Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a short haunted house story about a group of friends who stay the night in a Japanese mansion to celebrate a wedding. This was a nice, easy book for Halloween, but it did let me down a little bit.

I liked reading about the culture behind the legend of the house. I also think Khaw writes some beautiful prose, and the use of language was pretty good.
However, the book lacked a lot in character and plot for me. The plot was pretty basic, and although the cultural significance did add some to the narrative, it just felt too easy. It wasn't really scary either. I think the scariest part of this book is the cover. I also wasn't a big fan of the characters. I questioned several times how they were all friends because most of them didn't even like each other. A lot of this book was just annoying bickering and drama between characters, and I felt like it didn't really add anything to the story.
Overall, I thought this book was okay. I would still recommend it to thriller/horror fans because I know there are people who enjoyed it more than I did. However, I don't think I'll be picking it up again.

Thank you, NetGalley for a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Cassandra Khaw is an author I have seen many great things written about and I am so delighted to finally have the chance to review one of her books.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a haunted house story unlike any other that I've read. The spooky atmospheric setting made my skin crawl. As the story began to unfold, and the action picked up, the vivid descriptions made me jump at the slightest little noise while I was reading.

I do feel like this would have been better had it been a bit longer so that the characters had time to fully develop, but for a short novella, it is a great scare to read.

What are you afraid of? As October comes to an end, we celebrate the one night a year where ghouls and goblins are actually welcomed. As I set out to celebrate Halloween this year, I decided to listen to one more horror audiobook. Knowing my love for all things horror, the fine folks at Macmillan Audio sent me a review copy of Cassandra Khaw's new ghost story Nothing But Blackened Teeth. I was happy to accept it and listen to one final spooky book for the year. With a gothic setting in a faraway land, a group of characters with a multitude of secrets, and a chilling legend of a ghost, it was easy to fall under the spell of Khaw's work.

A group of five young people has gathered in the most unlikely place imaginable to celebrate the pending nuptials of a couple in their midst. The thrill-seeking quintet has forgone the usual wedding venues in favor of an ancient Japanese mansion, long abandoned to the past. As if the setting isn't creepy enough, the legend of its history certainly takes things over the top. Years ago, a bride-to-be was buried beneath the home left to eternally lay in waiting for her missing husband. She's said to have haunted the building ever since. Throughout history, multiple women have been sacrificed to keep the bride company. As the group begins their stay in the mansion, their own personal histories begin to come to light, waking the sleeping bride. Her pale face has no features beyond the dark black teeth that peek out from her mask. A haunted smile welcoming the newest guests.

In Nothing But Blackened Teeth Cassandra Khaw weaves a traditional haunted house story through the lives of five friends grappling with their personal love and loss. I loved the way that Khaw's legend of a lonely bride mirrored the hope and heartbreak of the present-day characters, both coming together into a new kind of nightmare. The audiobook is narrated by Suehyla El-Attar whose voice perfectly captures both the quiet intensity of the character dynamics and the more propulsive horror elements that drive the plot. Oddly though, I found myself more invested in the plight of the book's monster than the people living through the terror. Khaw doesn't delve much into their past, electing to have much of their motivations remain hidden. The monster, however, is given a full back story that reads like something out of a tragic historical legend. With the brief length of this work, all of that amounts to a story that promises something more impactful than it actually delivers. Still, the unconventional setting and truly scary monster are more than worth the price of admission.

This is exactly what I was hoping to read this spooky season! I rarely read Horror. I recently read The Death of Jane Lawerance (wasn't a fan) and this is the second horror book I have read this year(and maybe my entire life lol.) It delivers exactly what it promises too, a chilling and horrifying story. Backstabbing friends, pent up feelings, and a mansion fit to be filled with ghosts and hauntings, this book delivered exactly what I was hoping for! A bit gruesome for my taste (but it's horror, so what did I expect?)

I thought this book was as spooky as the hype led me to believe. Perfect book for the Halloween season. Shorter read than expected but well worth it.

I was not impressed. The cover was so much cooler than the actual book. The characters were very meh and the story itself was so short that I didn't feel very creeped out. There was really only one moment in the story that felt really creepy and it didn't really go anywhere. Still, it wasn't the worst thing I read and while I wouldn't recommend it, I probably wouldn't dissuade someone from reading it either.

Creepy and atmospheric. Great for fans of the Haunting of Hill House and Shirley Jackson. Perfectly written. Can't wait to see the movie I KNOW will get made!

I, so, wanted to love this book. That cover is stunning and one of the most interesting premises I’ve read this year.

Unfortunately, I felt like it was a bit misleading. This book was much more of a drama with a tiny bit of horror sprinkled in. I was really hoping it would be perfect for this time of year since were only a week away from halloween.

The writing wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t what I was hoping for

“Nothing But Blackened Teeth”, by Casandra Khaw


“Nothing But Blackened Teeth” is about a wedding celebration at the creepiest most terrifying place, a Japanese mansion built on the resting bones of a bride and the remains of the girls that sacrificed themselves for her.

