Baby Teeth: A Novel

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Collateral Awards of the 76th Venice Film Festival". La Biennale di Venezia. 7 September 2019 . Retrieved 27 February 2020. I received a copy of this book from St. Martin's Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. For Milla, it’s a headlong rush into first love. Like her character, Scanlen makes every moment count – a single loaded look, which sweeps between her parents and Moses, contains a symphony of emotions, starting with adolescent defiance and ending with an ache of uncertainty and longing.

She never liked me. No, that’s not true. When she was a baby…Suzette knew she was oversharing, but the words spelled out. But at some point the war began. And I’m losing. I’m losing it. And I can’t tell my husband, I try but…He doesn’t see it. And where would I be? I’m supposed to be a good mom, the mom I never had, that’s what I wanted. That’s what I promised him, what I promised myself”. Hanna, the 7-year-old at the center of this novel should, be all accounts, be a wonderful, well-adjusted child. The daughter of two loving parents, Hanna has been raised since birth by her stay-at-home mother and doted on by her loving father.

I’m always so impressed with verse novels, which convey so much through few words and white space, and this is no different. The core of the vampire is here: blood, and desire, and otherness, but it’s also about falling in love, something that Immy has done before, but it focuses on the crux of all love stories (platonic and romantic): Dalton, Ben (4 October 2019). "Picturehouse Entertainment acquires Venice Competition title 'Babyteeth' for UK". Screen Daily . Retrieved 5 October 2019.

Baby Teeth was a blast for me to read. Perfect for fans of Horror movies such as The Omen, Orphan and Case 39. I have a problem with the pacing. I was bored sometimes and to my mind, the book was overwritten. It has some unnecessary scenes. If I cut it off nobody would notice. I don't like that Suzette has Crohn's disease. It was useless. I also don't like when the author collects the problem. Less is sometimes more. Hannah was just enough. Then there is Hannah, who refused to talk even though she is physically capable of doing so and does so as her alter ego. Her thoughts and actions are those of a much older person, not those of an isolated, mute seven year old. Hannah thinks that life would be perfect if she could murder her mom and have dad all to herself and her attempts to do so escalate until Alex finally has to believe that his daughter is a sociopath/psychopath. Once appropriate action has taken place, the book abruptly ends, just when I was hoping we could learn more. We do learn one thing from Hannah and that is that her mom had better watch out! Suzette's mother's inattention to Suzette's pain had disastrous consequences for Suzette. When Suzette met Alex, she finally found someone who would listen to her. But when it comes to Hanna, he's completely blind. He gets to be the fun parent, while Suzette has to deal with a defiant child and day-to-day child rearing. Now, it's Alex who's not listening to her. She's ashamed that her own child is rejecting her and is beginning to question her own perceptions. Throughout the story, she’s drawn to authoritative adults who take the time to listen to her and offer to help her take control of the situation.However, they are not a perfect couple. Immy begins to take more blood than needed leaving Claudia physically weak, and one could argue that she is more obsessed with Claudia rather than in love with her - two things which are often conflated. Throughout the book, you can pinpoint moments where it becomes clear that they won't stay together. This is realistic, most relationships don't work out, not always because one person is awful, but sometimes because things aren't meant to be or you realise that you're not as compatible as you once thought. It breaks the mould of most romance novels. She stuffed a grape in her mouth, a strawberry, a cheese cube, another cheese cube, another grape. And made a show at chewing, chewing.” I hate to finish like a negative Nancy. So, I add this: the cover is striking and I love the title! Too bad about the book.😕

As the house starts to become increasingly volatile and claustrophobic, Suzette begins to wonder if she will ever feel safe in her own house, alone with her “baby daughter.” Dennis asked me how I was feeling this story. My answer = “it’s nuts, weird, strange but I love it”. For real, this was one wild story and I ate it all up! It made me FEEL so many feels. I was pissed, grossed out, felt creeped out and had me looking at my own child like, huh🤔. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Kudos, Madam Stage, for this very interesting debut. I can see much potential within the genre and hope you’ll keep writing. Your fan base is sure to grow exponentially, especially with all the popularity this book is receiving online.

Sometimes she wished she could remember being in Mommy’s tummy. Were they both really happy then? When their blood was all jumbled up and they shared a mystery? On the way home, Hanna saw that her mother seemed too happy, so she put the next stage of her plan into action. She had taken a photo of Suzette while she slept that morning, and she glued it into the center of a collage of photos of dead bodies that she had found on the internet and printed. When Suzette came in and saw it, she was horrified and shook Hanna, saying she would tell Alex. However, when Alex came home, Hanna had twisted her own arm so that bruises appeared, and when he saw them, he was furious with Suzette. They had a tense dinner, and Hanna decided that she could make Alex dislike Suzette even more if she made her ugly. ZOJE STAGE delivers quite the chilling tale here that was well-written with an easy to read writing style to make this quite the fast-paced read. The story is told in alternating voices and perspectives between Suzette and Hanna, I enjoyed both of their perspectives equally. The things that Hanna was capable of was downright diabolical and creepy!I nearly didn’t finish this book. I found it to be THAT ridiculous with nothing remarkable about the writing style to keep me hooked. But, as we readers often do, I just HAD to trudge on to see if my mind would be magically changed in the end. It wasn’t, though the end result of the book was one of the better parts of the plot, so at least there’s that, right? 2 stars ** suzette is a great dramatic counterpoint to hanna, and since the “creepy kid” is the constant in books like this, it is the parent’s reactions that determine where the book goes, so it’s all on her. which is a pretty constant theme in the book, along with parental breaking points. One final note: You may be wondering why I haven’t talked about “Daddy” more. Here’s what I have to say to him . . . . A vengeful pit grew inside her and it remained to be seen how it would grow—very possibly into a tree with snaking branches and claws. How fun it would be to be such a tree, looming like a giant on a neighborhood street. People would pass beneath her, and the ones she didn’t like—snap snap crunch! She’d snatch them up and tangle her branches around them, and their bones would break with little crunches that would be mistaken for the snap of a twig. Her bark-self would absorb their yummy blood and the tree would grow and thrive. (Hanna) I received an ARC of this book from the publisher, St. Martin's Press, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.