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Yours Celestially by Al Hess

After divorce, death, and having his reformatted soul uploaded into a new body, Sasha expected resurrection to be a fresh start. His time spent in digital Limbo with the program's cheeky AI guardian angel, Metatron, was cathartic, but what good is a second life when he only sees his daughter on the weekends, he has all the same problems he had before he died, and he can't seem to shake the ache for the married life he lost? If that weren't frustrating enough, a glitch in the program has given Sasha the ability to sense Metatron even outside of Limbo. And Metatron is in love. The angel's sickly-sweet yearning for one of the souls still in Limbo has turned Sasha's stomach into caramelized lead. It's hard enough to move on without someone else's feelings making the emptiness in his own life even more acute. He didn't have playing wingman to an actual winged being on his bingo card, but he's determined to help Metatron make a move on their crush so he ca...

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

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 wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends.

But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For 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.

TITLE: Nothing But Blackened Teeth
AUTHOR: Cassandra Khaw
PUBLISHER: Tor/Forge (Macmillan)
YEAR: 2021
LENGTH: 128 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Horror
RECOMMENDED: Highly

Queer Rep Summary: Bi/Pan Main Character(s).

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.

NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH is a chilling story with a classic setup: a very old mansion which the protagonists aren’t really supposed to have entered, and a variety of interpersonal tensions and allegiances which normally wouldn’t matter much to their daily existence but suddenly drive life-and-death stakes when the spooky stuff begins. The prose is exquisite, articulating the numb feeling of finding oneself the genre-savvy protagonist of a horror story but unable to change things. I love how it uses the hero’s trope-awareness to ramp up the terror and resignation as events play out to their viscera-laden conclusion. 

Short and spooky with an excellent ending, make sure this is on your horror shelf.

CW for cursing, sexism, misogyny, toxic friendship, sexual content, mental illness, depression, vomit, blood (graphic), gore (graphic), body horror (graphic), violence (graphic), murder (graphic), major character death (graphic), death (graphic).

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A woman in white with black hair and pale skin, her only facial feature is a smudge red mouth with a black void inside.


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