Five school friends descend on an ancient Japanese mansion looking for the thrill of a haunted mansion. They get more than they bargain for in this novel by Cassandra Khaw..

There's so much going for this novela. Kwah sets an intricately developed world for an immersive reading experience. Interweaving the Japanese cultural significance of the yokai with Cat's recent mental breakdown is a lovely juxtaposition. However, due to the story's short length, I felt the actual horror story took a backseat to the relationships between the characters. Again, because of the short length, I didn't feel like I understood the characters enough to have so much focus on them. II was there for the horror story, and I felt like I was cheated a bit.


I received and ARC of this book in return for a free and fair review.

This is a terrifying and chilling story that brings Japanese mythology to life. Set in an ancient mansion with a dark past, a group of college friends gather for a weekend of drinking and celebration. What should have been a joyous weekend celebrating the marriage of Nadia and Faiz turns into a gruesome nightmare when they awaken the spirits of the house.

From the cover, we know that we are in for a wild and horrifying adventure and Khaw does not disappoint. This is by far one of the scariest novellas I’ve read this year and I loved every single sentence. Khaw’s writing is quiet and almost delicate but packs a massive punch. The characters within are college friends who have grown both incredibly close and also far apart. Brough together for the wedding between two of them, stresses of the last year threaten to ruin the mood of the weekend but politeness and booze both help to smooth things over. It’s one friend’s massive amount of money that allows the friends access to such an ancient and haunted home, but it’s that same wealth that creates such friction between them. Our narrator Cat has recently experienced a mental health episode that may or may not be coloring her version of past events so her narration may or may not be reliable. And while the friends seem like such a close group-they were all gifted first class flights to Japan to stay in an ancient mansion that required government permits to visit, there is an unbearable tension between them. As their secrets unfold, the secrets of the house reveal a devastatingly dark history.

A horrifying, haunted mansion story that will chill you to the bones, Nothing But Blackened Teeth, is a must read for all horror fans.
Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

This was one of the creepiest books that is perfect for the Halloween season. It's about a group of friends who think an abandoned mansion is the perfect place for a wedding venue but there is a ghost bride lurking with a black smile. I really enjoyed this novel which was short and easy to read. It has about 120 pages so you can read this in one sitting. I loved the Japanese folklore blend into the book as you learn a new folklore that you probably would have never heard about without reading this. I enjoyed the author's writing and how they made the story flow and have everything perfectly set up in 100 pages instead of 300-500. The setting was wonderfully done in a way that even I was creeped out from and I enjoyed the conflicts thrown in this book.

There are many characters in this book and if I remember correctly it was written from all of their povs including the ghost bride. If not, I just remember it being written in prose form which the author nailed as they got all the vivid details. There weren't any side characters and the antagonist of the story was the best. For the characters, I wish they were well written just like how the story was written as the characters didn't really have a character development in the book. There wasn't really romance to look at except some flirting going back and forth but this story shows the theme of friendship and betrayal. There is so much betrayal with all the friends and some who have developed and grew their friendship in a way.

The ending was well done with this novella and I didn't expect it to be like that. I have to say that this is probably one of the scariest books I have read which means I might never pick up a Stephan King book. I just had a minor problem with the characters for this book but overall this was a great read. I don't know which book to relate this to as I don't often read scary stories but I think this is a great Halloween read!

I have chills. The writing and prose was amazing, and the pacing was done well. This was a story I couldn’t have stopped reading if I tried. It hit the tropes we all want in a horror and also obliterated the fourth wall. My only issue is I wish it was a bit less meta and we could have learned more about the characters and their history.

This was one of the scariest horror novels I have ever consumed! It was full of creepy twists and turns and wonderful writing that really put me in the same what-the-f**k-is-happening headspace that the characters seemed to be in most of the time. I do not know anything about Japanese folklore yet I still found this book easy to read and understand. It made me curious about a lot of the lore but no research was required to find this amazing novella creepy and terrifying.

I also really liked the group of protaganists. That early to mid 20s age range isn't too common in stories, I find, and the way they all fit together--high school friends, former lovers, friends of friends--made for a really interesting group to be stuck in a haunted house together.

I would recommend this to older teens and adults who are looking for something bone chilling and a little different

4..5
This book was so beautifully written and the only reason it didn't get 5 stars was because it was too short. The prose is rich and melodic and I loved it. Gorgeous setting, but very unlikable characters. But that's okay, you don't need to like the characters to get a good ghost story out of them.

