NOW AVAILABLE!!!if you like reading horror novels for their rich character development where all your questions about their individual and collective pasts are answered, move along. if you like reading horror novels because you want to be in the same WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? headspace as the characters for a little while, have a seat—you're gonna love this haunted house story.a group of five friends reunite in japan for a destination wedding, renting a heian-era mansion where obscenely wealthy gol...

i think this is the first horror story i’ve ever read where characters say “fuck” an appropriate amount of times (every other second)

These characters drove me absolutely insane 🤯 They ruined the entire experience for me, and this book premise had SO much potential so I’m big sad that I didn’t like this one 😭Reading vlog: https://youtu.be/1-Q5QE_faPY

**3.5-stars rounded up**Nothing But Blackened Teeth has wormed its way into my mind and it won't go away. I cannot stop thinking about it!I finished this story early this morning and have slowly raised my rating incrementally as the day has worn on. I started at 3-stars, in 12-hours, I have rounded up to 4-stars. Who knows how high this could go!?What could be better than a long-abandoned, reportedly-haunted, Heian-era mansion as a intimate destination wedding location?For Nadia and Faiz, nothin...

The damn hell! These people sucked arse but the creepy story was good! "Well, shit. Yeah. It’s a giant mansion in the middle of nowhere full of dolls and creepy shit." Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

Wait a minute! Did I read the blurb correctly? Is this book about a wedding celebration at one of the creepiest, most ominous and terrifying place at Heian- era Japanese mansion built by the resting bones of a bride and remains of girls who sacrificed themselves to accompany her? What a batshit, mind bending plot line! After reading the blurb and taking a very long look at the impactful, haunted cover that may give you nightmares for the entire month, I simply screamed: I’m all in! This is quiet...

Be sure to visit Bantering Books to read all my latest reviews.Oh, my eyes! My eyes!I don’t think I’ll ever unsee the cover for Nothing But Blackened Teeth. It’s terrifying. The unsettling image of the Japanese ghost bride is the stuff of which nightmares are made, and it will be forever embedded in my mind, gleefully waiting in the wings to haunt me every chance it gets.Fortunately for my pitifully low fear threshold, the cover was the scariest part of Cassandra Khaw’s Japanese-folklore horror

TW: gore, body horrorMaybe it’s odd to say that this novella was a wonderful treat given its content, but let’s be honest here. It was a wonderful treat. The writing was gorgeous and I truly felt like I was in the story. The beginning confusion of the dynamics of the friend group slowly being unraveled as the story gets darker and darker was easily my favorite part. I can’t even begin to explain how I felt. And then the ending was just the cherry on top. Just the right amount of shock and blood....

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. Listen to the full review at: https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/Horror novels are hard—using words to conjure images to creep you out as you sit on your hammock outside in the sun. But she decided to not even try and instead focus on showing off how clever she is. Being clever is easy—there is nothing behind it, no emotion, no greater truths, no human connection—it is simply a brief blip of intellectual flexing of the bicep or showing off your tanned midriff,...

Five friends rent out a haunted old Japanese house for a spooky wedding - but turns out them advertised ghosts is real and ghosty is getting revengey! Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth appealed to me because it’s a haunted house story, which I love, and it’s set in an old Japanese house, which I’ve never seen before, so it’s disappointing to say the book is actually a stinky pile of ectoplasm. Horror in general is hard to write and really good haunted house stories are few and far bet...

I’d like to preface this by saying that I don’t discourage anyone from reading this book. In fact, let’s support spec-fic authors of colour and READ THEIR WORK! For all that I didn’t personally enjoy Nothing But Blackened Teeth, I think there will be folks out there who absolutely will, as evidenced by several rave reviews already.So let’s get right into things. The prose in this novella is ridiculously, outrageously, unapologetically purple.It is EXCESSIVE, y’all. Part of me admires Khaw for co...

I had this shelved as "horror" but what the fuck: Dora the Explorer is scarier.I'll get straight to the point because I can't feel anything besides contempt and utter repugnance for Khaw's writing and for the incredibly stupid clusterfuck this book was and would like to get this over with. In my life as a reader, I came across terrible, awful writing and the worst similes...or so I thought. I was treated to lines such as "the boots hugged my calves like hands" (The Iron Thorn), "crackling like a...

Are you familiar with the legends of the Ohaguro-Bettari? She's a Japanese spirt typically known for having no eyes or nose, but her mouth is full of blackened teeth. She's been featured in many legends and there's been a lot of artists who have tried to capture the idea of what she would look like. Many different takes but one thing is consistent, those black teeth. (I do so love that cover)This book follows a group of "friends" (and those quotation marks are very much needed) who have traveled...

Not gonna lie, I know nothing about Japanese culture and I didn't even know what an "Heian" era was, (in Japanese culture, it's the period that runs from 795 to 1185),before I started this book. Now I know and I also have learned that Cassandra Khaw is a phenomenal writer!In a famous haunted mansion from the Heian era, a young couple, for whatever twisted reason, wants to get married. Only a few friends are invited as it's a long trip and let's face it-this kind of thing is not for everyone. All...

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | |and this was supposed to be a horror story? the only unsettling thing about this novella is that cover. Nothing But Blackened Teeth was probably my most anticipated October 2021 release, and boy, did it disappoint. I mean, given that N.K. Jemisin called it “Brutally delicious!” I went into this novella with high expectations. After getting through this novella’s opening scene, my expectations were quashed. There is an argument of sorts between 4 generic people that...

Hmm.. I'm not sure how to rate this one. There are A LOT of things I didn't like. There are similes and metaphors in every other sentence and the writing was a bit pretentious. Big words were used for the sole purpose of using big words. The writing and I just didn't connect. Another thing I could connect with were the characters.. I hated all of them. They all hate each other actually but they're all friends at the same time. I thought this dynamic was poor because it focused a lot on their dra...

THAT COVER, Y'ALL.A deliciously disturbing horror tale filled with Japanese folklore references. Creepy as fuck (just the way I like it). My only complaint is that it's quite a small book and the characters were so interesting that I wanted more.

4.0 StarsNormally, haunted house stories don't work particularly well for me, but this was a wonderful exception. This story successfully  balanced a creepy atmosphere with an exciting climax. I really loved the incorporation of so much Japanese language and culture in this story. The inclusion of mythological Japanese creatures really added to the story.In many ways, this was a very simple, traditional horror narrative. This book is filled with horror tropes, yet the diverse setting made the st...

A group of friends who grew up together in Malaysia gather to spend one night in a dilapidated Heian-era manor house to celebrate an imminent wedding between two of their number. An historic home built on the bones of an entombed bride-to-be and more than two hundred companion girls carries a certain fascination for them, as ghostly thrill-seeking used to be their lifeline. After all, what better venue to plan a wedding and waste a large portion of their near-billionaire friend Phillip's inherit...

Originally published at Cemetery Dance:https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/...It’s one of the most beloved horror tropes: A group of friends travels to an abandoned building rumored to be haunted. The friends are either going to film a documentary, or just see what happens when they attempt to spend the night.Horror ensues.It’s tempting to believe this trope has been done too many times to promise anything original but, thankfully, horror writers disagree and keep telling the story in their own...