ARC Review: Baby Teeth

About The Book:

  Title:  Baby Teeth 

  Author: Zoje Stage 
  Pub. Date: July 17th, 2018
  Publisher: St. Martin's Press 
  Pages: 320 

  Genre: Adult, Thriller, Mystery 

  Rate: 2/5 stars 

Synopsis :

Sweetness can be deceptive. 

Meet Hanna.

She’s the sweet-but-silent angel in the adoring eyes of her Daddy. He’s the only person who understands her, and all Hanna wants is to live happily ever after with him. But Mommy stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think of to get rid of her. Ideally for good.

Meet Suzette.

She loves her daughter, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette's husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all.

Review:

Baby Teeth is being marketed as a thriller involving Hanna, a (selective) mute girl, who hates her mother so much that she wants her gone so that she can spend all her time with her dad. Meanwhile, her father refuses to believe that Hanna has any ill intentions toward her mother. While this novel is being marketed as a thriller, I didn't find anything thrilling about it.

The synopsis of this book is literally the entire story. It never progressed past that, and went in circles of 1. Hanna planning to hurt/kill her mom, 2. Her mom reacting to the situation, and 3. Hanna realizing it didn't work and goes back to the drawing board. Obviously, I got very bored after awhile. But I stuck with it because I thought something exciting was going to happen.

I will say that Hanna was a creepy, albeit believable little girl. Her lack of empathy turned her into a pretty scary character. Suzette, her mom, was at the end of her rope and extremely confused why her daughter hates her so much and is so defiant towards her but doesn't act this way towards her dad. I do wonder why she wouldn't just put video cameras around to catch her daughter's behavior if it was so concerning to her that her husband wouldn't believe her? The dad, Alex, is just so clueless that there is nothing interesting about him.

While I liked the characters and writing of this book, I was disappointed that there really wasn't any type of resolution or fulfillment to the plot. I felt like we were just reading a big short story with no climactic aspects. This book is being marketed as shocking and disturbing. I guess at times Hanna could be disturbing but it wasn't shocking at all. Because I liked the writing, I would definitely try something else Ms. Stage writes, but, unfortunately, Baby Teeth was not a hit with me.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for providing this book
in exchange for my honest review

- Jocelyn