That cover is beautiful but terrifying, which is also an apt description of this novella. It’s a haunted house story with a uniquely Japanese setting, but also an exploration of mental health.

“One girl each year. Two hundred and six bones times a thousand years. More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own shining bones.
All for one girl as she waited and waited.
Alone in the dirt and the dark.”


Five friends have arrived at a crumbling Heian mansion for a destination wedding unlike any other. Local legend says that after a groom died on the way to his wedding there, the bride was buried alive in the foundation of the house in hopes her groom would one day show up, with a new woman being buried alive in the walls every year. Nadia, our modern bride, has always wanted to be married in a haunted house (me reading this: WHAT NO?!?!), and the prospect of spending time telling ghost stories and exploring the abandoned mansion is exactly her nuptial ideal. But the ghost that inhabits the house may have a different idea…

Cat, the narrator, has spent a year battling with depression, and her mental illness informs a lot of the way we see the story. The whole group is a tangle of complicated and toxic relationships, between jealousies over past relationships and slights, though all the messy backstory isn’t explained in detail. Suffice it to say that everyone is feeling salty about everyone else for their own reasons. Cat is particularly hurt by Phillip, the kind of guy who still wears his varsity jacket unironically, but whose family money has made this trip possible. Cat and Nadia are particularly at odds, since at one point Cat suggested Nadia and Faiz, her husband-to-be, would be better breaking up. Faiz, frankly, seems to just be along for the ride.

“But the interior didn’t smell like it’d had people here, not for a long, long time, and smelled instead like such old buildings do: green and damp and dark and hungry, hollow as a stomach that’d forgotten what it was like to eat.”


This isn’t one of those books where the story is being told from a remote distance. Instead, you’re in the middle of things with Cat, confused and frightened and, well, almost seduced. She feels a certain resonance with the tale of the dead bride, so maybe that’s the reason why she’s the first to notice that things aren’t quite right, though she’s reluctant to bring it up as her “friends” would just dismiss it as, at best, signs of her mental illness, or at worst, sour grapes. It’s Lin, the last of the five to arrive, who speaks the reader’s thoughts out loud – “this is the part where we all die”- a sort of fourth-wall breaking that adds a dose of humor and reality to the story. It’s very much needed because the prose is heavy and ornate, bordering on pretentious but somehow also gorgeously atmospheric and immersive. The story is inventive, with a mostly queer and diverse group of characters, and it knows what tropes to keep and which ones to invert. The tension builds bit by bit (bone by bone?) expertly until it reaches its shocking conclusion. I wanted a little more from the epilogue, but ultimately felt satisfied. This isn’t the sort of book where you’ll leave understanding everything that just happened, but it works.

“This is the problem with horror movies:
Everyone knows what’s coming next but actions have momentum, every decision an equal and justified reaction. Just because you know you should, doesn’t mean that you can, stop.”


Overall, a quick and atmospheric read, and definitely recommended for fans of haunted house tales.

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This was nothing like I expected. I loved this short little horror story. Highly recommend!

Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

A phenomenal novella that focuses on Japanese folklore, yokai, and a haunted house. This is one of those books where every line is like poetry. Genuinely scary imagery with some lasting depictions. I'll be reading more by Cassandra Khaw.

I thought this was good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped I would. Part of this is due to the fact that it's a novella - I felt like it was just over too quickly to really connect with the story and characters. However, being a novella, it is a fast read! The story is somewhat bizarre, to the point where I'm not entirely sure what I read at times. It's also not as much of a ghost story as I had expected, and I finished the book thinking "huh, that's it?"

The descriptions felt overdone at times to the point of feeling a little pretentious. This actually makes me wonder if the author's writing style leans more towards literary horror (like how I'd classify Stephen Graham Jones). If that's the case, then I'm not terribly surprised that it didn't work as well for me since I don't particularly enjoy this type of writing. I'll also note that there are some pretty disgusting descriptions and moments in case you're sensitive to this sort of thing (I'm usually not, but some of these scenes got to me a bit).

I feel like I don't really know or like any of the characters. The main character, Cat, is alright. She's loyal to her friends, even if they don't necessarily deserve it. I did feel like I was missing her backstory while reading this. Several things were alluded to, but I felt like I was just dropped in to an ongoing story and was missing something. However, I did appreciate how some of the characters were self aware with horror tropes.

