A horrible, heartbreaking, but amazing book. The Spirit Bares It’s Teeth is absolutely disgusting, but I loved it.

As a person who has experienced the world as a woman, as an autistic person, and as a trans person, this book hit all the rough spots. It made me sob my eyes out because I could relate to the experience of the main character so much, and it hurt to see myself like that. And even though it hurt a lot, it was incredible. I could finally see a character who is similar to me, which just made me love this book even more.

Of course, I also loved the story itself. It’s incredibly well written, and it made me gag and cry at times. There were moments just so disgusting that I had to stop reading, and I personally really like that in a horror novel (these moments usually made me cry too).

I adored the blossoming relationship between Silas and Daphne as well. The way they found each other wasn’t great, but what they got out of it is amazing. I’m so happy to see two trans people in love and trying to heal together. I hope they get their revenge.

Rating: 4,25

So after Hell Followed with Us was an absolute banger, I highly anticipated the new book by the author. I still can't believe I got an arc of it.

But to the review we go - this book is very different in the vibe than the previous one. The post-apocalyptic landscapes are replaced with a historical setting, high society, and mediums. Our main character, Silas, is one such medium, but he has the misfortune of being born a woman. Women with purple eyes - a trait distinguishing those who can interact with the Veil from other people are used only to marry and birth children. For Silas, who knows he is a boy and is also autistic, fitting into the image of a good, obedient wife is a nightmare. When he fails his only attempt at getting out of the arranged marriage prepared for him by his parents, he is sent to Braxton - a school for women with Veil sickness, that supposedly drives them mad. But is the illness real or just another way to control those who misbehave?

This book is messed up. Like, seriously messed up. Sure, there is graphic gore and body horror but the real messed up part is the system Silas finds himself to be a part of. He and the girls of Braxton can either submit and let the cis men control them or disappear from the school never to be heard from again. Both of those options seem like a death sentence but how are you supposed to fight if nobody who could do something is on your side? Throughout the book, we are accompanied by dread and helplessness. Every time a character does something out of the line, the tension reaches its peak. You fear what will happen if they get caught. You are afraid for them even if they aren't doing anything that's considered wrong. Desperation leads Silas to consider terrible things many, many times. This is a story about young people who fight the system not out of their own choice, but out of the lack of it. In many cases, succumbing means death or suffering either way, so it's better to go down fighting.

I really liked Silas as the main character. He was terrified and anxious and he had every reason to be. He was also strong and smart and I really loved how his passion for medicine made him act calm and collected, because it was something he had confidence in. The rest of the characters, however, didn't seem that fleshed out. It's clear that Andrew Joseph White is more of a plot author than a character author and I know this is how many people love their books, but unfortunately, I prefer character-driven stories. This is a personal preference but to me, the rest of the characters seem to just be there. Daphne, for example, didn't have much going on outside of being Silas' love interest. The characters were okay, just not very memorable to me and I had the same book with the author's other book.

When it comes to worldbuilding, it was a bit messy at the time and I didn't feel like it was explained that well but I vaguely understood it, so it didn't pose a problem for me. I really like real historical settings with magical elements and this story fits perfectly into that description. It has mediums and ghosts and people who put all that magic under their strict societal rules. What else is there to want?

The writing style flowed very well and there were a lot of lovely quotes that I wanted to highlight. I love how Andrew's writing can go from profound lines to visceral gore in no time.

