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.

Trigger/content warnings: graphic violence, body horror, medical gore, C-section, vivisections of humans, child abuse, transphobia, misgendering, deadnaming, internalized transphobia, misogyny, child pregnancy, child marriage, attempted sexual assault, abuse of power, ableism, descriptions of dissecting animals

Representation: autistic trans boy main lead, trans girl love interest, sapphic side character

If you’re looking for an unapologetically dark story unlike any other, look no further than The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, Andrew Joseph White’s haunting and raw sophomore novel set in an alternate 1883 London. With a blend of ghosts, missing girls, body horror, and discussions of trans rage, this novel will surely appeal to horror fans.

In an effort to escape his family and their arranged marriage for him, sixteen-year-old trans boy Silas Bell takes the spot of another man at a convention. Nothing goes as planned, however, and Silas is sent to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium, an all-girls boarding school that treats “hysterical” violet-eyed students who can communicate with the dead. Silas is exposed to the brutal, oppressive environment at Braxton’s, where students are disappearing without a trace.

This book cut my heart apart and then stitched it back together again. I'd follow Silas and Daphne to the ends of the earth.

It's Victorian England, and the veil between the ominously cold and dark spirit world and our own world is thinning. Inexplicably and in response, violet eyed girls and boys begin to pop up, able to break down the veil between realms and talk with spirits. But in patriarchal Victorian England, females are not allowed to commune with the spirits in any capacity. Doing so means death...or being sent away to an asylum and "rehabilitated" to serve the one purpose violet-eyed girls & women are allowed to serve: as breeding stock.

Autistic MC/hero Silas was born female, but knows it's not who he truly is. His brother George seems to understand him, going so far as to giving Silas discarded clothing to wear and calling him by the correct name. However, one reckless decision after another leaves Silas being whisked away to Braxton's, a sanatorium and "finishing school" for violet-eyed girls to be turned into lovely, abiding wives.

But girls are disappearing, and Silas realizes it's up to him to find out why. With the help of his betrothed, a trans girl named Daphne, the pair are up against insurmountable odds. The horrors lurking beneath the fine exterior of Braxton's are innumerable, and the HEA at the end of this book was the most hard-earned HEA I believe I've ever read.

AJW has written a masterpiece of body horror intermingled with a poignant exploration of the historical trans experience and the autistic experience. I walked away from this book completely altered in the best possible way. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth ravaged me from page one, dragging me along through horror after horror and yet it also lifted me up in all the right places. The love between Silas and Daphne will live in my heart forever. The understanding and devotion between the two of them nestled deep in my marrow, and there it will stay.

The voice, pacing, and plot twists were fantastic. I felt the danger skittering along my skin from beginning to end... never assured of the MC's safety. Always feeling like something horrible was one page away. I stayed up until an ungodly hour reading this one until my husband made me go to sleep (by way of reason lol), and woke up the next morning and immediately binged the rest of it until I was done.

One thing I will say is to please abide by any content warnings for this book. There are very graphic descriptions of surgery, smells, the insides of bodies, pregnancy loss, c-section, etc. There are also implied and mentioned sexual assault of minors, and on page non-consensual kissing (not between hero/heroine). I apparently have a very sturdy stomach, but if you are squeamish at all, I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend this book.

All in all, this is the best book I've read so far in 2023 and if you can stomach the body horror and SA, I'm begging you to read it.

Thank you to NetGalley, PeachTree Teen and Andrew Joseph White for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White (@ajwhiteauthor)

👁️💜🪡🩸👻

“I wanted nothing to do with spirits. I wanted the soil while it was still attached to the body, when it still thrummed with life. I wanted to feel the body move, burning hot under my fingers. I wanted to dedicate my life to the only thing that has ever made sense.”