I really liked the idea of this haunted house, but I probably just needed more time to really explore this in order to enjoy it more. I know most of this review sounds negative, but I'm actually glad that I tried this out. I was super intrigued by the premise (and let's be real, that cover - major props to the person who designed that because it's so creepy!). I also wanted to try something out by this author because I've heard some good things.

While this didn't work quite as well for me as I wanted, I would still recommend it if you're looking for a quick horror read or if you tend to like more literary writing!

My video review can be seen on my booktube channel (around minutes 0:24-3:15 of this video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pXp6DvIA6I

It’s like the author didn’t know what they were trying to do with the book. They tried to make the characters super relatable by making them curse and say ‘dude’ and ‘bitch’ all the time. They didn’t want the book to be like cliché horror films, so they made the characters say it outright. Philip’s the white boy next door, the perfect hero to the story, so of course he’s not going to be that. Nadia is the popular good looking mean girl. Lin is the comic relief guy with the most common sense and Cat is the bisexual depressed one, so ‘ of course we’ll be the first ones to die’.

There’s bit of what people would call dark humour, but I’d argue that it’s just dry out of place kinda humour. Suicide and depression were treated casually and jokingly. The whole thing looks like it came right from the early 2000s.

It’s kinda cringey and ridiculous. Breaking fourth wall like that was so unnecessary and it’s mostly what broke the spell for me. I wasn’t spooked in the slightest. The author was so hellbound on trying to convince you the book is not like other horror books that the story itself suffered from it and lacked in several aspect. They fucking watched a man die without trying to help him because ‘we’re in the third act there’s no getting out of this, he’s dead’. The fuck??

I don’t know what to do with this. It’s a pretty short book, so the pacing is very off. Not much backstory on the friend group and their dynamics, except that basically everyone in it has dated one another at some point, apart from Cat and Nadia who are literally at each others throat everytime they interact. Girl on girl hate is really an outdated concept that needs to go. The Japanese folklore that’s supposed to play a big role in the story isn’t really explained. The build up is pretty non existent and there is no plot twist. At all. Nothing. Big disappointment.

Full review in the 10/13/21 edition of Real Change News.

Cassandra Khaw’s new horror novella, “Nothing But Blackened Teeth,” is a quick read that will leave you captivated and gripping your book or e-reader. With the weather in the Pacific Northwest turning chilly and dreary, this is the perfect tale for those who embrace the season and Halloween in particular.

Khaw never wastes a word or a sentence. She masterfully constructs a breakneck story in 160 pages. Because most readers are familiar with the horror genre as a whole, Khaw doesn’t need to do too much expository writing; she simply sets the scene through conversation and interactions among the cast and then barrels through the plot.

“Nothing But Blackened Teeth” follows a group of 20- and 30-somethings as they explore an ancient, abandoned Heian-era mansion in rural Japan. The mansion is a cliche set up for a horror scenario and familiar to aficionados of movies like “The Grudge” and “The Wailing.” The group of characters also echo tropes including a young bride, her groom, an all-American and newly ordained priest, a jokester who refuses to take things seriously and our narrator, Cat, the “weird” one who didn’t think she’d even survive long enough to be on the trip.

Cat’s main battle is choosing between surviving — especially as a queer and mentally ill woman — and diving into dangerous situations to try and save her friends. That battle is at the heart of the story.

Khaw masterfully uses “Nothing But Blackened Teeth” to embrace everything horror fans love. It is character- and action-driven and has a surprising amount of description in such a short page count. The language Khaw uses has teeth and makes the novella impossible to put down. The words she picks are intentionally vicious and vibrant. Khaw manages to write gore without being gratuitous, and the creepiness of the setting wraps around you like a dark, damp blanket. When you finish reading, you may catch yourself looking at shadows just a little bit longer.

This book can be read in an hour , and that is a good thing because the story is not compelling. It tells of a haunted house in Japan where a ghost bride waits for her groom but he was killed before the wedding. It also contains girlfriends to keep her company. It's not remotely scary, and the story is hard to follow. The five Americans who travel to Japan are not likeable, and I don't care what happens to them. I would give it one star.

Absolutely terrifying -- the perfect one-sitting October read. I will definitely be seeking out more of Khaw's work!

Have you ever fallen so in love with a cover? Even though the cover of Nothing But Blackened Teeth terrifies me, I love it so much. I think the two things I loved the most about this novella were the character dynamics and the Japanese folklore. The action of the story, haunted mansion and ghost brides, would be enough to thrill. But where Nothing But Blackened Teeth presents intrigue is in the character dynamics. There are secrets between these 'friends'. All the flames and loves we think we've put out. The history between people that seem to haunt us.