All in all, I think this book is another great success by this author and he is slowly becoming an auto-buy author for me. The grips I had with it were mostly based on personal preferences and I'm sure a lot of people out there are not gonna mind them. I do recommend checking the trigger warnings before going into this one because it is raw and heavy and touches upon many topics that can be upsetting or triggering.

did someone say queer feminist victorian asylum novel with ghosts?

i believe in queer characters who should be kept away from sharp objects and have a homicidal streak supremacy. and angry ghosts. really angry ghosts.

i was so lucky (i sold my soul to the devil) to get an arc of this wonderful book, after i had gotten an arc of andrew joseph white’s debut, hell followed with us, last year. meaning my expectations were set high.

this book is an exploration of society’s need to ‘cure’ those who refuse to fall in line and victorian-era psychiatry as tools of oppression, told through the perspective of an autistic trans boy, silas. it takes place in a victorian england, where the veil between the living and the dead is thinning, and those with purple eyes are able to communicate with spirits.

this book was at times frustrating to read – how painful it is to read about something as true as the treatment of people, especially women, in the psychology field. how easy it is to put yourself in the shoes of people who dared show more emotion than allowed, who society deemed had to be fixed in order to become the perfect wife or, what they considered, a normal person. how easy it is to imagine the fear and exasperation they must have felt, knowing they would have to be broken down into pieces in order to be cured, and that no one believes them – they are simply mad. the way the fictional ‘veil sickness’ is described hits extra hard, because it relates to things like female hysteria and lobotomies and doctors with no real knowledge of what they’re doing, actively harming people in the name of research or rehabilitation. how bitter it feels to read about men thinking they can take and destroy what they like, because they believe they own everything.

and how angry this made me feel. the dehumanisation described made me want to just jump into the book and slap certain characters.

because the characters feel so real.

the characterisation is extremely well done – the main character, silas’, personality and interests influences the writing style and metaphors used. silas is an autistic trans boy and his special interest is surgery, so that means that the story is told through this surgical lens – he has a very clear voice.

your honour, he is real to me.

the side characters also shine through, with their own and very distinct personalities. i am absolutely obsessed with how real these characters felt, which allowed me to have shifting opinions about them – how fierce my love for certain characters is, and how fierce my hate for others is.

having already read hell followed with us, i have been searching for a character as relatable as benji. boy did i find it!

listen,

listen!

i was highlighting a passage on every page, just sitting there telling my invisible audience just how me this screamed. in ways this is a very dark book, tackling serious issues. it’s heartbreaking and frustrating and disgusting. it takes place in an alternate victorian england, far from modern society, but still, in the midst of this and despite the distance, the main character hits closer to home in a way none other character has ever done.

and i think it is so important that readers get to see reflections of themselves in the books they read.

this book had some extra insane and emotional scenes and i can’t wait for the world to see them, so we can scream about it together. (*that* scene).

i truly don’t know what kind of witchcraft is going on, because white’s books always have the most stunning covers with the best titles.

having now read two of white’s books, i knew a bit what to expect from this book – the characterisation, the unmistakable writing style, the body horror (one of the best subgenres of horror imo), the fierce characters and strong themes – which is why, with only two released books, he stands strong as one of my favourite authors (he just knows how to write horror – the genre wouldn’t exist without its transgressiveness, and he gets that), and i can’t wait for what he releases in the future.

thanks to netgalley for giving me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

cw: graphic violence, sexual assault, medical gore, transphobia, ableism, medical abuse

I don't even know where to begin with this review, because this book was incredible! It had all of my favorite aspects of horror: ghosts, gore, terrible people, and medical history.

Silas is an incredible MC, and I loved being inside of his mind. The way he thought of everything from a medical side was fascinating because of his main goal to be a trained surgeon. Being diagnosed with Veil Sickness reminded me a lot of Hysteria from medical history, so it was really fun to read White's depiction of female's being "treated" aka studied and made to believe they're crazy. I really wish we got more background on the Headmaster and his wife - that would be fun short story.

Silas' relationship with his brother George was heartwarming at first, and then the plot twist!? Where is George after the ending!?

Daphne is such a sweet partner to Silas, and I was a little hesitant when they first met, but she was the support system that Silas needed and I am so thrilled they found each other!

I cannot wait to buy this book for a few friends for Christmas - yes I am already adding it to my gift lists.