Asian culture in general is one of my favorite things to read and I loved the immersion of Japanese culture in the book. The various food references, history of the mansion and bits of language were my favorite parts. The Japanese folklore, Yokais, and the significance of blackened teeth, was enjoyable.

I felt the book lacked character development and a solid plot. The story starts with a bride that dreams of being married in the haunted mansion. The narrator is a queer woman who suffered a breakdown. It is never really explained why she had the breakdown or why the bride wanted to be married in the mansion. Several parts of the story left me with questions. When reading, a novella, which is a book that is under 200 pages, I expect the story to be a little tighter from start to finish. “Nothing But Blackened Teeth” could have been developed into a full book.

With that being said, the prose was beautiful. Casandra Knaw knows how to write a book filled with imagery. The mansion was dark and gave the reader a foreboding feeling. There were some haunting moments and a creepy description in the mansion which I truly loved.

As a fan of atmospheric books and Japanese horror, I am looking forward to more books by Khaw.

A great read for spooky season. So creepy.

The story has a trope I enjoy in horror stories where humans are monstrous.

Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a creepy ghost story set in a Japanese haunted house. Our characters are staying the night in a haunted house in celebration of an upcoming wedding. They are hoping to see a ghost, but they end up going through more than what they bargained for.

This was a sucker punch of a little book. This is very short but it packs a ton of great elements into it. Its dark, its scary, it's unsettling. Honestly it's nearly perfect. Horror novellas can be very hard to pull off but Khaw did it masterfully. I would definitely really this book to all the horror lovers out there.

3 Stars

I am grateful to Macmillan Audio for sending me an advanced copy of this audiobook for review.

This is a tough one, because while there were elements of this that I enjoyed it ultimately was not my favorite thing.

I enjoyed the actual horror aspect very much. The setting was a great choice for a Haunted House horror. I liked the folklore incorporated into the plot and how it all played out with the characters. That setting was creepy and the perspective made it more so. The main character had very interesting relationships with each of the other characters which added a level of complexity to this short story.

The characters were my big problem. They seemed very thin and their behavior seemed almost nonsensical at times because we simply didn't know enough about them. This was a short story, but it could have benefitted from a few more pages to give us fully actualized characters. So while I was enjoying the setting and horror, I was constantly wondering why any of the characters were behaving the way they were. The author said they were friends but everything they did contradicted that...

This story was fine, but I didn't love it.

Content warning: gory death scene

Choose four people to go on a vacation with. Were your ex, your ex’s fiance, that fiance’s former crush, and your loose cannon semi-bestie anywhere near this list? I think not. Alas, that is the fate that befalls the protagonist of Nothing But Blackened Teeth, a perfect spooky novella by Cassandra Khaw.

Under these less than stellar circumstances, our protagonist has agreed to attend the destination wedding of her ex who seems to have invited her out of latent guilt surrounding their breakup and her institutionalization. It doesn’t help that the two have been longtime friends in a coupling that involved a straight-laced and appropriately humble athletic friend turned NFL player and a smart aleck friend without any qualms about dredging up the group’s sore spots. While this arrangement already seems set up for an implosion, the group’s greatest obstacle lies in location. The bride, Talia, insisted upon having her wedding in a traditional Japanese mansion from the Heian-era despite no one in either family having this heritage. In an indication of their fortune, the NFL-player friend is able to find her one and fly them all out to hang out ahead of the wedding festivities. The twist? The mansion lies within an isolated forest and is rumored to be haunted by a ghost bride who murders those who enter in tribute to her lost groom. Instead of taking this bloody tale as a sign to tread lightly, Talia decides to have the group spend the night sharing 100 scary stories, symbolically blowing out a candle after each tale in imitation of a samurai tradition she’s heard about. Through the course of the night, the messy emotions of the group unfurl and shake up every expectation the friends have for their trip.

If you are a fan of horror and love mess, Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a short tale that you’ll definitely enjoy from romantic entanglement down to the poetic last line. Enjoy this story with a hearty beverage of choice, a gloomy setting, and on audiobook—the narrator is fantastic!—if you dare.

This book could have been so good but the authors wordiness got in the way. I felt the plot was great...a group of friends go to a haunted mansion for a wedding. However, this book should not be called horror at all. There was nothing even remotely scary due to the authors prose. I liked the way the friends banter with each other but we never find out their backstories.

"Nothing but Blackened Teeth" was the epitome of OK. This is a case where the writing really outshines the story. It's atmospheric and the idea behind the plot seems great, but lacks the story lacks the connective tissue to make it work. I felt I was just dropped into these characters I didn't know — and never got the chance to — with way too many pre-existing petty conflicts within the friend group that I wasn't privy to. It feels like too much of this novella is devoted to the drama within the group and the horror and supernatural elements are peppered in as though they were an afterthought until nearly the end. Then, it's all resolved in a matter of pages, which left me feeling as though the novella was only partially developed before it went to print.

