Nothing But Blackened Teeth

 Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw, 128 pages.

A group of friends obsessed with ghost hunting decide that a haunted Heian-era mansion would be the perfect place to hold a wedding. The house is allegedly haunted by a woman who, when her husband died on the way to their wedding, asked to be buried alive to wait for him. It is likely also haunted by all of the girls allegedly buried to keep her company over the years. But the group, who it may be a bit of a stretch to call friends, gets more haunting than they bargained for.

This was a sort of interesting story, because the tension that arises from the fact that these people used to be friends but now mostly hate each other and the tension from the supernatural goings on are constantly bouncing off of each other, but rarely working in concert. I have some mixed feeling about this book. On the one hand there are some absolutely terrible images that have lived in my head since I read this book, on the other hand it's very frustrating that there were some other writing choices that could have been made to make this a thematically consistent and intricate book, but it just never quite comes together, which means it can't quite live up to the book it could be in my head. The ghost, despite having this story that you would think would interact with the haunting, isn't really a character, and could probably be replaced with literally any other ghost who wants to kill the people in it's house. Not a bad book, but it doesn't live up to it's own potential.