Thanks NetGalley and PeachTree for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A Fantasy Horror that immediately haunts you in the best way, sucking you in to the world and refusing to let go as you turn for “just one more page, just one more chapter” to see what comes next.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is about girls, transphobia and ableism. It’s about men and friendships and family and death. It’s about forging your future, when the world is against you, about screaming, punching, fighting your way out because that’s the only option left. It’s about murder. Rape. Monsters who aren’t very different from the ones we see today. This book is about how society sees those who are different from the standard mold, especially the actions of privileged, cis men. I would say this book handles much more serious topics than Hell Followed With Us, and to a much larger extent, so please, please, keep that in mind while reading.

As a transmasc autistic teen (not to mention a big history lover), I loved The Spirit Bares It’s Teeth. It WAS very heavy at times, and I found myself having to put it down and physically walking away so it wouldn’t get too overwhelming.The prose was lovely, as well as the description. Unlike in Hell Followed With Us, I felt like I could actually get to know all the characters and their personalities, despite the large cast, and of course, my little classics heart was always bound to love Daphne, with our shared love of Ovid. The plot took a while to take place, but when it did, it moved quickly with its high stakes. The worldbuilding was solid enough, perhaps a little vague at times, but the historical snippets of informations was really fun to read. THE BLACK PAGES!! I loved the stream-of-consciousness style in the black pages which makes sense, when you think about it, and I don’t know what it was about it, but my heart was thumping and three times the rate whenever I came across any of them. And Silas. I loved Silas, with his careful, medical gaze, and the rabbit metaphor. I loved how I could see myself to closely mirrored in his character, how his freedom almost felt like my own.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a swirling potion of deep purples and blood red, the type that shimmers when you get near it, ready to bite bite bite and not let go until it has consumed your entire being. The only type of parasite you would ever want.

Thank you netgalley & Peachtree Teen for providing me with an earc of this.

I wasn't sure if i was interested in it at first because I'm not usually a horror reader but the more i heard about it the more i wanted to read it. So i requested the arc.
Hell followed with us is definitely going up on my tbr .

This book was visceral, saddening & difficult at part but amazing. This was everything i wanted, and everything i didn't know i wanted. It was just amazing.

The rawness of the mc and haunting story keep me engaged for all of it. The writing style helps give the bring life to the voice of the mc which is disgusting, hopeful and overall unique. I loved him so much.
Really enjoyed the spirit bares it's Teeth and definitely recommend but check trigger warnings

Holy hell.

This book.

After Andrew Joseph White's first book, this was already one of my most anticipated of 2024 and he blew it out of the fucking water.

And boy did this book make me feel seen in a way I think I'll be trying to put into words for some time.

White somehow manages to weave a beautiful, hopeful, absolutely disgustingly horrifying narrative that intersects and interrogates issues of women who are seen only as women, and women who are seen as men, and men who are seen as women, and medical abuse and ableism, and bodily autonomy, and intersections of multiple identities, and so much more. The way he allows his characters to feel their rage so viscerally on the page is incredibly cathartic and will be lifesaving for so many teens (and honestly people of all ages who read his book).

I was also so excited as well to be able to read White's first book with an openly autistic MC, and uh, yeah. Wow did I identify with so much of Silas' experiences there. At this point, that was not a surprise to me, but definitely some really powerful and needed validation.

Honestly, I'm mostly sitting here on the porch, having devoured this book in just a few hours, sitting mostly speechless as I try to capture the power of this book in these few paragraphs. All I know is that I won't possibly be able to do it justice, but I'm so incredibly glad this book exists and I hope it gets every bit of attention it deserves.

First of all, a million thank-yous to Netgalley, Peachtree, and Andrew Joseph White for the e-ARC, I am absolutely thrilled that I got the chance to read and review this book. <33

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is by far one of the best books I have read this year. Just as disturbing and powerful as the author’s debut, this book takes place in 1883, London, where people with violet eyes communicate with the dead. The story follows purple-eyed Silas Bell, an autistic trans boy, as he is shipped away to an eerie “finishing school” to become an eligible wife. It is a story of ghosts and magic and mystery, but it is also a commentary on the medical abuse that women, queer people, and neurodivergent people have faced throughout history.

