I was lucky to get an arc of Andrew Joseph White's first novel, Hell Followed with Us, and loved reading it. That's why I was so excited to get an arc for this book through NetGalley!

This book was amazing. Victorian ghosts and medical gore are right up my alley so the setting and plot of this book had me from the first page. Silas was also a character whose perspective I loved reading. His inner thoughts were honestly just as interesting as the action-packed moments of the plot. The way he thinks about himself and the world around him is endlessly engaging.

I'm pretty sure this is a standalone, but I already want more.

Prepare to be angry. Prepare to be disgusted. Prepare to get your heart broken and stiched back together, not neatly but still perfect.

Oh, I enjoyed that book so much! After I've read "Hell Followed With Us" and loved it, "The Spirit Bares Its Teeth" was one of my most anticipated books this year.
At first, I have to be honest, it was a bit difficult to find your way into the story, for it felt like you just jumped into that world without any explanation of it whatsoever. But the more I read, the more I understood it.
It is a deep dive into being trans and autistic, what it means to be a man or a woman and how society tries to make rules about that. It also is a perfect example of how language changes the way we precieve (SPOILER!) for as soon as Silas used she/her pronouns and Daphnes real name it totally changed the way I saw this character.
Even though the plottwists are a little predictable, they aren't less shocking and especially the last 100 pages have the perfect arc of suspense!

Thank you NetGalley for providing an e-ARC of this book!

- thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc to review!

- the fact that my jaw was on the floor reading this the entire time should say a lot. visceral, gutsy, and emotional, Andrew Joseph White delivered a story with a strong autistic protagonist, a story of trans resilience and love, and a story that explores the horrors of women being exploited, and their validation for fighting back against the systems that hold them in chains.

- the exploration of the Veil and the allegory of the rabbit inside Silas made the world surrounding him feel like one big puzzle, with each chapter bringing a new perspective and dimension to the bloody, carnage filled England.

- everything about this book is perfect, and I’m so glad that it has been published into a gory and visceral novel. congrats to White. this book will be one of my favorites for a long time.

- trigger warnings (taken from AJW’s website, since they’re very specific /gen):
Graphic violence
Sexual assault - implied, attempted, and on-page
Medical gore, including an on-page Cesarean section
Transphobia (explicit misgendering, dead-naming, transphobic violence/conversion therapy)
Anti-autistic ableism
Medical/psychiatric abuse, including dubious diagnosis and treatment
Gaslighting and abuse
Minor discussions of miscarriage

This book had me enthralled since the first chapter. I couldn’t put it down. Even though I may not personally understand everything that the main character is going through ( I am not autistic nor a Trans Man ) but I truly aches for everything he went through but I understood the other women he was with and the history that men has put us throughout the years. This book will make you sad yet full of rage of everything that these characters go through all at the same time.

"The worst part about a spirit to me - what makes my heart hurt the most - is that their body takes the form of the worst thing ever done to them. Or the worst thing they ever did. Either one, whatever left the biggest scar on their soul."

Andrew Joseph White is quickly proving himself to have one of the most unique voices in literature. I was fortunate enough to receive an ARC of this book through NetGalley and while it did take me a minute to make my way through it, I read the last half of the book with a ferocity that could not be contained even by my work schedule.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is an absolute masterful blending of genres. It is simultaneously a nuanced queer narrative, a historical fantasy, and a horror novel. Each character in this novel is nuanced and has a rich and complex backstory, even if Silas (and therefore the reader) never gets to know the true depth of it. White does such a good job of making the reader genuinely want good things for Silas and the girls of Braxton's that any tragedy that befalls them hits hard even when you know it is coming.

The body horror here is not nearly as intense as in Hell Followed With Us, but it feels more rooted in Silas' characterization. Even when I wanted to look away because it was gross and made me want to squirm, it felt disingenuous to do so because it was how Silas communicated his emotions and the world around him.

I cannot wait to purchase the physical copy of this book and be able to see how the formatting works in print, especially during the climax. I can't wait to see what White does next because this was an absolutely stellar read for me!

