Nothing But Blackened Teeth

by Cassandra Khaw

Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists.

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.

It’s the perfect venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends, brought back together to celebrate a wedding.

A night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are tested.

But the house has secrets too. Lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

Effortlessly taking the classic haunted house story and turning it on its head, Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a sharp and devastating exploration of grief, the parasitic nature of relationships, and the consequences of our actions.

• ISBN10: 1250759412
• ISBN13: 9781250759412
• Publish Date: 19 October 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 128
• Language: English

Reviews

[lyx]

3.5 stars
The story keeps you hooked all the way through, it's nothing spectacularly new, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It reminded me of middle-school creepypasta days in the best way (iykyk). The atmosphere, setting, and overall writing are quite good and you get a great sense of the characters and their dynamics even for such a short novel.

[Quirky Cat]

I knew from the moment I heard Cassandra Khaw's latest novel announcement that I was going to have to read it. Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a horror novel with paranormal elements and is part of the Nightfire line.

Would you spend the night in a haunted house? Would you do it alone, or with friends? One group of friends has opted to stay at a Heian-era mansion, one that suspiciously has little information available to these guests. They don't know the name, the owners, or anything else.

That should have been their first red flag. It wasn't, and so these friends – who are more frenemies in truth – are going to have one horrifying and memorable night. One that they would probably have preferred to forget.

"After all, isn't that the foremost commandment in the scripture of horror? They who are queer, deviant, tattooed, tongue-pierced or other must always die first"

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a dark and twisted read, one that did a fantastic job of subverting expectations and flipping traditional tropes on their heads. For that, I very much appreciated this read.

So, I know that it is relatively common to create unlikable horror characters – it makes it more bearable when the worst happens to them. But I almost feel like Cassandra Khaw did too good of a job with her characters. I didn't really like any of them. More than that, I felt like it would have been healthier for the lot of them to go their own ways.

Especially if they had done so before the events in this book took place. But whatever, it's okay. Who doesn't enjoy the occasional read surrounding frenemies? It took some time to get their relationships established – and then the real horror began.

This is the part where Nothing But Blackened Teeth really began to shine. However, shine might be too bright of a term here. Perhaps gleam would work better in this instance? Either way, it was the horror story that sucked me into the narrative.

I should probably mention that the horror elements go pretty dark and graphic. So don't make the same mistake I did – read this book during daylight hours. Your sleep will thank you for it.

Thanks to Tor Nightfire and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Read more reviews at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub]

Brooding and dark, Nothing but Blackened Teeth drew me in and kept me off-balance. Always on the precipice of scary, it never quite tipped over. Instead, it stayed an eerie book, one that has crawled its way into my head. I’ll be thinking about it for a long while, reliving bits and pieces of the creepy story.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth follows a group of friends who decide to rent a Heian-age mansion for an odd sort of wedding celebration. The thing is, they’ve heard it’s haunted. That’s the draw for them: they’re hoping to experience the otherworldly and the disturbing. Well, wish granted.

The story goes that originally a woman’s fiancé died on his way to marry her at the mansion. She decided to be buried alive so that she could wait for her husband like one does, I suppose. Women continued to be sacrificed, one per year, so that the buried bride wouldn’t be lonely. In all honestly, the origin story for the haunting is the part that I found to be the weakest. It just didn’t inspire that anticipatory shiver that I was hoping for.

None of the characters are particularly likable and at first, I found myself viewing them through the slasher-film lens. You know: this one will die first because they sleep around, this one next because they don’t believe in the danger, etc. However, such was not the case. The tropes became jumping-off points for complex, multi-faceted characters, each with their own flaws and fears. Half of the fun of Nothing but Blackened Teeth was watching the complicated relationships fray and slowly dissolve as the characters’ pasts caught up to them.

The story begins with Cat, a woman who is still coming to grips with an unspecified mental illness. It has affected her past and she is still in the midst of learning to cope with it. There’s Phillip, the charismatic and super rich sponsor of the mansion rental. There’s Faiz and Talia, the engaged couple. Cat and Talia have beef, and their issues with each other add to an already tense situation. Last, there’s Lin, who is a master pot-stirrer. It’s these tangled relationships and hidden emotions that really elevate Nothing but Blackened Teeth to the fascinating tale that it is.

Author Cassandra Khaw played with motifs of relationships and mental health in ways that felt a little reminiscent of Shirley Jackson (if Jackson had a penchant for gore). There were times when I wondered what was happening and what- if anything was being imagined by one character or another. Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a riveting book, perfect for fans of creepy tales with a little extra bite.