This was such a creepy novella! Following Cat and a group of her friends, Nothing But Blackened Teeth tells the story of the horrors they encounter while staying at a Japanese mansion. I really liked the descriptions of the ghost: I almost wish I had saved this for a October. The only thing I had a problem with was that the first part of the novella mostly dealt with the really complicated relationships between all of the characters. I didn’t really care about the tension between them all that mostly stemmed from them all having dated each other at some point or another. So the first part dragged a bit before the ghost actually appeared, but once she did, I really enjoyed it.

This Japanese cultural horror novella is a hauntingly sharp stab of a read. In embellished prose, yet so stark with horrific elements, it is most expressive from the radically piercing cover to its livid content.

A handful of young adult friends are heading for an all-expenses-paid trip by one of them, as a gift to two of them who are getting married. Friends since school times, their group dynamic is complex due to some relationship baggage and former relationship contention.

Their destination is an abandoned imperial palace as the backdrop for the occasion, a once favored venue for beautiful weddings. There is a dark story though that surrounds the place that is built upon 206 bones for every year of the past 1000 years.

When the friends arrive and explore the 2 story palace and its many rooms, the voice of an ancient ghost lures them to play a game the ancient samurai played once to see who was the bravest.

“In one room sat terracotta monks, head weighted with an ancient regret. In another, dolls with mouths lacquered black. In another, books, or at least the corpses of books. The volumes were mulch, eaten by insects, infested; edifices, turgid with egg chambers, writhed from the rot. “

This leads them to The Hitobashira ritual, the deciding factor on how this game will go. The question is, how does this fit in with the planned wedding, and what have the ghosts in mind for these friends.

A poetic approach to horror makes this cerebral modern haunted house story a feast for the senses.

***

I fell for the cover first - that’s all I can say. Secondly, I was intrigued by the Japanese lore and the old haunted, imperial palace.

This novella reads very modernly and the reader is thrown right into the friend's dynamic. The travel from A to B, in this case, the arrival at the palace to the climax of the story accelerates steady and is very character-driven.

The writing is vastly embellished with expressive prose and I enjoyed this a lot. The author does not hold back on gruesome details, yet it doesn’t feel terrorizing or overly gruesome.

If you enjoy that bit of sizzle and crack in your horror reads, this might be to your taste.

Enjoy!

*Quotes taken from an uncorrected proof

I received a digital copy of this novella from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Thank you.

More of my reviews here:
Through Novel Time & Distance

I love a ghost story that involves real, complicated, messy people and friendships and relationships, and this delivered on that tenfold. I also love the lore of the buried bride. My only complaint is that I feel as though the story could have been longer, should have been longer, so that everything could breathe more and we could get more in depth look at the characters, the house, and the story.

I wanted this to be sooo much better. The concept, the plot, the folklore were all amazing, but it was just too short. Everything happened way too fast—especially since both the main characters and the ghost elements had such long backgrounds. Had this been developed over a hundred or a couple hundred more pages, it could have been perfection. We don’t get time to understand how deep their relationships are or the weight of the ghost story. Disappointing.

Thank you to the publisher for giving me a free e-galley of this book in exchange for feedback.

Since I read this book in e-book form, I didn't realize how short it was until I was well into it. This was a tiny book that I finished in one sitting, right before bedtime, which is maybe not the best time, but I accept the consequences of my choices.

It was a classic haunted-house story that I can easily imagine as an upsetting movie. The settings were fantastic, and if I had to google a few Japanese things, that's good, because now I know a lot more. The web site I found said that ohaguro bettari are upsetting but not dangerous, but that didn't seem to be the case for the one in this book at all.

The writing was first-rate on a sentence level. People will read this book because they want an upsetting Japanese horror story, and they will get exactly what they want from it.

With lush and striking language, Khaw has created a novella that feels weightier than its relatively brief page count. When five estranged friends gather for a wedding ceremony in an abandoned Japanese manor rumored to be contain the bones of thousands of women--well, it's hardly a surprise when things take a turn for the worse. Khaw's rich prose is delightful, but the dread grows steadily until the moment it explodes into disgust and horror. Through her protagonists' own discussions, Khaw is aware of the traditions she is writing in, but Nothing but Blackened Teeth finds fresh life in its cultural influences as well as its ability to deliver ongoing surprises, even when you might think you know where its all headed.

Woven through with themes of mental health and relationships stretched past the breaking point, Khaw's characters face terror both fantastic and tangible. It's a book that wonders whether some things are simply inevitable, carrying its characters to the brink even as it brings the reader on a twisting ride through dark, surreal passageways perhaps better left undisturbed. This novella is a gripping achievement and well worth the time of any horror fan.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a surreal Japanese ghost story-themed nightmare told with lush descriptive language and very spooky imagery. The unreliable narrator, dramatic personalities of the main characters, and strangeness of the set-up occasionally made it difficult to follow the action. This is especially true in the second half when some of the characters begin to speak about their predicament in an almost self-aware way. I think I probably would have liked a little more development of the characters, particularly more about their shared pasts as I think that could have given the ghostly encounters more weight. That said, the book has a real immediacy and the emotions of the characters come through loud and clear.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth tells the story of a group of friends who come to a haunted mansion of sorts in Japan so two of them can get married. Then, all hell breaks loose. A dead bride steals the living bride away. Friends fight over long-ago disputes. And people come apart, literally and physically.

