'A group of thrill-seeking friends in search of the perfect wedding venue plan to spend the night in a Heian-era mansion. Long abandoned, and unknown to them, this mansion rests on the bones of a bride, and its walls are packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.

Their night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare, as the house welcomes its new guests. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.'

This book had a lot of potential. I love spooky novellas and I found the idea of this ghost bride haunting a manor really interesting. I thought the set up to the story was really good - lots of tension between the characters, and enough mystery to keep me intrigued.

But in the end, I was left feeling underwhelmed by this one. It lacked the tension that I like and expect in horrors such as this, and I felt like it could have been fleshed out a bit more and given more dark atmosphere. If it had been a little longer, paced a little better, it would have been perfect.

The writing was beautiful, though.

This book had a lot of potential but for me it just didn't live up to it. For a horror it wasn't very scary or even creepy, it lacked the suspense and build up I feel is required for a good horror. It had an interesting premise; a bunch of friends go to a haunted house for a wedding .

I think the plot could have been more fleshed out, I wanted to know more about the ghosts backstory but also the friendships. Its obvious the characters have a complicated past and some very strained relationships that we just don't get to know enough about.. Really I think the story was just too short and had it been longer I think I'd have liked it more.

For the most part it was just a bunch of friends arguing and not being very nice to each other. When the ghost does appear it ends up sort of hanging around them and they don't really seem bothered by this. It did have a little bit of gore and violence but it all seemed too easy for them. It also ended really abruptly and I didn't really see the point to the story.

On the plus side the writing style was very good and I loved the setting and seeing some of Japanese folklore. It had all the makings of a good story but just fell short for me.

A strained group of five friends reunite in an abandoned Heian-era mansion for a wedding. Talia, the bride, has always wanted to be married in a haunted house. You see, the group used to go ghosthunting together, back when the bonds between them hadn’t been strained with time and disagreements. It’s said a woman whose fiance died on the way to their wedding is buried in the walls. She’s been waiting for her love to return ever since. Cat, the protagonist, has a particularly tense relationship with the wife-to-be – her scepticism about the marriage is plain to see. As the night moves from constant bickering into something more sinister, the reality of the group’s friendships is thrown into doubt. Cassandra Khaw’s writing style has teeth sharpened on descriptive prose. It worked brilliantly here. The slow, purple prose with a harsh, angry edge is perfect for a haunted house filled with bitter, sharp people. The atmosphere and setting were a haunting slow-build that’s difficult to achieve in novella format. Perhaps it would have been good to have more detail built into the character relationships, but they remain an excellent portrayal of a friendship group that’s lasted well belong its expiry date. There is a level of fourth-wall-breaking that starts as entertaining and begins to feel heavy-handed. Characters having a strong awareness of their existence in a horror tale can be a lot of fun, but this story occasionally overstepped and dampened the momentum. The haunting was lush, packed with a variety of Japanese spirits. Although the book offers no explanation of its terminology for those unacquainted, authors don’t need to write for audiences unfamiliar with the culture they are referencing. We can easily search terms for a deeper understanding. Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a horror book that drips with style, its literary decisions won’t be for everyone, but it’s a gem for those who do enjoy it.

I feel extremely underwhelmed. it's not to say that I didn't enjoy this story, because in a way I did, but I enjoyed the atmosphere more than I enjoyed the actual plot. I think it's a story that would've benefited from being longer: I could not believe that all our characters were supposedly (best) friends, the bonds were non-existent, and the ending felt rushed

I picked up Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw despite its freaky cover art in the hopes of reading a totally new haunted house story from a different culture but ended up feeling supremely disappointed.

This short novella tells the story of a group of old friends who have met up for the first time in what seems to be years at a notorious Heian-era mansion in Japan. Two of the friends have always wanted to get married in a haunted house, which is the reason behind the trip. The house is supposedly home to the spirit of a bride who waited there for a groom who would never arrive and was eventually buried alive in its foundations so she could continue her waiting forever. Over the years, many other young women have also been buried there in order to provide the spirit with some company. As the night wears on and food and drink flow freely, the dream wedding destination becomes a nightmare because the lonely bride seems to want a new companion.