Pre-order THE SPIRIT BARES ITS TEETH by Andrew Joseph White!!!
#ArcReview
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/727063/the-spirit-bares-its-teeth-by-andrew-joseph-white/
Release Date: September 5, 2023

TSBIT is a haunting and visceral YA horror novel that refuses to shy away from the lurid details hidden within the history of medical study. With a cast of queer characters, an actually autistic and trans main character, and enough blood, gore, and mystery to satiate even the hungriest true crime fan, this book will be devoured by scary-movie loving teens and adults alike! It may even inspire you to try out some historical fiction.

As an autistic and trans reader, the representation was excellent. Transgender experiences were discussed with openness and respect. Autistic experiences and behaviors were not mocked, but validated. It's a refreshing and meaningful contribution to modern literature, in a time when the harsher side of history feels more likely to repeat itself.

Wonderful, heartbreaking and gutsplitting prose promises to split you open and sew you back up again in what I'm sure will be an instant hit from this New York Times bestselling author.

Don't miss your chance! Pre-order today, and be the first of your friends to peel apart a spectral haunting that you *will* fall in love with, even as it lives in your nightmares.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/727063/the-spirit-bares-its-teeth-by-andrew-joseph-white/

Cover Designer: Lily Steele
Illustrator: Evangeline Gallagher

Thank you so much Holiday House and Peachtree Teen for the access to this digital ARC via NetGalley! It was a privilege and a pleasure 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

#horror #GothicHorror #gore #YAbooks #YoungAdult #trans #ActuallyAutistic #books #preorder #HistoricalFiction #AlternateHistory #ghosts #romance #medical #fiction #BookReview #review #noSpoilers

Add Andrew Joseph White as one of my new all time favorite authors ASAP.

This book destroyed me in every unimaginable way possible. His writing, this story, these characters- they reached into my chest and pulled every part out. And then slowly I was put together, and somehow my heart was a hundred times bigger.

There's nothing easy, or quiet, or gentle about this novel. It's the sharp edge of glass that pierces the skin and the mind, it doesn't censor itself at all. There is no room for ignorance here. There is no room for question. There's hardly anything warm here, except for when the world and its humans and its raw characters create that warmth long after everyone else has snuffed it.

This is resilience, but it is also born of necessity. Violence, gore, the truth of power and the minds of men. It blends truth and fantasy but fantasy is a fine line that can't be sorted into characters, it can't be defined here, they're the same. The results are the same. The history. The blood. The bodies.

This book left me raw and broken in some of the best ways. Silas, Daphne, Mary, Isabelle, Louise, Charlotte, all of the girls all of the boys all of them.. they're inside of me and it's finally that we can all scream.

We need this novel more than anything right now, as rights are being taken away, as the numbers of minorities and groups of humans are tread upon and unalived and dissected. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is so powerful. Every word was a sucker-punch to my insides, over and over, there's no mercy here, none at all.

Because that's what this world is.

Anyway, I just finished this novel and I'm still thinking and trying to remember how to breathe so I'll leave it at what I can actually decipher from my thoughts.

I fucking love this book. I love every single thing that Andrew White is doing for literature and for communities and for trans people, for readers, for future generations, for past generations, for us. I am so thankful that we have this. That we will leave this behind. This is history. Our lives are non-negotiable. Our love, our fierce humanity, our existence is not a question, or an option.

We bleed raw, and red, and warm. We are here, and we are not going anywhere. We will take everyone down with us.

The best novel I've ever read since I don't know when. Brilliant.

Thank you Netgally and peach tree for the ARC. What can I say about this book The spirit bares its teeth, how about so much! This book was amazing. I instantly fell in love with the main character Silas not only autistic and trans but in a time that so much was agents women made me feel like I was there and feeling all he was going through.
I will recommend this book to everyone that asks me what my favorite book of the year is and this is it! This was a great YA horror book with just the right amount of gross.

I follow the author on twitter (and read his previous book) so I fully expected the gore, what I didn't expect were the feelings I got from reading about a trans autistic mc. This was imo incredibly well done and I loved reading through Silas's thought and how his brain works, as an autistic queer person it means so much having this representation done so well.

Andrew Joseph White quickly became a favourite author!

I recieved a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for providing an honest review. Additionally, I will be briefly discussing some of the body horror elements of the narrative, so please be aware when reading.