The story is fantastic, but the book barrels along at a clip that doesn’t let up. We meet the characters quickly, then learn immediately how their pasts connect. And then the spooky stuff pours in. What I wanted was more length, more space for details to cook, but what I didn’t receive anything bad either. I just wanted MORE.

If you want to dip into the world of Cass Khaw, give it a go. You’ll end up at the end of this begging for more.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is the story of a group of five “friends” who travel to Japan, as two of them are getting married. Faiz and Nadia are set on having a borderline sacrilegious wedding ceremony an abandoned Heian-era mansion that turns out to be haunted. However, little does the party know that this is a house that yearns for blood. You see, the "friends "are a complicated group who are constantly bickering and fighting, and the house, and the yokai who haunt it don't have time for their crap. The mansion is known for being built on the bones of a bride who took a maiden sacrifice with her for many years. So basically these Ohaguro-Bettari are ready for another sacrifice and the new bride to be will do just nicely.

This was a good ghost story full of Japanese folklore. It was quite atmospheric too. Khaw's writing can be a little dense at times but is always eloquent. There were many lines that I drooled over and wondered "wow, that was such a fascinating way to write that sentence." However, at times I found Khaw's prose to be a tad bit overindulgent and this distracted me from the plot of the story.

This being said, this novella is still worth reading, especially if you're a fan of ghost stories, haunted houses, and Japanese folklore.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for providing me with the eARC.

Also, as many have mentioned, that Ohaguro-Bettari cover is sooooo creepy! Love it!

This book was so fucking scary. What an incredible piece of work. This was a terrifying horror story, truly a work of art in the genre. It twisted common horrors with new concepts that haunt you long after the page.

This book wasn't what I was hoping it would be. Maybe if it were a novel and not a novella it would have gripped me more.

“I hope the house eats you.”

This is a gorgeously written story. It’s dark, edgy, and perfectly grotesque.

Our characters are so very wrong. Our house is so very wrong. And the things that may dwell within it are so very dangerously wrong.

The writing style is blade sharp. Each sentence seems to have been very carefully created in order to cut you right to the heart.

And, at its heart, it’s still a horror story. Ghostly, heartbreaking, and utterly compelling. It stays with you.

5 stars

*ARC via Net Galley

A very scary, ominous and dark horror story. A group of people gather in a reportedly haunted abandoned mansion and encounter some difficulties between themselves and then encounter a more problematic spirit that throws any semblance of normality out the window. If readers aren't entirely familiar with the supernatural folklore that this story draws on to create its terror, they will still find this to be a chilling read.

I really liked the main character, Cat. And, I genuinely liked all the male characters, even though Phillip was pretty douchee. (Can I say that in a review?) I did NOT expect that it would end the way it did. I definitely thought they were all going to die, and Cat would become the new ghost-bride.

The only thing I think could have been improved upon was sometimes, it was slightly confusing what was happening. This is NOT because of the Japanese words within the text... it was more like there was so much description that the creepy doings of the house and the actions of the characters became jumbled together.

I’m not sure if it’s because this is an ARC copy and the formatting needs to be a bit polished up, but the writing style, structure, and voice is so so confusing and I couldn’t follow it. I ended up giving up.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a quickly read ghost story steeped in Japanese and Asian folklore.
"A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company."
Or so the legend is told when a group of friends arrive at the mansion for a wedding and some reminiscing, but not all is right with the friends or with the house as a night that should be for celebration turns into a memorable night of haunting things.

First off, I really enjoyed this novella. There are not a lot of moments I see the word chiaroscuro in my regular life. As much as I enjoyed the story and the amazing literary way it was written, I do think the metaphors and descriptions were a bit...bloated. I wanted more from the ohaguro-bettari and her Yokai gang, but I do commend Khaw for really going all in on the descriptions, and interruptions, that open each scene. The way she weaves the main character's mental health issues with the haunting and the characters' inter-personal issues, can feel a bit blurry and confusing, but I found that seemed almost intentional once I reached the end of the story. Overall, I found Nothing But Blackened Teeth to be a very creepy and visceral novella that I will remember for years to come. I will
be handing this book to every horror fan I know!

Five friends visit an old, haunted Japanese mansion to perform a wedding ceremony for two of their party. They soon find out that the house is glad that they've arrived, and how much of a problem that is about to be for them.

Cassandra Khaw has created an interesting narrative, complex characters, and a scary story all in the space of a novella. In fact, she manages to pack so much into the narrative that the explanatory asides and metaphors take the reader out of the flow of the story more than once. She's also particularly brutal and gory in her descriptions of the house, its monsters, and the group of five. Ultimately, I don't overly enjoy haunted house tales and this one was no exception, but I wouldn't want to discourage anyone who might enjoy a good haunted house story.

I loved the premise of this one, but unfortunately it fell flat for me. I expected far more chills and scares, but the story spent so long on the interpersonal dramas between the characters that I never felt it gave the reader what was promised by the blurb. The pacing was also inconsistent.

This is a book I would recommend to those with specific tastes-- emphasis on tone and atmosphere of a story, rather than grounded characters and plot, and those who love flowery prose. I personally do enjoy the latter but not so much the former, so it didn't work as much for me as Khaw's other novella, however still an enjoyable time and for those looking for spooky "vibes" would do well to check it out.

Semi-estranged ghost-obsessed friends (frenemies?) gather at a haunted mansion for a wedding, and bad things happen. The prose was a bit overwrought for my taste, but Khaw is definitely a master at evoking character and setting. Even in this short read, I felt like I knew exactly who the characters were and the setting was richly horrifying. A definite recommendation for anyone looking for a quick unsettling read.