And amidst this tension between the characters at the core is a setting of danger lurking beneath the surface. While I wish that there was a little more space devoted to the ending - especially with all the revelations - I still enjoyed this novella.

This novella is insanely good and had me riveted to this story!!!!!! I usually don't read novellas because their not long enough in my opinion but this one is amazing!!!! I highly recommend this book

A surprise elopement in a haunted house in Japan... what could go wrong?

Phillip, the all-American, blonde white boy with an inheritance to blow invites all of his friends to a mysterious haunted house in Japan to help his friends Faiz and Nadia elope. Cat, a queer Asian, feels a bit left out of her friend group because of her recent mental health struggles--but she's still there for them to celebrate their special day.

Then Cat starts hearing a whisper in her ear. Suenomatsuyama nami mo koenamu.

This is my second try at Cassandra Khaw's stories, and I'm so glad I persisted. I didn't have the best time with The All-Consuming World, but Nothing but Blackened Teeth was exactly what I needed to recover from it. I actually want to re-read All-Consuming World now to see it with a fresh set of eyes.

Khaw has a very original writing style. It's purple prose, but with a tad extra. Its poetical, and perfect for the ghostly, haunted house vibe. They also take the "descending into madness" trope and flip it on its head--everyone seems to be descending into madness but the expected character herself, Cat.

Thank you to Net Galley, Tor Nightfire, and Cassandra Khaw for the chance to read this advanced review copy! Nothing but Blackened Teeth releases on October 19th.

3.75 stars

Spooktacular, graphic, and ominous, this Japanese-inspired dark novella was a thrill from start to finish. (I just wish it had been longer.)

Concept: ★★★★
Sense of unease: ★★★★★
Characters: ★★★★
Writing: ★★★★★

Nothing But Blackened Teeth comes out on October 19!

First off, if you love horror at all, then I think this title speaks for itself. What horror fan would pass up the chance to—at a minimum—try out this novel? Nothing But Blackened Teeth screams to be read. Literally.

So I came for the title. Then, once I read the blurb, I was ALL IN for this concept. A group of young people meet up for an impromptu wedding in a Heian ruin that's known to be the origin of a traumatizing and sinister undead bride?? Say no more. Add in the fact that every single person in this toxic friend group has issues with one another and are a powder keg of drama waiting to happen?? Really, say no more, I'm already reading it.

This novella comes in hot at just barely over 100 pages, and at times it felt like a fully fleshed out novel and at times it felt like it was only a few pages. I would have gladly read an entire novel on these characters and this setting, so my one main gripe about this short version of the tale is that it felt like it was only a teaser to the real thing.

Don't get me wrong—it has an official beginning, exciting middle, and final end. It's the full monty. Butttttttttt. I felt like we snipped out a lot of juicy options in order to keep this uber-slim final product.

Come for the concept. Stay for the beautifully rendered friend group on the brink of implosion. Leave with the unformed sense of lingering loss and unease.

A great read for this year's spooky season!

Thank you to TOR for an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

If you enjoyed the Tsuzumi Oni arc of Demon Slayer, haunted mansions, more slasher than scary,, and excessive purple prose, this is the book for you.

In this short novella, Cassandra Khaw does an incredible job of building messy characters, all of whom you don't particularly like — a refreshing take on horror, where you're not that sad to see any of them go if it comes to it. Even our main character, Cat, is unlikeable, if not the most pragmatic of the group. While I enjoyed the general drama of the group, at times it had me rolling my eyes, wondering how, realistically, this group of friends had ever gotten into this situation in the first place.

Khaw's brand of "horror" is less thriller and more gore, at times taking away from the innate atmospheric terror going on in the background. A haunted Japanese manor is not the first of its kind, but the wonky spatial play and the laughing paintings were incredible touches. But this is a character-driven story, not a horror-driven one. The characters waffle and the reader is never sure what's real or not, driving the plot with their own prejudices, egos, and drama.

I was hoping for me, honestly. This is such a good premise, but the purple prose was hard to parse through and the characterizations were frustrating to read. Not a horror novel I'll end up recommending, and not worth the gore at its core.

This felt like a glimpse inside of a longer novel. We got a snippet of a night (or a few hours) amongst people who don’t like each other very much and probably never did attending an event they don’t want to be at and no one wants them at in a place they chose to be “scary” but not too scary. All in all, it was forgettable, confusing and felt incomplete.