This story delivers as promised, and as expected from Andrew Joseph White. The protagonist, Silas so aptly expresses the reality, anger, and gory horror that can be the human experience. In his case, as a violet eyed trans man in a world that values him as marriage and lineage material, not as the person he is. I am here for the representation of a trans, autistic, main character finding ways to live, exert autonomy, find friendship and love, and take revenge against those who hurt him and others.
Silas has a plan to escape his family that wants to marry him off to the highest bidder as a valued violet eyed daughter. He takes the spot of a young man to get his Speaker Ring, a kind of permit for violet eyed men to open the Veil between the living and the dead. When this plan fails, he is sent to Braxton's, a "finishing school," where girls disappear or are married off, and he has to find ways to survive.
This book is potent, and the amount of tears I shed reading this can attest to that. The anger is not held back from the beginning to the end of the book, directed towards the systems of oppression that can be found in family, society, and the behavioral norms forced upon us all. The fury and vengeance towards those institutions and people are healing in reading, much like Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White and Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao.

Okay, here we go. Let me be upfront: I LOVED this book. I was so excited when I was approved to read it on NetGalley, you have no idea. I can’t be objective. This is just going to be several paragraphs of gushing about how much I enjoyed The Spirit Bares Its Teeth.

Now, first of all, this is a YA book, and I’m not part of the target demographic. At the time of writing this, I’m twenty-four. So, usually, I’d go into a YA book on the understanding that I might not get into it the way I would have done when I was younger. That wasn’t the case here. I was obsessed from page one.

So, let’s talk about Silas. Silas is a fantastic protagonist and narrator, like none I’ve ever seen before. I have autism spectrum disorder, and I’m often wary of books with autistic characters — how will they be portrayed? Will they be a fully developed autistic character or a vague, flat portrayal of autism? Didn’t need to worry about that with Silas. He felt so real. I understood him so deeply that it made me want to cry.

Every autistic person is different. It is, after all, a spectrum. But in Silas I saw, for the first time since I was diagnosed, someone who was autistic in the same way I am. More accurately, he’s autistic in the way I would be if I hadn’t had books and TV to learn social expectations and etiquette from (I use the word ‘learn’ loosely). But still, I had that wonderful moment of ‘he’s like me! He’s like me!!!’

This story is dark. Very much so. It’s EXACTLY the kind of thing I wanted from YA horror when I was a teenager. Andrew Joseph White is not afraid to get gruesome when it comes to details. I read his debut novel, Hell Followed With Us, a few months ago, so I thought I knew what I was in for with TSBIT. I did NOT. And I mean that in the best way. It’s graphic, it’s grim, and I LOVED it. There’s this bit in Chapter Fifteen… well, I won’t say it, but if you’ve read it then you know what I’m talking about. Yeah. That. Wow. And then there’s Chapter Twenty-One, in which… well. You know. One of the most memorable and shocking scenes I’ve read in a while, that’s all I’ll say.

And the ending!!! The ending!!!!! Physically, I was sitting still and staring at the last page. Mentally? Oh, I was rubbing my hands together in glee.

I read TSBIT in under a day. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read a book so quickly. I’m sad to have finished it. I’ll have to buy a copy when it comes out so that I can go through it with a fine-tooth comb. I’m going to underline all my favourite parts and write a plethora of notes in the margins.