I’ll be honest, this book bored me to tears, and I would never have finished it if not for its blessedly short length. The cover is by far the scariest thing about it and I never felt even the slightest shudder of fear throughout—I have read scarier picture books than this. There are two huge flaws here that I think both contributed to the lack of scares and overall dullness of this book, and the first is the characters. Even by the end of the book, I barely knew anything about any of them beyond a few superficial or plot-critical facts. I never had any sense of connection between myself and the characters or even really between the characters themselves. I was told what their relationships were like, but I never saw it in action and, by the end, I wasn’t even bothered who lived or died.

Worse, however, was the writing style. This whole novella read as if the author was trying to show off how clever they were. It was filled with endless flowery metaphors and prose so purple it completely obfuscated what little plot there was. When the ghost bride first put in an appearance, I barely even realized it was happening thanks to the event being enveloped in lyrical writing to the detriment of actually telling the story.

With phrasing like, “a predatory stillness that drove a scream through the medulla oblongata” throughout, I’m frankly amazed I stuck this one out to the end.

While this book wasn't for me, this short and sweet ghost story would be just perfect for those who like scares without the huge backstory!

“The five of us spent years in restless pilgrimage, searching for the holy dead in Kuala Lumpur. Every haunted house, every abandoned hospital, every storm drain to have clasped a body like a girl’s final prayer, we sieved through them all. And I was always in the vanguard, torchlight in hand, eager to show the way.” - Cat.

My thanks to Titan Books for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Nothing But Blackened Teeth’ by Cassandra Khaw in exchange for an honest review.

A creepy title with a creepier cover and the destination wedding from Hades as its premise… definitely sounded like my cup of tea!

Philip, who is extremely rich, flies four friends first class to Japan where he is to officiate over the nuptials of Faiz and Talia. As the friends had been keen ghost-hunters, the wedding was being held at a remote Heian-era mansion reputed to be haunted by the vengeful ghost of an abandoned bride. How romantic!

The house quickly lives up to its sinister reputation with rooms of weird dolls, murals of Japanese demons and that’s even before strange things start occurring.

I had a mixed reaction to this novella. It was certainly nightmarish though you would think that this group would be a little more savvy about stranding themselves in such a location. Of course, there are tensions between the friends that increase as secrets begin to emerge.

The writing was lyrical even during the scenes of strong visceral horror. However, this combination of poetic writing with ghastly goings on felt a little disjointed to me, diluting the sense of urgency and peril.

In addition, aside from Cat, the novella’s narrator, I didn’t connect to the other characters. However, the descriptions of the house itself were extremely effective and the hauntings chilling. It’s a novella that I would have loved in audiobook format though definitely one not to listen to late at night.

Given the amount of Japanese words a glossary would have been useful. I was grateful for the ability of my Kindle to supply definitions at a touch; though a few terms I had already encountered when reading books that featured Japanese mythology and folklore.

Overall, a bit of a mixed response. Despite the uneven pacing and underdeveloped characterisations, there’s no doubt that Cassandra Khaw’s weaving of myth and folklore into the narrative was extremely effective and spine-chilling.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

I don't know exactly what I expected from this book.

I loved the writing, the author paints with words and it was beautiful, but I think it was too short.

Unfortunately I think it was just ok, but I want to read more from the author

This is a new author for me. I really enjoyed Nothing but Blackened Teeth (brilliant title by the way). This is a short book, a novella rather than a full length novel. I could have done with it being a bit longer as I was just getting into the story and starting to know the characters when it ended. This ticks every box for a good horror yarn.

When a blurb includes mentions of The Ring and The Haunting of Hill House, I expect to be so terrified that I'm unable to read the book when it's dark outside. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Starting with the positives, the author has a beautiful writing style, even though it didn't always work for me. Some of the prose really struck me; but in other parts, the layered metaphors were too much and took me out of the story because I couldn't fully grasp what the author was trying to say. It leans hard on the purple prose.

I wanted more vibes from the setting, and this too might be due to the overly descriptive prose. The cover is creepy enough that I have trouble looking at it for too long, but that isn't reflected in the story or the setting. Other than some vague rumors we never really get an explanation behind the house's mysteries. I missed being able to delve into the why and the lore of it.

If the setting isn't satisfactory, then it is up to the characters to bring the story to life. I liked how messed up they all were, and that their relationships weren't as straightforward as a group of friends doing something fun together, but parts of it were too messy. I stopped trying to keep straight who had slept with/had a crush on/hated who because everything got tangled up in my head. Nothing was spelled out clearly, and none of the characters were very sympathetic as a result of all the confusion.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a spooky new novella from Titan books and author Cassandra Khaw steeped in Japanese mythology that makes its arrival just in time for Halloween.