⚠️TW: body horror, medical trauma, physical abuse, transphobia, ableism, off-page SA

(swipe for synopsis)

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is an absolutely phenomenal read. I applied for the ARC as soon as it became available, as I had just read the author’s previous book, Hell Followed With Us, which will mostly likely be my favorite book of the year, with TSBIT being a close second. 💜

Silas is queer, autistic, and he is a hero. He is smart and determined, and loves the things that make him who he is, no matter how much the world tries to wrench that away from him and tells him he’s broken. He has no desire to use his ability to commune with the spirit world, but he does so for the greater good, and he wants desperately to be free to be himself, a reality that many queer and autistic folks can relate to. The girls Silas meets in the sanitorium are so well written and my heart ached for all of them. The prose was beautifully written, and very haunting (pun intended). ✨

This story is INTENSE, and you absolutely need to read the TWs before diving in. The historical abuse of mentally ill & queer people is a recurring theme. But it is also extremely powerful. It is a beautiful representation of an Autistic protag, and despite it’s dark tone and a plethora of gory scenes, there manages to be a fair amount of queer joy packed into the story as well. I was riveted the entire time, and there were twists that absolutely punched me in the gut. I cannot recommend it enough. Seriously. 🙏🏻

TSBIT comes out September 5. Huge thank you to @ajwhiteauthor, @peachtreepublishing, & @netgalley for allowing me to read this masterpiece early! 📖

STARS:
📝strong story? ⭐️
🤷🏻compelling characters? ⭐️
✍🏻enjoyable writing style? ⭐️
❤️‍🔥did it give me ✨the feels✨? ⭐️
👍🏻recommend? ⭐️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5/5 stars)

cover art by Melia Parsloe

never have i read something that had me stopping so much to think about how similar i was to the mc. silas made me feel so visible, the way he talks about his autism and transness (not entirely relating to eachother) is so resonating. silas and daphne are maybe one of the best portrayals of trans love i’ve seen written and i am obsessed with them. this book was disgusting, tense, full of queer rage, beautiful, dark, gross, and gory and also perhaps the one of the best books i’ve ever read.

Before I get into the review, let me just say that this cover? Stunning. Perfectly encapsulates the vibe of the book.

Now, this took me a day or two to write, mostly because my brain just would not form a coherent sentence to save my life. But also because I wanted to do this book justice. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is raw, intense, horrifying, and infuriating. This is a world that has far too many parallels to today's; trans folk aren't allowed to express their identities and are viewed as "sick" when they try, autistic folk are viewed as off-putting and "wrong", women are defined by what they can offer men, and anyone not white is invisible until they aren't. It's honestly the conservative viewpoints in a nutshell. Andrew Joseph White very kindly offers a page of content warnings before the start of the book and that isn't just lip service. There are a lot of things going on that are very, very difficult to read about, even if they aren't your specific triggers. If you aren't in a position where you can handle reading about any of those things, it'd be best to skip this book and possibly come back to it if you can.

The thing that makes this more than just a fictional look at a very real, intense time period is that ghosts are hidden behind a Veil and there are violet-eyed people who have the power to manipulate it. As with any power (especially one that seems to come out of nowhere, seemingly divine), there are people who seek to use and abuse it for their own gain. These come in the form of Speakers and they are all cis men. Why? Because, obviously, women are far, far too fragile to handle the powers of a speaker and manipulate the Veil. /sarcasm Instead, violet-eyed women are, from a very young age, groomed to be the wives of these Speakers or any other powerful man who simply wants the prestige of a violet-eyed child of his own. That brings us to Silas. Silas is a trans, autistic boy who wants to be a surgeon. He also desperately does not want to get married, but his parents have other ideas. A voice in his head (in the guise of a rabbit) tells him to just suck it up and do what they want; it's better than getting hurt in the end. But filling the role everyone tells him he was born to play (even though they're so very wrong) is more terrifying than being sentenced to death, so he attempts to infiltrate the welcoming of a new Speaker into the fold by posing as the boy in line to get his Speaker's brand. Unfortunately, he fails, outs himself in the process, and is very nearly taken into custody when one of the Speakers intervenes and offers to arrange a marriage between Silas and his son. This comes with a catch, though, as Silas must be brought to a special sanitorium/reformatory for violet-eyed girls who have "Veil sickness".

And that's where the story begins. Silas and the girls at the reformatory go through so, so much. It's equal parts sickening, saddening, and rage-inducing. Silas, despite all he goes through, is a wonderful protagonist. His narrative voice is very evocative and pretty gory (if I had the skills to rip out my own uterus, I'd do it, too, ngl), but that's just how Silas sees the world--through the eyes of a surgeon.