This book definitely isn't for the faint of heart. Like Hell Followed With Us, there is a decent amount of blood and gore described on page. Most of it, in this book, is medical content and body horror. There is also implied and on-page sexual assault, sexism, and transphobia. The author handles these difficult topics well, however, and I never felt like they were being glorified or dramatized. It was more like the author was bringing awareness to very real horrors. The way he described what it was like for Silas to grow up trans and autistic in a time without words for those things was amazing as well, as were the content warnings and the author’s note he provided at the beginning and end of the book.

And the writing. Andrew Joseph White is an incredible author, and it shows in absolutely every word of this book; The descriptions, the medical-related metaphors, the emotions. This is a story packed with fury and grief and vengeance, but also with hope and friendship and belonging. The characters are fierce and powerful and vividly unique, and I adored Silas and Daphne and Mary and Isabella more than I can say. I saw myself reflected in parts of all of them—Mary’s anger, Isabella’s grief and fear, Silas’s rabbit.

Overall, this book was spectacular, a gorgeous blend of ghosts and power and horror and history all filled with beautiful writing and raw emotion. If you can handle the darker subject matter, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Andrew Joseph White continues to blow readers away with his upcoming sophomore novel, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth.

To put it bluntly: this book makes you uncomfortable in the best way possible. It is thought provoking and challenging. I could not put this book down. When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about the next time I would be able to read more of it.

Silas, our autistic trans MC, is one of the best main characters I’ve had the pleasure of reading in past year. Silas’ story practically LEAPS off the page, grabs you by the throat and says “Pay extra attention to me!” Without giving too much away, Silas has to go through hell and back to fight for a chance at living his true identity. With the help of Daphne, this proves to be much more complicated than they thought it would be.

My FAVORITE issues this book touches on: autism representation, trans representation, and mental health representation. Andrew Joseph White’s writing makes you THINK. His story telling is so well done that you can feel in your bones the full effect the story is going to have on you within reading the first few pages of the narrative. How he writes autism quite literally makes me feel seen, understood, loved, and appreciated.

This is one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. It’s been two days since I finished it and cannot stop thinking about it. Thank you to Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel + Ink and Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

First, a massive thank you to Netgalley Peachtree Teen, and Andrew Joseph White for this e-arc. I owe you my life.

To articulate the way I feel about this book is akin to parsing out a translation from a language I don't know. I find myself grasping at words, feelings, pictures, anything, and all of it falls short. I absolutely LOVED Hell Followed With Us, and yet I think The Spirit Bares It's Teeth might beat that???

This book follows Silas, a young autistic trans man living in a magical variant of the Victorian era. In this world, there is a veil between the living and the dead, and sometimes children are born with the capacity to interact with and manipulate that veil, to commune with those beyond. Silas is one such boy, but he is uninterested in spirits, in his words "I wanted the soul while it was still attached to the body, when it still thrummed with life." He, inspired by his doctor brother and unsanctioned visits to the operating theater, is a student of science and medicine, yearning for the day that he is able to live openly as himself and as a surgeon.

Instead, following an incident wherein he attempts to steal documentation that would allow him to do so, he is brought to Braxton's Finishing School and Sanitarium. The school operates under the claim that some young women who were born with that gene which allows them to manipulate the veil fall subject to Veil Sickness. The sickness is described as an ailment of the mind, having symptoms akin to hysteria and Braxton's exists as a place to experiment with various treatments. Here, Silas is only referred to by his dead name, he is threatened and harmed by the headmaster and his wife, and, perhaps most importantly he uncovers a web of deceit and abuse after one of the girls disappears overnight.