The story follows five young friends as they travel to a remote mansion ruin deep in rural Japan so that two of the group can be married, one of them having always wanted to get married in a haunted house. There's a few problems though, first of all, none of them really like each other all that much; and you quickly begin to see the cracks in this fragile friendship, a friendship that probably should have ended long before this point. The other, bigger issue, is that the story around the mansion, of the ghostly bride buried alive beneath the foundations who haunts its halls is more than just a story; and now the five of them are going to have to fight to survive the night.

As someone who loves Japanese fiction and mythology I was hugely excited for this story. There's something about Japanese ghost stories that hit so much harder than those we get here in the UK that makes them so much scarier. The imagery is more frightening, there are rules around things like ghosts and yokai, and usually it's people who deserve something awful that happen to be the ones getting haunted to death.

And whilst this book has a lot of this, and there are moments of great tension built up in the descriptions of the environments and the things lurking just out the corner of your eye there's one area I unfortunately felt the book didn't give me enough. The characters. We get titbits about the five people that make up our cast, and very quickly learn the broad strokes of their relationships and how they feel about each other; but as things progress it's clear that these first impressions aren't telling us everything, and that most of these characters are really bad for each other.

We get a few hints as to what's going on, such as one of them having not liked another when she started dating her friend, and thought the relationship should have ended; or how another of the friends had secretly slept with the bride in the past. But for the most part the details aren't really there. Whilst this doesn't really affect the story in any great way, and it's more of what's happening in the mansion whilst they're there that's the most important I really wanted to understand these people more, to see what their issues were and to understand their relationships better.

I think some of this is down to the fact that this is a novella, and as such there's pretty limited space given over to these in-depth character dives and explanations, and that if the book was longer I'm sure we'd have gotten a lot more of that. What we do get is very intriguing though, and it's clear that Cassandra Khaw can write complex and flawed characters, even if they're going to be characters we only know for a brief while.

Where Khaw really excells, however, is in the atmosphere. A lot of attention is given over to the setting of the book, and very soon the reader gets a good sense of what the old mansion is like. You feel like you're in the hallways yourself, peeking in at these lonely, haunted rooms. There's a sense of pervading darkness and gloom that flows throughout the book, and there were times the descriptions were so vivid and so detailed I felt like I could reach out and touch the crumbling walls and smell the dampness.

The same level of attention to detail is given over to the main star of the book too, the ghost. It's clear Khaw hasn't just replicated the 'standard' Japanese ghost image that most of you would probably think of if asked to imagine one, but has drawn on other sources too; such as the monstrous yokai. The ghost is a figure that's gone beyond what you would expect of a human, taking on a more demonic and twisted form, one that sends chills down your spine and really sticks with you.

Whilst this is a short read, and we don't get a lot of time to know the characters there is a lot to like about this book. The story is chilling in a way that I absolutely loved, and I wanted it to keep on going because I was enjoying it so much. Thanks to this book I'm definitely going to be checking out more of Cassandra Khaw's work.

The haunted house is a staple feature of so many horror stories from Hill House’s not sane walls to The Shining’s never leaving guests. I bet there is house near you with some form of reputation or history. Places that hold memories of bad deeds are of course constant magnets for the brave and foolhardy. Ghost hunting is a boom industry from tv shows, youtube videos and of course the plot for many a horror tale in itself. Are you brave enough to come in and stay? This starts the dark nightmare of Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw where fractured friendships and an abandoned mansion are a dangerous combination.

Cat arrives at a ruinous Japanese mansion for a wedding of her two friends Faiz and Talia. She is accompanied by Cat’s one time lover Phillip and soon will be arriving their distant friend but often a class clown Lin. The group hungers for thrills and the idea of a eerie wedding ceremony in the ruined remains of a decaying house with a thousand year old reputation for a ghost and many women buried alive on its grounds is just too good an opportunity to miss. But this group is not quite the tightly knitted group of college everyone remembers. Talia is not happy when she finds Faiz and Cat dated for just 8 chaste weeks long ago and Phillip is trying to repair a damaged friendship while Cat is still recovering from a breakdown. The last thing anyone needs is a clever ghost to now enter the story. The night will end in death and betrayals.

