A breathtakingly unique, disturbing, uncomfortable and dark look into the dysfunctional family dynamics between Suzette, an overbearing mother and her hateful and cruel daughter Hanna. This book isn't for everyone. It will make you uncomfortable. It will make you cringe and want to close your eyes and turn away. It will make you angry and even make you want to throw it across the room. And it will make you want to hungrily keep on reading, because like an accident on the side of the road that you can't help looking at, you'll want to see and know more.


Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing a digital copy in return for an honest, unbiased review.

“People told her those were the hardest times, before a child could speak her needs, but for her they were the easiest.”

Hanna doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to. Not with daddy. He understands her in a way no one else does. Not even Mommy. And that’s a problem. For Mommy.

Except Suzette may be the only person who sees Hanna for who, or what, she actually is. She sees the tantrums. The deviousness. And when her antics start to feel far more sinister, Suzette begins to fear that her daughter is capable of things she never imagined. In a home where Suzette once felt safe and loved, she now feels she’s trapped in a nightmare. The only question is, who is getting out?

“It was hard to pour endless love into someone who wouldn’t love you back. No one could do it forever.”

Baby Teeth is a difficult book for me to review. One the one hand, I absolutely loved how Stage explores the fundamental question in psychology today: nature versus nurture. That is the theme at the core of this book. Hannah, as we discover, is quite the little monster. She’s pathological in her deviousness. And she’s only four. Creepy AF!

Then there’s Suzette. A woman who, like most mothers, isn’t perfect. She makes mistakes. Has her own demons to contend with. Struggles with the demands motherhood places on her, when she is clearly not in a mental state even resembling stable. Or prepared. The dichotomy between this mother/daughter relationship is full of so much delicious tension, I couldn’t get enough.

“Honesty was not an altogether solid subject in her mind; it was a vapory thing, like smoke that was present one minute and began drifting away the next.”

But, then it started to get strange. Yes, I get that this is an intense story line, and while I was holding my breath until the end, I didn’t really buy the ending. It felt, I don’t know, underwhelming. By the end of the novel, we are in. I mean, we are divested in a novel full of awful people dealing with horrific things. Don’t hold back at the end! Give me an ending that shocks me. That horrifies me. That will make me never look at four year olds the same! I felt like the ending we got was a little too neat. A little too predictable. And a little too easy.

Here’s the thing. I am fine with unlikable characters. Hanna is clearly unlikable. She’s manipulative. She’s most probably on the fast track to being a complete sociopath. But Suzette and Alex aren’t actually any better. Which, for the sake of character analysis, I actually liked. I liked that we have to stop and question where this penchant for atrocity comes from. Did Suzette, in fact, cultivate this, or was she just the first victim? What about Alex?

“It tried Mommy’s patience sometimes, but Hanna considered that a good thing because you can’t get better at something without practice, and she wanted Mommy to become more patient.”

This is great in regards to a psychological thriller because it makes you wonder, really wonder, how monsters are made. Can any of us find ourselves in the dragons lair, through actions and behaviors we did to ourselves? This is the line of thinking that makes for fantastic horror. It’s real. It makes us look twice at our own lives. At our own choices. And we shiver in the dark of night, because maybe, just maybe, we relate a bit too much. It hits home, a little too close.

I wanted to close this book and shiver with dark delight. I wanted to be freaked out. But, I wasn’t. And, to be honest, I don’t know if I’m being fair. Not every book ends the way we like, and while I didn’t feel satisfied with the ending, I haven’t been able to get Baby Teeth out of my head since I finished, well over a few weeks ago. And the stories that stick with me, are usually the ones I rave about. I need to process this one more. Really think about it and decide. I’ll probably need to reread it, once my initial reactions have been subdued.

If you love complex books with psychologically compelling plot lines, full of characters that are all kinds of flawed, you’ll enjoy Baby Teeth. It’s creepy. And it’s frightening. It’s a story that will make you react and think. If you’ve read this, tell me what you thought! And if you haven’t, let me know if you do. This is a book that needs to be talked about. It needs to be examined, and processed, and dissected. In that regard, I loved it.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press for sending me an early review copy!

Hanna is just like any other girl, except that she's non verbal and she's plotting to kill her mother.

Suzette is just like any normal mother, except that sometimes her hatred for her daughter shows.

In Baby Teeth, the dual perspectives of Hanna and Suzette show the inner-most thoughts of these two characters as they move Alex, Hanna's father and Suzette's husband, like a pawn in their deadly stand off.
Hanna is very intelligent and calculating. Because she refuses to speak, she communicates with her parents through knocking, squeals, and other noises. In her eyes, she wants her mother gone so that she and Alex can live happily together. Hanna thinks that her mother is the reason why Alex doesn't love her more. She wants to take her mother's place in his life.

Suzette, frustrated with having to take care of a non verbal child, just wishes that her daughter was more like her. She buys her toys, artistic tools so that she can express herself, and even tries to teach her how to draw, being quite creative herself. But nothing works.

I really wasn't expecting this novel to be the way that it was. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would really love for it to be some sort of thriller movie.

I know this was a widely publicized release but it was just strange and unenjoyable. I would not be recommending this to readers.

Absolutely gripping. I was unnerved and addicted at the same time. Would make an excellent book for book clubs and unique thriller recommendations. We ordered several copies for our library collection!

I am so sorry but this book was not for me. I DNF it at 30% after 2 weeks of picking it up and putting it down to read something else I just lost all interest but I do recommend you read it for your self!

OH WOW YES! Well this was so amazingly creepeculiar!

BEST THRILLER/HORROR I read in 2018!

