Five (mostly) friends gather to hold the wedding of two of their own in a haunted house. The house is a Heian-era building where a bride died waiting for her groom, and girls were regularly sacrificed to the structure so she wouldn't be alone. On the first night of their arrival, they drink, celebrate, bicker, tell ghost stories, and soon find they aren't alone. The long dead bride is watching them, and she's excited for new people to play with.

NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH thrums with ghostly terror, lyrical prose, and rich, messy themes to unearth. Cassandra Khaw is a master of literary horror, giving you enough to sink a shovel in but trusting you to dig deeper, bones and all, yourself. Every single line in the story is carefully chosen. The shortest description propels such precise imagery, often of things lurking in the shadows, that this is a novella best read with all the lights on.

Part of the brilliance of NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH is how it teases, tells to an extent, but doesn't give every detail. For the 5 friends, we get tastes of what their relationships and backstories are. We know Cat, the protagonist, is still recovering from a dark, suicidal period. We know several of the friends have dated or been intimate with each other (and not everyone knows who has been with who). And we know some are spiteful, some are more honest than they should be, and some less so. But we don't know all the how's and the why's; rather, Khaw shows us how they feel, how their emotions have twisted and twined around each other, as that is often more important than the details. In a way, this mirrors the story of the bride, the girls, and the mansion. We have the basics, but what's left are the bare bones and the haunting emotions, the desperation and need to poke and prod, because reactions are better than the silence.

Readers will find a stunning mix of physical horror, psychological terror, and prose as sharp as the smile of a ghost bride.