This novella is a masterpiece in how to build a story. Told always from Cat’s point of view we get to meet the friends and before any supernatural action commences, we feel the fracturing that is underway. It’s that feeling when you know you’re meeting the same people out of routine and nostalgia rather than love. These people know when each other is lying and they know all the defences people will use to hide their feelings. Khaw shows us the brittleness hiding behind smiles and gestures yet also shows the ties between these were once strong and you’d love the group to cast their problems away and just enjoy themselves. But as the story darkens you know these emotional whirlwinds in Talia’s constant suspicions, Phillip’s guilt and Faiz’s constant feelings of inferiority to Phillip being the rich leading man of college, life and the group conspire to create a perfect recipe to entice a ghost who herself has experience of a bad relationship being jilted at the altar then buried alive.

The second act is when the story enters true horror and the setting forthis tale is a remarkably creepy mansion. It has all the classic haunted house flourishes with rooms full of decay with books turned to mulch, rooms of broken staring dolls and on each wall demons and other nastier creatures from Japanese mythology looking on as humans implode with one another. Khaw moves from creating the human characters and their dynamics to a sudden rush of dark energy and you’ll notice the narrative speed up as the group realise they are now in the hands of an ancient ghost known as ohaguro-bettari pulling them along into a living nightmare. At this point the reader starts to realise we cannot trust Cat’s eyes as reality is being played with and things go south fast. This experience shatters the minds of the group and all that inner anger with each other suddenly erupts. As well as the creepy atmosphere the true horror is how the characters are now so broken that they can’t actively resist what is unfurling. They’re on guiderails created by a ghost and bloody visceral ending is coming, and they can’t stop it. The finale is dark not just for the event but what this means for any future survivors. Khaw writing throughout is spell-bounding and captures the mood of each scene perfectly from suspicion; arrival of ghosts to anger and hostility via madness. The truly horrible suspicion behind it all is has the ghost orchestrated and controlled all of this or is this just the final fractures that needed only a very little push?

This is a truly wonderful piece of horror storytelling with a great blend of psychological and bloody horror. An imperfect group falling foul of a haunted house is a classic storyline but the energy and use of setting and atmosphere by Khaw made this a hugely memorable read with that central idea of friends not being able to save you is a unsettling fear many of us may have and makes this story easy to respond to. If you want something that makes the back of your neck go cold and wonder who may be about to whisper a less than sweet nothing in your ear this is perfect for you. Strongly recommended!

“I think this is all a mistake. Us coming here. Us being here. I think we’re going to regret it. That’s all.”

Five twenty somethings have travelled to Japan for a wedding. Most of the group have dated one another at some point and although this is supposed to be a joyous occasion, the ‘friends’ spend much of their time re-examining past wounds.

The Heian mansion where they’re staying is rumoured to be haunted. The story goes that a groom died on his way to their wedding and the bride’s response was to ask her wedding guests to bury her alive. Totally normal request. The guests obliged her because … reasons? But the story doesn’t end there; some unlucky lady is sacrificed each year to keep her company.

“Like, this feels unholy.”

I loved the concept and was really interested in exploring some Japanese folklore. Given this is a novella, I had hoped the horror would be flinging itself at me from all angles but I spent most of the read wishing the characters would stop bickering amongst themselves so ghost girl could get on with her haunting.

I anticipated feeling dread or the need to look over my shoulder. Instead, I was frustrated to be spending time with characters I couldn’t connect with and confused as to why they were choosing to spend time with one another.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you!)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

This is a swift, sharp and satisfyingly eerie read, best read in one sitting (which is very possible as it’s a novella).

The premise is simply that five friends in their twenties gather in Heian-age mansion because one of them has always wanted to get married in a haunted house. Which. Um. In any case, the backstory to this particular haunted house is that a bride’s fiancé died on his way to the wedding so she decided to be buried alive in the foundations of the house so she could wait for the spirit of her husband. After which a girl was buried alive on an annual basis so the bride wouldn’t lonely.