Despite being a fantastical horror, it's obvious that White did his research into the history of medical treatment for anyone society deemed "other." The layers of ableism, abuse, taunts, and medical experimentation are (pardon my pun) very well fleshed out - multiple times during my reading of this I found myself gasping aloud, flinching in horror, gripping the nearest surface until my knuckles turned white. Some part of me felt that if I turned away, I would be complicit.

In the midst of this, there is hope, friendship romance. A beating heart to encourage me to keep reading, to see them through to the other side no matter what. The moments between Silas and Daphne and the begrudging friendship between him and Mary were so real to me. Their relationships were bright, vivid against the bleak situations they faced.

Sometimes, that is enough.

This book took me longer than usual to read because it was a lot to digest. I love Andrew Joseph White, and am fully convinced I will devour every work he publishes. Now: the story. This was DARK!!! Horror in YA is so hard to come by and this delivered. I loved the complex dynamics between the people in this "School" it was so intriguing. I am a sucker for a good forbidden love trope so this was delightful. The PLOT TWISTS?? Immaculate. Every horror fan needs to pick this up.

This might be my favorite book of the year! I loved everything about it--the plot, the characters, the writing. Silas is one of my new favorite characters. The horror actually scared me! The creepy, mysterious vibes were so cool.

After loving Hell Followed With Us, I was so excited to dive into The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, and the book certainly did not disappoint!

The entire cast of characters seemed well enough flushed out; there were a couple of characters, the groundskeeper specifically, that I would've loved to learn more about their background, but only because of how interesting I found them.

The dynamic between Daphne and Silas had me rooting for them from the get-go. Their romance had a backseat to the main storyline, but I still found myself aching whenever Silas would take a moment and reflect on everything he was feeling for Daphne.

The Victorian aspect, while there were some liberties taken, only enhanced the story in my eyes. The world building was wonderful, and being able to take a glimpse at what life was like for a woman living in this time was needed with the way the story progressed.

Counting down the days until AJW's next book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Peachtree for the e-arc!

The cover is amazing with the imagery and coloring. Right from the start there is a warning on what is to come and honestly I was a little scared but happy that it was there. This book is historical fiction so the setting and background have actual history behind it which made me intrigued with this book in the first place as this has the first autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting.

The book is about London in the early 1880's where the Veil between the living and dead is thin. Certain people with Violet eyes are able to connect to the veil, however the women with the Violet eyes are condemned. We follow Silas Bell who is a sixteen year old boy being forced to present as the girl the world insists that he is. After a marriage engagement goes awry, Silas is told they have Veil Sickness and is forced to go to a school to "cure" that. Things are not what they seem behind closed doors of Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium.

I honestly loved this book so much that I would scream it off rooftops. Finishing the book I felt vindicated along with Silas. As someone who is queer and nonbinary, this book was a bit close to home and honestly frightening with how society is moving at its current pace. I was not sure what I was going to expect with the characters and storyline at first as I was worried that with it being historical fiction, the story would head towards a violent end. Overall the pacing and storyline was very good, the writing was fantastic and I felt the medical horror was done at a decent pace and was not too much all at once.

As someone who doesn't do a lot of horror, Andrew Joseph White's books are the few times I am excited to read anything in the horror genre. Like with Hell Followed With Us, the descriptions are so well done and gruesome I found myself with my jaw dropped so many times.
Heavy emphasis on checking out White's CW as medical terminology and gore is what makes this book shine but can be a lot for some readers.

