yeah, let’s INVITE THEM IN.

When it hits the fan, things devolve quickly for the poor souls who decided to dredge up the monsters. The strongest points in Khaw’s novel are the creeping moments of dread that make your ribs clench up. She writes such vivid atmosphere, it’s crazy. Every yokai came to life (ha, get it?) and every breath the house took blew straight off the page.

The biggest problems here were the pacing and the characters. I don’t think enough terrible things happened, if I’m being honest. And I wanted to like more of the characters, get to know them a little better. As it is, Cat was my favorite and everyone else was terrible. I don’t even necessarily have to like them as people, just as characters doing whatever they do. We didn’t get enough of their history to solidly sort out feelings, except for the strain between Cat and Nadia. Everyone else was...meh. Their motives were too vague, and their fractures not reasonable enough.

And the ohaguro bettari--which gives the book its title--needed to show up earlier. So if Khaw had stretched it out just a bit, made us clench our cheeks with tension a few more times, and fleshed out the characters more, this would have been darn near perfect.

Though, I will say, the ending paragraph really made up for some of the mixed feelings I had for the middle. If you’re remotely familiar with how the majority of ghost stories end in Japan, this ending will make perfect sense.

So overall, this is a great novella. Not fantastic, but a solid effort that shows a great potential to write bone-chilling horror.

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<p>Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a horror novella that combines haunted houses, Japanese folklore, and the break down of old friendships. I received an early review copy from the publisher through NetGalley. When a group of five friends rent an old Heian era mansion in Japan that is supposed to be haunted for two of them to get married in old conflicts between the friends cause tensions to rise and things end up not going to plan. The premise of the book pulled me in but it was the cover that convinced me that I needed to read this book.</p>
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<p>The story is told from Cat's perspective and she is their with Phillip, the only white guy in the group, fiancées Nadia and Faiz, and best friend, Lin. Its clear from the start that Cat had some short of metal health episode prior to the story that has greatly impacted her relationships with her friends and Nadia only invited her because others wanted her there. Phillip the riches of all of them helped rent this location because Nadia always wanted to be married in a haunted house and Faiz agreed to do it before their main wedding. The ghost story associated with the mansion is that a wedding was supposed to take place their but the groom died before arriving so the bride told the wedding guest to bury her alive in the foundation of the house. The bride would keep the house standing until her grooms ghost come home and every year after they would bury a new girl in the walls so the ghost won't get lonely. </p>
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<p>Everything seems to be going fine just drinking and partying until Nadia suggests that they play Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai which is translated as A Gathering of One Hundred Ghost Stories. Where everyone in a room would tell a ghost story and then extinguishing a candle and who ever could survive without flinching won the game. Cat ends up being the one to tell the last story which she tell their story of the night and mentions that the house knows that they are there and she saw a girl earlier. They go searching for the ghost and Nadia ends up disappearing and a ohaguro-bettari (a female yokai dressed as a bride) pretending to be her. They have awakened the spirits of the house. </p>
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<p>As a group they end up finding a book that tells them how to get Nadia back but Faiz and Phillip end up arguing and Faiz stabs Philip. With Phillip dead Cat suggest that they make his death count for something and complete ritual to save Nadia. They burn down the mansion to cover it up and stop anyone else making the same mistakes. The book ends with everyone having gone their seprate ways and not really being friends anymore.</p>
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<p>In many ways this is a story about how friendship fall apart told through a horror story and ghost. I loved this story but did wish I knew a little more about the groups past as I didn't completely understand how they got to this point at the start of the book. Great for horror fans or anyone intrigued by the cover. Currently, Nothing But Blackened Teeth is scheduled to be released in October 2021.</p>
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Warning: I'm about to quote an ARC, which you're not supposed to do, unless the writing is so darn perfect that any change to the final would be unforgivable:

"You know how poets say sometimes that it feels like the whole world is listening?
It was just like that.
Except with a house instead of an auditorium of academics, collars starched, textbooks like scriptures, each chapter color-coded by importance. The manor inhaled. It felt like church. Like the architecture had dulled its heartbeat so it could hear me better, the wood warping, curling around the room like it was a womb, and I was a new beginning. Dust sighed from the ceiling. Spiderwebs fell in umbilical cords, a drape of silver."

I am that house, and I am listening to the poetry of this prose. This is just one of so many paragraphs in this novella that blew me away. How did she just do that? i asked myself more than once.

The comparisons to Shirley Jackson in this novella are deserved. The main character has some of the same neurosis and fears, that feeling of being an outsider, not fully understood or content, references to pasts traumas and crisis the reader is invited to extrapolate on their own as we ride through the story insider her internal dialogue. This is a literary go-cam inside her spirit and mind as we visit this haunted house. Brilliantly haunted. It's own kind of Hell House history that would make Matheson shudder.

This story has a serious tone but with a dark humorous mix at times, self reflects on horror more than once, aware of itself. Aware that it's standing on the shoulders of giants, but about to make its own creation. It doesn't have contempt for other haunted houses, but it does dismiss them in a sense as nothing compared to 'this.. because this is real. More severe and serious and sinister and ancient. Every relationship connection is filled with ghosts. None of them is safe. Nobody is full okay with who they are and who they love, everyone concerned over past ties and connections, hurt people hurting people. Ghosts are everywhere and follow everyone, and we are all of them. Your partner is haunted, and so are you.

I loved hearing the short snippets, of non-english language which added to its mythos. It forces you to mouth words and speak a different tongue, as if the reader is performing their own incantations.


I hope this book eats you, because it ate me, and I enjoyed each crunch from its blackened teeth.

First of all, this cover art is AMAZING. Absolutely perfect for this creepy short story. I’m obsessed with everything dark and scary, so when I saw this cover and then read this description, I was hooked. And Cassandra Khaw did not disappoint! Short and straightforward while still managing to be flowery in her language, an interesting and under utilized setting, and a complex cast of characters that were very well fleshed out for the amount of pages. Absolutely loved it and will buy this when it comes out!

Disclaimer: This review is going to be a mumbo-jumbo of whatever is coming to my mind at the moment because I haven't written one in... a long time and I finished this book five seconds ago.

In all honesty, the premise of this story is ridiculous to me. Maybe it's my cowardice or my experience with the paranormal or the numerous warnings of my parents and grandparents concerning the paranormal speaking, but why would anyone want to get married in a haunted mansion? Why would anyone even want to enter one? At this point, sweetheart, you are literally courting death and I am not the one who's gonna feel sorry for you when it happens.

And that is how I started this story rooting for none of the characters. And then as it progressed, I admit, I grew mildly invested in two of them; I really wanted to know what had transpired between them because it seemed there was a lot to unpack there and I wished they would be saved from the horror ending somehow.

Speaking of 'the horror', it was very well written with just the right descriptions and comparisons to set the creepiness in the atmosphere, in the very walls of the house, making it seem like the house was an entity by itself. And that really came through because my mind decided to give me images and sensations the narrator was experiencing as I lay in bed reading this. I was so terrified of my own room I had to stop reading and distract myself with funny videos until 2 am.

Creepiness aside, the mansion came across as gorgeous and I intend to go ahead and look up the Heian period to get a clearer idea of what things looked like before I reread this book. And also because it sounds like a very interesting period, of course.

The ending, I have to say, was not what I had expected but at the same time, truly, more horrifying than ghosts and such, is what people are capable of doing to other people. That is the most jarring part of horror stories in my opinion because, on one hand, you have this... force, that is obviously more powerful than you, and on the other hand, you have people who you think are just like you, but who could cause just as much harm, be it through utter stupidity or by sheer want of it.