Anyway, Nothing But Blackened Teeth exists both within and without the horror tradition its exploring. Yes, it’s a haunted house story about a group of young folks bearing their own, y’know *figurative* ghosts confronted a literal one. But its references come from exclusively from Japanese folklore. The characters have, in the past explicitly travelled together, seeking supernatural experiences and have come to the house now in the hope of seeing a ghost, rather than stumbling into a disturbing situation by accident. Bar “golden boy” Philip, who has paid for the whole enterprise, they’re all marginalised along some axis: Cat, the POV character, for example is queer, Chinese (though she was raised in Malysia) and in recovery from suicide attempt she describe as motivated by ‘terminal ennui’.

I appreciated the book for its atmosphere, for all the Googling it made me do (that’s not sarcastic: I like the notion that’s scope to write in a way that doesn’t insist ‘white American’ has to be the cultural default of the books), for its gorgeous writing (which I’ve seen described elsewhere as purple, but for me perfectly suited the protagonist and the tone of the story) and for its thematic resonances. The various relationships between the five friends have all degenerated into toxicity, Philip is, of course, privilege personified (and his fate I couldn’t help find both darkly satisfying, because I’m a bad bad person) and Cat herself is mired in the loneliness of mental health recovery. For me, this was the most useful use of the haunted house as symbolic object: we often wonder why, in such tales, a protagonist does not simply leave a situation they know is terribly bad for them. Which, y’know. Mental health, amirte?

I think where I struggled was the sheer compressed nature of the story. I didn’t necessarily need to know all the gory details of every betrayal, every misplaced crush or ill-advised fuck, but it felt to me like we barely got to know the friends before one of them has been taken by a ghost and another has started pulling his teeth out (that makes sense in context). Even the climax is an odd combination of body horror, murder and … bickering? Which, well, your mileage may vary but, for me, slightly compromised the impact of what was happening. Plus there were a few fourth-wall breaking comments offered by Lin, the character who self-describes as the comic relief. For example, at one point he tells three of the others to “go do protagonist shit.” And, again, your mileage may vary but for me this was just a bridge too. Obviously, any savvy modern person, whether they’re in a horror story or not, would be aware of horror tropes, and drawing attention to them felt like something that sort of character would do. But there was a bluntness to these references that felt unnecessary to me. I mean, horror media has been pointing out horror tropes since … okay I don’t know enough about horror media to say when. But since Scream at the very least.

But this otherwise a dark and sophisticated take on the material; one that takes it in intriguing directions while offering a familiar catharsis. Highly recommended.

Also that cover. Omfg.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is an intriguing horror novella surrounding a group of friends who stay at an abandoned Heian era mansion for the wedding of two members of the group, however the night spirals out of control when the ghostly bride who inhabits the mansion comes after them looking for a new victim to bury inside the mansion's walls.

I enjoyed this novella with it's lyrical prose and horror tropes and was kept on the edge of my seat as the night slowly unravelled into a horrifying nightmare for the group however I didn't feel much connection to the characters and was at times confused by the dynamics between the group

I'm glad to have read an e-ARC version of this novella on Kindle. I like to think my vocabulary is pretty well developed, but still I found myself making use of the built in dictionary almost every page. Sometimes because I was unfamiliar with specific Japanese words, (which was to be expected and I'm always interested to learn of other cultures so I'm not complaining about these), more often they were general descriptors.
There was also a repeated phrase that no amount of tinkering could convince Google to translate for me.

It felt a little like Khass had been writing from a thesaurus, these unnecessary additions broke my concentration a few times and perhaps pulled me out of the story.

There's a strange contrast between the elegant descriptions of the mansion and the language and behaviour of the characters. Though perhaps this is intentional? Making it clear the characters are encroaching on a sacred space they don't belong in.

Rich boy Philip has bought permits to allow himself, Cat and Lin to witness the marriage of their 'friends' Faiz and Talia in this Heiran mansion.
The group have a vibe younger than their presumed age and the not unusual mixed relationship histories with both women having slept with both men in the past. They spoke and behaved as young teenagers, not matured adults ready for marriage.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is told from Cat's point of view as one night goes horribly wrong. I'd like to say I enjoyed it but honestly, I can't.

It didn't make sense that a group of people who all despised eachother had traveled to Japan for a wedding in a rotten old mansion. The way they spoke to and treated eachother from the start showed absolutely no love, so why would they bother?

The legend behind the mansion was interesting but the present events were half formed and sudden with no build up or reasoning.

Not for me.

Sadly, this was a big disappointment. But let me say why I gave it two stars instead of just one - the writing. I really liked the writing. I thought the writer is talented, and the writing is amazing.