Ok, ok...ok. Maybe I just need a minute? First, the cover is *chef's kiss*! As a fan of The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, I was excited to add this title to my October horror fest. Honestly, only a few people can pull off a long-form horror story - King, Straub, Tremblay. But some of the best are short stories, novellas - not so long that they ruined themselves. Khaw has written a story that captures the tension between friends who are friends almost simply because of familiarity, not because they actually like each other. She doesn't fall into the trap of the unreliable narrator, which many horror others do, and neatly ties the story into a tidy package. This may never be on the same level as "Full Throttle" or "The Lottery" (two of my favorites), but certainly an honorable mention. And it would be spectacular in the hands of Ryan Murphy.

The best thing about this book is the cover art by Samuel Araya.

Five friends Phillip, Cat, Lin, Faiz and Talia head to Japan for a travel destination bachelor/bachelorette party. Together they visit a Heian mansion. It's a celebration of the upcoming wedding of Faiz and Talia! Talia wanted a spooky celebration and the folklore of a Ohaguro-Bettari (ghost bride) enticed her.

I found the characters in this book to be incredibly annoying. Instead of reading about a book of twenty-somethings the characters came across as if they were teenagers. There was constant overuse of the word "fuck" especially in places where it was out of context. It was as if the author was attempting to be cool and woke and instead the characters came across as if they were middle school aged children trying to defy their parents with swear words. The character of Lin was meant to provide comic relief and instead he's just annoying. The groom, Faiz comes across as whiney.

The plot itself may go over the heads of readers who are not familiar with Japanese folklore. Yokai, kitsune, fusuma, tengu, hitobashira, and ohaguro-bettari etc. I would've preferred that the author describe these beings. This would've increased the horror and fear and provided readers who don't know Japanese as their first language the opportunity to fully imagine the scene. The plot is relatively uneventful until the last 3/4 of the book and then spirals into an unrealistic ending. I wasn't scared. It wasn't spooky. I wasn't creeped out.

I was also provided an audio copy of the book which I used to follow along in the physical copy that I purchased. Many thanks to NetGalley. I highly recommend the audio book vs purchasing a physical copy at $19.00.

Imperfect people make very bad choices. I normally don't go for horror, but was in the mood for a good creep-out now that fall is rolling around. I did listen to this audiobook (the narrator is great) on a bright, sunny day, which can cut into the scare-factor. But I wish there was more ghost story and less of the highly dysfunctional friend group. In the exact opposite of most reviews, I wish this wasn't so driven by the characters and their personal motivations and more driven by external forces. You are definitely left understanding how complicated the pasts of these five friends are, but I really would have loved more ghosts and creeps.

“A little bit of magic. Even if it was hungry. 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.”

NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH is a seething, visceral horror novella that puts a twist on the classic haunted house story. A group of old friends have found a Heian-era mansion in Japan to fulfill the dreams of a bride-to-be who always wanted to get married in a haunted building. But things get a little complicated: both in the group dynamic, and by the hungry ghost bride buried in the foundation. While the story proceeds as one might expect - creepy shit happens, ratcheting up in intensity until the story comes to its brutal climax - Khaw’s impressive work with language, their nods to (and dodges around) typical horror tropes, and their incorporation of Japanese folklore make this a unique story. I absolutely loved their writing - poetic, sharp, biting, and at times grossly evocative. The narrator, Cat, is Chinese-Malaysian and bisexual, and Khaw doesn’t shy away from calling out who usually dies first in horror stories - and changing things up in their version. While Khaw seems to aim for some character depth & emotional heft in this novella, I didn’t find myself drawn to any characters other than Cat, and I wasn’t that invested in the plots twists. Still, it’s a grotesquely stunning little tale that I enjoyed immensely, and it’s perfect for spooky season. I definitely recommend the audiobook; it’s like someone whispering a creepy ghost story in your ear. Thank you to Tor Nightfire for the ARC & to Macmillan Audio for the ALC!

Content warnings: suicidal ideation, mental health stuff (including hospitalization), violence/injury, gore, death

When Cat is invited to a Heian-era mansion in Japan for the elopement of two of her friends. The bride, Nadia has dreamed for years of getting married in a haunted house and her fiancé Faiz is willing to accommodate. The house that they've chosen has a ghost story attached to it - many years ago, as wedding was panned there, but the groom died before arriving. The bride was so struck with grief that she asked the wedding guests to bury her alive in the foundation of the house. The bride would keep the house standing until the groom's ghost came home to her. Every year, a new girl would be buried in the walls so that the bride's ghost wouldn't grow lonely. As the story unfolds, we learn bit-by-bit about the past drama that exists in the group of friends that has gathered for this wedding, and the old wounds that may have never healed.

This novella was is atmospheric, creepy and chilling. It combines Japanese folklore with haunted houses and relationship drama. The author doesn't skimp on the gory horror imagery and her prose is really lovely and lyrical, while at the same time brutal and gruesome. In places, the story was a bit confusing to me - I did a lot of googling to keep up with the Japanese terminology, and I wish I understood more about the relationships in this friend group that brought everyone to this point. The cover is absolutely terrifying.

Thank you to @Netgalley, @TorNightfire and @macmillian.audio for providing me with an ARC/ALC of this book.