This book would be an awesome horror/thriller movie!

At first, I was like… Huh? I don’t like it. Nun-huh. I don’t.

A few pages later, I was like... Hummmm.... I’m liking this!

Halfway in I was like… OH WOW YES!

This is a very unique book so if you think you don't like it, I suggest you give it a few more pages. You may end up LOVING it, like me. :)

Expect…

- Two very distinct and strong voices. A child and her mother.
- A third-person deep POV so good you’ll feel you ARE these two characters!
- A fascinating and downright creepy mother-child relationship.
- An even creepier and unique villain. This villain is just so unexpected, manipulative and creepilicious! The entire book you’ll be obsessively wondering WHY she is so evil and WHAT’s next????. OMG WHAT is she going to do now?
- Enthralling emotional and psychological imagery. To be captive in the minds of this befuddle and abashed mother and her child is such a psychological treat! trip! Especially the little devil’s mind! It’s just total lunacy, pure evil! Awesomely evil! This is delivered through tons of inner monologue and backstory but they are told in such an engrossing way you won’t be bored!

One of my favorites of 2018. An empathetic mother pulls the reader into this story, leading to a straight-up ambush by an unequivocally evil child unlike any I've ever seen in print. Creepy and brilliant, this page-turner is nothing short of genius.

Oy I never wished so much ill on a child before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DNF. This was just so repetitive and dour. I couldn't connect to anything or anyone, and I just didn't care what was going to happen.

I really had to push myself to read the beginning of this book, but as I got further in the story, I was addicted. This book screams sequel.

This book was intense! Suzette had her work cute out for her from the very beginning with Hanna. This is one of the creepiest, most insanely good books I've read in a long time. It was like being on a roller coaster from the first page. I would be lying if I said I didn't start looking at children very differently while reading this. It was dark, disturbing and amazing!

This book was great! I didn’t want it to end. Parts of it creeped me out, and I am pretty hard to creep out! I hope there will be a sequel! It was fascinating switching points of view and Hanna, the child was very interesting. A few times I felt bad for her, but most of the time I was hoping she would get caught. I’m not sure what to think of Suzette the mom. The father I wanted to punch much of the time. Great book!

Suzette has a hard time really loving her little girl, Hannah. That’s fucked up, right? But she feels a little bit vindicated when Hannah says she becomes another person while the devil comes to her. Dad doesn’t understand anything, but he loves Hannah, and he wants Suzette to try harder to love her too. Which is lucky for Hannah because she reeaalllly loves Daddy. I mean, really. She wants him all to herself. So there is a lot of oddball shit going on, and I thought it was going to be really gimmicky, but turns out it was absolutely incredible and a pleasure to be horrified by Zoje Stage.

Hmm. For someone who adores We Need to Talk About Kevin, you would think that a book modelled after it would shoot straight to the top of my favourites list. But, you would be wrong.
Like, really really really wrong.
There was no thrill, no suspense. Just the maniacal mutterings of a seven-year-old with an evil masterplan. Oh, and far too much focus on Crohn's which, as a person that deals with a chronic stomach condition, really turned my stomach. No one who deals with these things want to read about them, okay? It's like dead parents in badly-written young adult fiction.
But, the problems didn't stop there. Oh no. On top of my entirely subjective qualms, the writing wasn’t very good, the chapters from the child’s view really missed the mark (it was aiming for a mix of violence and childhood innocence that belayed something ominous lurking under the surface but to be honest, it just came off as nonsensical and over-written) and the relationship between the mother and child just felt far too far-fetched to be even close to believable.
I mean, Ed Kemper and his mother had a better relationship than these two main characters did.

This book!!! So I saw that this book was described as a mixture of We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Omen and some other book----but they had me at We Need to Talk About Kevin (truly disturbing book if you haven't read it). I REALLY enjoyed this book. "Evil" kids are the stuff of nightmares and this story is a great one! When I was a kid I watched "The Bad Seed" with my mom many times and I always wondered if it was true....are some kids "born bad?" Here we are again asking the same question. Great book----I'd just love to know more!!!

This. Book. Messed. Me. Up. The front blurb describes it as WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN meets GONE GIRL meets THE OMEN and that feels pretty accurate.

Hanna believes that her mom is a bad witch, that has cast a spell on her dad and stops him from spending as much time with Hanna or giving her all of his love. Suzette believes her daughter Hanna is trying to kill her. Suzette is right.

The perfectly paced suspense carries this book as readers constantly wonder whether Hanna or Suzette will succeed in this battle. This book carries all of the gothic fear of the domestic, the idea that perhaps the home is the most dangerous place of all. Killer kids aside, Stage thoughtfully explores the complexities of parenthood/motherhood and the way parenting changes the relationship between spouses. This is, at it's core, a novel about how families are hard and how we have to fight for love and how we often must make hard decisions in order to keep that love intact.

Also the ending will want to make you sleep with the lights on.

I was given a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Honestly, the tag line got me and that rarely happens. This book sounded so so interesting from the get go. I would definitely classify this book as "un-put-down-able" because once you started you really had to know what exactly happened. I knocked a point off just for the ending because I wanted more and I think I was a tad bit let down by the conflict resolution.

Baby Teeth was the book I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into, the premise had me intrigued and I thought it would be my favorite read of the summer, but it was lackluster for me and did not hold my interest long enough to know the characters more, or find out what happened until the end. I did like the writing style, but there was something about this story that I just didn't care to finish reading.

An absolutely delightfully creepy book. In the beginning I couldn't tell if the mother was a horrible, crazy person or if the child truly was evil. Such an unsettling book...I loved it!