When I finished reading Andrew Joseph White's debut, Hell Followed With Us, I simply knew that I would be jumping onto reading his next release as soon as I possibly could. In fact, I made a Netgalley account just to read it before September because I couldn’t wait to read it.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was once again, a love letter to trans and autistic people who are forced to fight to make a space for them to live and to thrive in a world that often tries to destroy us. I cannot speak to the autistic representation in this book, as I’m not autistic, but I do want to speak about the trans aspect of Silas’s identity.

The trans experience that White tells in Silas’s voice spoke to me so hard, because it’s my own experience. Like Silas, my body is not one that can easily be mistaken for anything other than AFAB. Even so, his dysphoria is not wholly about his body, it’s about how society perceives his body. It was a different transmasc story to what I usually see, and it filled my soul. I wrote down so many quotes related to Silas’s trans identity, even a whole paragraph that just explained my experience at one point.

I am not usually someone who enjoys gory horror, it’s just not my style. But something about the brutality of this book, the clinical blood and meat combined with the horrific treatment imposed on the women (and Silas) in the narrative is cathartic. It’s healing. As White says in his foreword, sometimes survival hurts, and hearing that narrative told soothes a wound that should never have been dealt.

Intersection with my own identity aside, Andrew Joseph White told a masterful story that kept me engaged the whole time, managing to shock me with things that had been lead with at the very beginning of the book. I never knew what to expect next, and the ending of the novel was a wonderful conclusion to the book, and I felt perfectly suited to reflect the long-term impact these experiences would have had on the characters.

With The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, Andrew Joseph White has confirmed his position as my favourite author, and I will be throwing money at his next release at high speed.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If only a keyboard smashing would count as a review...

<b>TW: transphobia, ableism, graphic violence, sexual assault, discussions of forced pregnancy and miscarriage, mentions of suicidal ideation, extensive medical gore </b>

I was screaming inside since page one. I felt the shards of a glass plunging into my guts and twisting them in a sickening, horrible but satisfying way that only AJ White is able to. I am utterly at lost for words.
Silas, baby, precious boy living in a world where the different is discarded as unnatural and sent to a place where it is left to rotten or broken until "fixed" in a shape that would only satisfy the real monsters of society. I loved every single character in this book, how rounded and nuanced they all are. Not only that, but I felt like one of the spirits, the pain and injustice of it all is now deep inside my veins, permeates every inch of my skin and lungs, and by the end of the book I was ready to join the fight. This book is not for the faint of heart, but should be a must. It is a giant f* you to the patriarchal society we still live in, and a reminder to never, ever let your guard down. I can't wait to buy it and bully my wife to read it.

Oh, and now I want a tattoo of the rabbit.

I know I am being incoherent. I am not okay. Blame White for this.

This book, though amazing, is not for the feint of heart, so please read through the content warnings on the front. It's a great trans autistic survival story mixed with historical fiction vibes and ghosts. There is beauty even in dark times, and it does celebrate trans joy, but the book makes you work for it. That being said, it's a satisfying story of revenge against abusers. I read it in two days, I couldn't put it down, but I did have to skip some descriptions because wow they are graphic. The writing is also very refreshing compared to Death Followed, and the MC is more realistic and well rounded.

First of all, thanks to NetGalley and Peachtree Teen for letting me read an ARC of this book.

The authors go me FROM THE NOTE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK. THE STORY HADN'T EVEN STARTED YET.

Andrew's writing is just so beautiful. So honest. I think the thing about it is that he understands humans so well? Is that weird to say?? And then he's able to translate it into such clear words.
This book talks big about nd don't get me wrong, they go through horrible things, and it's not sugarcoated, but it's not torture porn, it's not there to satisfy anyone's morbid curiosity. They hurt and we see their pain and then we turn away, not because we pretend it's not happening, but because we're not entitled to the victim's pain. The tender way this book handles tragedy, seriously. Get everyone to take notes.

The mc just made my heart feel so full 😭 And all of the girls. @ andrew thanks for letting us be angry and hurt and happy and loved.

