Okay, fam. So I had a lot of feelings about this book, and I am so glad that I’m doing a buddy discussion for this one because I need to let it all out. Thank you again so much to Tay @ Frayed Books for doing this buddy read with me, and I hope you guys like our discussion post!

I am so glad that I read this at the beginning of spooky season, which for me begins in September. The weather is starting to get colder and the whole fall vibe thing is happening. Books like these get me into the mood of reading spookier books especially gearing up for Halloween! I love Halloween and all of the haunted attractions that come with it.

If you’re looking for a creepy book, Dawn is definitely the author to go to. I’ve only read The Dead House but that book via audio is… perfection. I was legitimately scared at times and it takes a lot for that to happen for me. Anyway, this isn’t a review about that book! Teeth in the Mist definitely takes that same creepy vibe and pushes it into witchy haunted house territory as well as some casual devil/demon stuff. Yanno, a typical Friday night. I was automatically drawn in by the cover of this one so good job to NOVL for that!

As I said, I read this via print and I am glad that I read it that way. It was neat to see the blacked-out pages, the letters and the photos that help you visualize the story better. This book is basically told in three separate timelines: we have Zoey (current timeline), Roan (1851), and Hermione (1583). We find out that some of the characters are related along the way, mainly Zoey/Hermione and Roan/Len. Len and Poulton are two side-ish characters that are important in the story, one more so than the other. I agree with Leelynn here in that Len seemed sort of thrown in there and I didn’t really totally like her character much. She kind of came in more than halfway through the book and while I appreciated her relationship with Zoey, I knew there was something that we didn’t know, which was revealed on the final page.

Zoey is an inquisitive girl who likes photography and finds out that she can Conjure and is a type of witch, as one does. I thought that her story was told in an interesting format with both the journal entries and description of the videos she was making. Roan’s story is told after her father dies and she is sent to Mill House to live. You can guess that that probably isn’t the safest place for her and she–and other wards of the master of the house–quickly find out that not all is what it seems. Finally, we have Hermione, who’s letters appear a few times throughout the book. She is like that last thread which ties the past to the present.

Now, we know I am not a fan of many timelines. They can get confusing and convoluted and I don’t appreciate them. In some ways, these timelines were needed to drive the story. In others, I was confused for the first part of the book until I realized what was going on. This isn’t simply a book about witches, or a haunting. It’s a combination of both, with some demon stuff in there too. It may be hard to wrap your head around but it does work and I did enjoy reading the story. The most unique part is in how it’s told and that is what sets it apart from other books first and foremost. The different formats, the way the writing is sometimes put on the page. It’s just so cool and breaks up the book in a way that doesn’t have it feeling heavy and too dark.

I couldn’t find myself loving this book despite liking the elements in it. It felt sort of confusing at times and it took me a while to get into it. I still enjoyed reading it and I am curious to see how the audiobook sounds so I may be borrowing it and rereading it somewhat soon. I did find myself comparing it to her other book in terms of the way it was written and how much I loved the other one, so maybe I put myself at a disadvantage there. I think this is a great book for the October/Halloween season and I would recommend others to read it.

So I’m thinking back to this book because it’s been a few books in between that I’ve read since then, and I’m still bothered by that ending. I feel like it was such a cop out, to have Len (Raplen apparently) the daughter of Roan and Rapley, who were actually Adam and Eve that we kind of see in between each part of the novel. I think it was separated into like five parts or something, all dealing with a location associated with the Mountain. That cursed, stupid mountain that I just felt was demonized because of stupid Faust for his personal gain. I think that mountain would have been something beautiful if it wasn’t for him.

Don’t get me wrong though, I kind of like that Adam/Rapley and Eve/Roan got to meet again, although apparently they are halfsiblings because their dad is Faustus… well actually no Roan is even more special because apparently her dad is also the Devil. How cool, I guess?

So they totally had sex twice before they realized that they were related though, so I don’t know if I can hold that completely against them, but it still has an icky factor afterwards.

I would say that the ending was a cop out because I felt like they just made Len be connected to Roan as an after thought. I still don’t get why Len would go to Mill House knowing that her mother almost died there and her father died there when they were younger, all the horrors that happened there, only for her to be stuck there for five years by the time Zoey and Poulton make it to the House. Wouldn’t her mom have taught her that? And since apparently Roan is still alive because of her own deal that she made which really wasn’t explained, wouldn’t it have made sense for Roan to tell her daughter the history of how she came to be? It just didn’t sit right with me.

It’s funny because it seems like I’m mad at this book which I am, but it’s not like I didn’t like it. I was just bothered by that part, and of course since it hella spoils stuff, I really couldn’t say much about it.

Again, I wish we got to hear more from Hermione. I felt like she wasn’t as much of an important character as the synopsis made her out to be – although knowing that Hermione is Zoey’s ancestor, and that’s why there are physical repercussions for when she Conjures because of that whole thing – was good to know. I was wondering how the three of them fit together. I don’t feel like Roan really fit in with Hermione though. She wasn’t related to her, she just had to go to the house because her father sent her there after he died.

But also, what I’m curious to know is how many other kids are there that Faust sired to give their souls and bodies to Satan to keep on living. It couldn’t have just been those, and after the battle between Roan and Faust, what happened? I feel like there was a period of silence before Zoey got there, so how was he able to feed? Did he survive? I felt like I didn’t see him really die or anything, and since the wheel kept working by the time that Zoey was there, then someone had to have been giving it souls and stuff, right?

I just apparently have a lot of questions still.

Yeah I don’t know why I put creepy ass gifs in this post when I know I’m going to be the main one scared of them, but oh well.

So there you have it! Tay and I give you our full, unfiltered thoughts of Teeth in the Mist. I know that this was my first ever book by Kurtagich, and from what I’m hearing, she is a Queen at the Spooky and Creepy, so maybe I’ll try some of her other novels in the future.

What do you guys think? Do you want to share any spoiler-full thoughts with us?