But the rest of it...I'm almost laughing at the thought of this being scary, or creepy, or anything for that matter. This felt empty, like it had no plot, it had no characters, like an empty book with a lot of great metaphors and similes.

This to me felt like a scene cut out from a teenage movie where kids go into a haunted house and then shit happens to them.

I think this lacked atmosphere. It's fairly short, but still, there was no momentum, no atmosphere created, no characters you liked or hated, there was no sights or sounds that make your skin tingle with fear or disgust...

And to think I was dreading reading this because I was too scared!

The perfect read for spooky season. I made the wise choice of reading the latter half of this novella early in the morning before the sun had risen and it couldn't have worked out any better - NOTHING BU BLACKENED TEETH is eerie, haunting and captivating on its own; give it that small extra support and you'll find yourself transported right into the heart of the story along with the characters, their fear and anxiety making you feel unsettled like you wouldn't have expected. I can't quite tell if I devoured this book or if it devoured me, but I am delighted with it regardless.

Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw is a menacing ghost story set in a haunted Japanese Mansion

The story centres around a group of friends (although that is a term that can be applied loosely) as they rent a Heian Mansion for a wedding for two of the party. The party are a group of thrill seekers who regularly go exploring so called haunted places and have heard that the mansion that they are going to is regarded as one of the most haunted places.

Whilst there are many eerie goings on in the house, the main focus revolves around the groups tenuous relationships with each other, and as we delve deeper into the story, the frayed relationships between the friends become steadily unwound.

As the story progresses, we learn of the characters mistrust for each other and how their relationships have become more fractured as time has gone on. Cat, the central member of the cast has recently experienced some form of mental health crisis but is on the way to recovery and has been invited to a wedding celebration for her best friend, but we soon learn that her best friend’s fiancee is not her biggest fan.

Even though the book is short, Khaw steadily builds layers of tension, not just between the characters, but in the cloyingly, claustrophobic atmosphere of the house.

There are going to be obvious references to Shirley Jackson with Nothing But Blackened Teeth, particularly in the way that the house has just as important a role in the narrative and events of the story, and the fact that you are never entirely sure what is orchestrating the events or widening the tensions of the group. Is it the house itself, or the unnatural presences in the house. In addition to this there is a slight hallucinatory tone to the book and you are never sure what is actually real.

I like the fact that the characters are not particularly likeable, and again it gives it that unreal feeling as to whether the events are due to extraneous forces or whether the group are reacting to the environment and are succumbing to their own personal insecurities.

Khaw continuously plays with and subverts common horror tropes, gently having a little bit of a humourous poke at horror films and the formulas that they use.

The book never falls into outright horror as Khaw restrains the story and keeps it firmly in the eerie side. She carefully dissects the relationships between the group, and exhibits the scars of their friendships and we see the wounds slowly ooze as we learn that none of these wounds have actually healed.

With Nothing But Blackened Teeth, Cassandra Khaw demonstrates her talent for building tension and atmosphere and I think she will definitely be a name to watch out for in the future.

That cover! Drew me in straight away. Unfortunately this short horror novel wasn’t to my taste.

The story of five friends who head to Japan to a “haunted house” as two of them get married, it’s an odd mix of overuse of prose and metaphors mixed with near soap opera two dimensional unlikeable characters.

Told from the viewpoint of Cat, who seemingly is very emotionally fragile having recently suffered some sort of break down that is never explained, all five seem to have had some sort of romantic involvement with each other in the past and animosity is rife amongst them. It makes it hard to connect with any of them or have any empathy with any of them. To be honest they are just all incredibly irritating.

This soap opera plays alongside long portions of descriptive prose about the house, the folklore, the atmosphere and, while it’s nice to see an author try something different, I found the use of odd or unusual words quite annoying and it was hard not to think the author was overly trying to show how clever she was rather than adding value to the story.
Mix this with the over simplistic bickering of our two dimensional characters and you have two completely different styles of storytelling and I could just never engage fully with the story.

The book itself is more a novella than a novel, coming in at under 200 pages and takes place nearly exclusively in the house.

Not particularly scary or atmospheric, there is some interesting ideas but in my humble opinion the authors style choice just doesn’t work and the book is destined to fail when that happens.

Many thanks to the publisher for the ARC through Netgalley.