While ofc the most important thing is for everyone to get to see themselves in stories, I think this book is also good for people who don't expect to see themselves here. As I said, the writing is so good at showing the reality of its characters, and I think people who might, for explample, not be acquantainced with a non-ableist portrayal of autism to start to realize that hey, maybe I don't know as much about this as I thought! Maybe it IS important for me to know!

what joseph white nails here is how he breaks down the stereotype that autistic people are naive because, if anything, silas as a protagonist is anything but. he's wonderfully ambitious and intelligent, but also kind despite all that he has to endure as a trans boy in the 19th century. there's a lot to unpack here about what it means to be trans, what handicaps (and subsequently privileges) a visible gender identity presents, and more. however, at the heart of the story is one of found family, which is so, so important because even if one passes as another gender, the experience of being trans is still othering. that doesn't negate the possibility of strong friendships and intrinsic understandings though and it isn't naive to want that. this emotional crux didn't hit as hard as i would've wanted because the relationships described are sometimes more subtle, but i can't wait to reread down the line.

(*3.5)

i don’t even know how to begin this review. the only coherent thought i have about this book right now is i absolutely adored it. every single word.

the spirit bares its teeth truly exceeded every expectation i had for it going in. i adored the characters (silas, daphne, isabella, and mary you will always be famous) and i was not expecting a romance at all!! and it blew me away!!

but i think what made this reading experience so special to me is how much i related to the main character. every single one of silas’ mannerisms and most of his thoughts feel like they were pulled directly out of my brain.

the horror elements, of course, did not let me down. i could barely put it down, the suspense!!!! my stomach was churning, my heart was burning, tears were streaming down my face. i felt every emotion.

i think. i loved the spirit bares its teeth more than hell followed with us, which is insane to me because of how much i love hfwu.

i’ll need a few weeks to recover from this (and i still probably won’t fully recover.) i truly think every single person should pick this book up, if you are able to. it’s powerful, important, and i cannot stress this enough, astonishing.

Thank you to the publisher for sending this to me as an ARC!

This is the best book, and probably the most important piece of literature that I've read all year. We are reading from an autistic trans boy's POV, and discussing real issues that women and people with any difference have faced throughout history. The most amazing part of this book to me was that the horror lies in the fact that this book has just exaggerated things that could actually happen to marginalized groups.

Along with this, AJW helped me see my partner in a new light. My partner is a trans-femme individual, and her struggles are things that I understand conceptually, but haven't been able to understand in reality. Through Daphne, I was able to understand and bond more closely with my partner, and for that, I am incredibly grateful:)

This book hooked me right from the start. I was craving something spooky and dark, but with a unique premise –this was the book! The main character, Silas, is misunderstood by everyone for his unique way of looking at the world and feeling like he doesn't belong in his own body. I really loved hearing about the perspective of a trans/autistic character (although these aren't terms ever used in the book, of course) during Victorian England, It was definitely grim and not for the faint of heart, but well written and compelling. My only qualms with this book were that there were coincidences that seemed a little too perfect.

Whenever an author has a powerful and unique debut novel as Andrew Joseph White did with Hell Followed With Us I tend to dampen my expectations for their second book because of the dreaded sophomore book curse. Surely lightning can't strike twice?

I'm here to tell you it has.

Throughout the novel I found myself rooting for, fearful for, and wanting to fight for Silas. White does a fantastic job of weaving Victorian horror, mystery, and suspense to explore the transgender experience while keeping you on the edge of your seat until the last page.

The body horror and medical gore are used brilliantly and in a way that is not gratuitous, wanton, or excessive but accent the themes of the book. The autism representation was wonderfully done as well.

I hope everyone gives this gem of a book a chance.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow wow to this book!! I loved the representation in this book and the overall spookiness!! I thought the mix of horror/supernatural elements and real-life events from the 1800s was done so well. Girlies that had a love of The Yellow Wallpaper short story will love this book.

This is my first time reading a novel by this author and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this book. To sum it up, it’s a Victorian, gothic, horror, fantasy book with queer and transgender characters. To be honest, I started reading this book with no expectation of how it was going to play out. The characters are beautifully rendered with all their flaws and insecurities. I had definitely gone through an emotional rollercoaster ride while reading this. There are a lot of dark, serious, and disturbing themes in this book but the author was able to balance it out. The story is evenly paced and though fictional, has thought-provoking, real world themes.

To properly enjoy this book, please be advised of the following trigger warnings: graphic violence, sexual assault, medical gore, transphobia and medical/psychiatric abuse.