The concept of the Veil is really cool, but I do wish it were utilized a bit more. Although Silas is able to manipulate it, he doesn't like doing it. He prefers working with the living rather than the dead. Which, honestly, is completely fair. I still wish there was a bit more explanation behind it, even though I can see how, narratively, it may not fit.

I do also wish we got a bit more time with Silas and Daphne. Because Silas is basically immediately shipped off to the reformatory, he and Daphne only get so much time together. Their relationship was really sweet; I just wish that the story fleshed out Daphne's character a tiny bit more. Not to say that she isn't fleshed out; I just wanted the tiniest bit more.

Overall, though, I really loved this and sped through it. I probably could've finished it the day I started it, but I started it too late in the day and ended up needing sleep. I'll definitely have to go pick up Andrew Joseph White's debut because the writing here was immaculate. And if you can stomach it, I'd highly recommend picking up The Spirit Bares Its Teeth. It'll make you sad and angry and disgusted, but not hopeless. Never hopeless.

I received an ARC in exchange of a review! Let me tell you, this is genuinely one of the best books I’ve ever read. I fell in love with Andrew’s writing after Hell Followed With Us, and I didn’t think I would ever love a book as much as I did that one, but here we are. I’m a huge fan of horror and this book still managed to paint a descriptive picture of disturbing and tragic events. The main characters are so lovable and flawed, and the trans experience is so beautifully represented. The autism representation was so relatable and made me fall in love with Silas as a character even more considering the amount of times I could relate to him and his experiences through the book. I read it all in one sitting and I want nothing more then to experience it for the first time again. The twists and intricate turns were amazing to watch tie together, and I’m definitely purchasing this book the moment it comes out to reread all over again.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a young adult horror novel about a young autistic trans boy trying to figure out what's happening to the other girls at the sanatorium he's been forcibly placed at. I have never seen this combination of characters in a historical novel, nor have I seen such incredible depictions of autism, outside of AJW's debut Hell Followed With Us. I'm currently sitting here just at a loss for words. I'd be reading the more mundane scenes and Silas would start stimming in a way that I myself do and I'd just go"!!!!!! I DO THAT :D!!!" Aside from the depictions of autism and transness, the plot itself was just. Ough. Oh man. AJW was not lying when he said this book was heavy. Just imagining some of the scenes were absolutely horrific and so sad, I think the author has done an incredible job of writing everything so viscerally. Every aspect endears you to the book in some way, there's at least one side character for everyone to latch onto. The reveals near the end did so well in portraying that moment of realization that everyone around you is complicit and the absolute sickening feeling it is. I was very excited to get my hands on this title from the moment it was announced and it was as incredible as I thought it was. Genuinely don't have any criticisms here, and I'm excited to see what Andrew puts out next.

heavy content warnings for: blood/gore/descriptions of injuries, ableism, sexual assault, discussions of eye mutilation, miscarriage, heavy bodily injury, transphobia, medical procedures depicted and dicussed, torture.

What i love the most about Andrew Joseph White’s writing is the way it hooks you from the first page and keeps your attention all the way through. I felt so many emotions while reading this book. Disgust was a big one and I mean that as a compliment. A lot of people have said this one isn’t as bad as HFWU but in my opinion it’s way worse. I love that, that words on my phone can invoke so many emotion.

The pacing is great. It builds a sense of dread but can also very adeptly lull you into a false sense of security. Nothing is sacred. It lends to the general sense of just pure horror coating everything and every interaction.

This is a book very heavily inspired by history. The oppression of specifically women and the mentally ill and horrific conditions and experiments that would take places in places like mental asylums in the name of cures. The female hysteria. This is a book purely focused on the white perspective. This is acknowledged by the author. I don’t feel educated enough to say anything further on that topic.

My biggest gripe lies in the romance. It’s very insta lovey. I’ve thought about it more and it makes at lot of sense actually they’re teenagers and suddenly theres someone completely safe and you’re already engaged I wouldn’t let go of that.

I could not put this book down and I loved every second even when I was uncomfortable. Andrew Jospeh White has quickly become a favorite author and I will be eagerly awaiting any releases in the future.