There is a certain outline to the Feminist Victorian Asylum Novel™. Our protagonist, whose every problem stems from being a Woman in the late 19th Century, is dragged off to Bedlam because she looked at a man the wrong way. The audience of course understands that this was wrong, and an awful violation of autonomy, and thank goodness that medical and societal understandings of mental health have come so far. But there is an agreeability to these protagonists. It is crucial that she has done nothing objectionable from the perspective of the 21st Century audience - after all, she is our eyes, and what good are eyes if the reader spends the whole story resenting the ones they've been given? Our protagonist has done nothing wrong. The other women locked up around her, I suppose they didn't either; but our eyes cannot be the ones who felt attraction to the wrong kind of person, or looked out from a brain that processes the world in the wrong way, or saw enough that was already wrong long before they became the next victim. It's much easier to see the worst of humanity when you can say with absolute certainty, 'I don't deserve this'.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is not that story.

I feel like there will be two camps of opinion on this book. One will be 'this is upsetting because of the surgery(ies)'. The other will be 'this is upsetting because everything short of the surgery(ies) has happened to me over and over for all my life'. And I loved it because it speaks to both past and present while understanding this as impossible if the reader's eyes are covered. The systems of power that trap our transmasc autistic protagonist in-universe have such perfect descendants in our current age, where this book will likely be banned from high school libraries and the teenagers who need it before it even reaches those shelves. The adults who feign concern for vulnerable queer and neurodivergent children, just to corner them when they're most desperate and tear them apart. The doctors far more interested in cutting up biological 'deviances', to root out how to control future populations. The former women's rights activist, who decides in the end that it's so much easier to smile and parrot back all the most toxic messages of patriarchy.

Ghosts as vessels not of the buried past, but perpetual relivings - often of the worst violences imaginable - are one of my favorite horror tropes for a reason (why yes, I am about to go rewatch Crimson Peak yet again after posting this review, thank you for asking). This book's worldbuilding of spirits and violet eyes works so well for this reason. What is every generation of downtrodden and abused queer folks before us, if not a collective fury for us to witness and summon now? Does the world not seek to gaslight and violate our very identities out of the fear that we might else be legitimate? Colonialism is a ghost, ableism is a ghost, patriarchy and transphobia are ghosts. So too, are their innumerable victims. Which are we letting whisper in our ears? Whose headstones will we put on display?

I opened this book wanting to get an idea of what it was about without necessarily wanting to read it next; there were other books I was eyeing from my tbr lists. Before I knew it, it was 1 am and I had to sleep and finish the rest the next day. I was completely unprepared for how it swept me up and enveloped me in the story. It was brutal and heartbreaking, yet tender and loving in equal measures. While I am not a trans man or transmasc, I understood Silas' struggles with navigating an unkind society as a neurodivergent person and the expectation of fulfilling a rigid gender role. I grew to care about him deeply and kept wishing for the happiness he deserves, even while the circumstances became increasingly dire. Andrew did an amazing job crafting realistic and lovable characters, but the injustice hurt even more when it inevitably happened.

One thing I liked about this book was how it reminded me of an all-time favourite of mine - Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. Through the characters' emotions, I thought I could also feel the authors' own feelings towards a society that is unjust and intolerant. The desperation, confusion, and rage - to quote Zetian from Iron Widow, they are all "utterly relatable."

I think it is safe to say that this book has made Andrew an auto buy author for me, and I will definitely get my own copy when it is released.

Thank you to netgalley for providing the e-arc!

I don’t even know where to begin. First, I love that the author puts a note of warning of triggers at the beginning and even says it’s ok if you can’t finish. There was graphic medical descriptions, but it was the implied horrors that were harder at times. Andrew Joseph White did a wonderful job in the way he handled them. I loved Hell Followed With Us and I loved this as well. Mr. White is now added to the list of authors who I will automatically buy anything that they write.

you guys, think i found my new favourite book of 2023. this was so good, definitely right up my alley. the world building was exceptional and i was so invested in the lore, mechanics of how this world operated. i really enjoyed how beautiful the writing was, including how visceral the imagery could get. the body horror was utter perfection. the characters were the type you found yourself rooting for especially when shit hit the fan towards the end. i just love this so much and can not wait till it comes out so i can own a physical copy.

many thanks to netgalley and the publishers for allowing me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.