Baby Teeth: A Novel

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Hanna would sit there, watching them, trying to decipher the puffs of smoke. How much had her young brain already misconstrued? Observing, absorbing. Warping, twisting. Drawing conclusions about everything they did. this sapphic vampire novel-in-verse is soft and sweet, tender and dark, and helplessly sad. the desire-filled romance evokes a specific type of fresh, earthy, heartfelt sapphic wonder which i absolutely adore. Once Suzette starts mentioning to Alex about their daughter’s behavior he doesn’t believe it. How can his sweet little girl do any of the creepy things that are being described. Even when the schools tell the parents about Hanna’s schemes, Alex isn’t willing to consider it.

Summary and reviews of Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage - BookBrowse Summary and reviews of Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage - BookBrowse

This kid. Mmmmm, she is not messing around. I WANTED to get away from her and she's a fictional character. Alex, Hanna's father, wants to believe his wife's accounts of Hanna's cruel and unusual behavior. The only problem is that Alex has never really seen it, himself: Hanna shows him nothing but love. Which is driving Suzette literally crazy. Could it be that Hanna is just a typical, naughty girl - one whose everyday antics toward her mother point to intelligence, creativity, maybe even charm? Or is Hanna, as Suzette fears, actually trying to kill her? Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the advance reading copy. The opinion is purely my own. In her debut novel, Zoje Stage has made quite a name for herself. Exploring some dark and disturbing areas of the parent-child relationship, the reader is forced to see a seemingly calm little girl turn against her own mother. Hanna Jensen appears to be quite the average four-year-old girl, with one glaring exception; she does not speak and never has. Countless tests and examinations have left her parents, Alex and Suzette, baffled, as there is nothing physical wrong with her. With her muteness comes the added issue that she is unable to acclimate into any scholastic situation, leaving Suzette to homeschool Hanna. While there is no verbal communication, Hanna’s comprehension and written word is advanced for her young age. What no one has been able to see is that Hanna has another side, a darker side that is focussed on tearing Suzette down in a well-planned manner. Hanna internalises her struggle, but is happy to show her mother an evil side and purposely sabotage any progress that is being made. What begins as simple defecating on the floor turns to barking and, eventually, full-on violence in a school setting. While Suzette tries to come to terms with this, Alex is oblivious and sees only the princess-like girl that Hanna presents on a nightly basis. After Hanna tips her hand and shows off an alter-ego, Suzette is no longer prepared to go at this alone, but Alex remains uncertain that Hanna is to blame for anything. Hanna sets out her own plan to get rid of Suzette once and for all, allowing her to have Alex’s attention forevermore. While Suzette knows it is coming, she is helpless to slay the monster before her, seeing it has taken the form of sweet Hanna Jensen. Stage weaves together quite the disturbing tale here, pitting parental instinct against base survival. Fans who enjoy a diluted psychological thriller may enjoy this one, as its presentation has rounded edges and light spine tingles.Suzette's body has betrayed her repeatedly. She is under a doctor's care, but she's constantly worried about the next flare-up. When Suzette becomes pregnant she felt a loss of self. It's like an alien overtook her body! Pregnancy caused her to lose control of her body because she wasn't able to take her medications. The following day Anna and Henry realise that Milla had sex the previous night and are happy for their daughter. When Anna goes to give Milla water in bed after Moses leaves the bedroom, she discovers that she had died during the night. It was such a long, boring, drawn-out ending that didn’t satisfy me in any way, shape, or form. I’m talking zero climax, no excitement, no fun race to the end, nothing. Just more dialogue and more recapping of what I’ve read at least twice already.

Do Novels About Evil Children Say About Us? - The New What Do Novels About Evil Children Say About Us? - The New

The pivotal moment in Hannah and Suzette's relationship is when Suzette is inappropriately candid with two-year-old Hanna. She doesn't consider how much Hanna can understand or how a young child with limited experience might process the information. It's a frustrating scene to witness, because of all the miscommunications that ignite the toxic cycle of Hanna and Suzette's relationship: Hannah is stressed out because Mommy is acting weird→Hanna tries to get her Mommy's attention the only way a two-year-old can→ Suzette interprets it as yet another one of her maternal failings, when Hanna is actually just being a normal toddler→The situation spirals out of control. I thought everything would get better. Kindergarten. But she didn’t talk. That’s how it all started. We tried doctors, there’s nothing physically wrong. But every place I’ve tried to enroll her, and every babysitter, it’s like she wants to torture— just me”. Baby Teeth" by Zoje Stage was a novel I’ve been meaning to read on my TBR for a while since it had an awesome cover, a wild description, and seemed like my kind of read. Right off the bat, it was an interesting story and done in a unique way. To read alternating chapters between daughter and mother was very original and once the creepy moments started happening, my goodness, I was excited to see what awaited.

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🤔. This first thing I’m going to say about “Baby Teeth” is that it won’t be for everybody. And that’s OKAY! I’m not going to judge anyone for liking it OR not liking it. It’s a fiction book! I’ve seen Baby Teeth listed as a thriller; it wasn’t that at all, but it COULD have been. It probably would have been a much more enjoyable read—cringe-worthy moments in the plot and all—if it had been written from Suzette’s POV only. Then we could have seen her mounting terror and desperation and feel it in a more pure form—the way that she did. But Stage decided to try her hand at writing in a child’s voice via Hanna's chapters and it Did. Not. Work. Honestly, a terrible idea given the level of skill she displayed in this novel. Not only did it take away from the suspense to know exactly what Hanna was going to do next from her POV, but the clunky and inauthentic way in which Stage wrote Hanna made reading her chapters a real chore. Of course, I understand that Stage was attempting to speak simplistically, as a child might, but it didn’t sound anything like a seven-year-old’s way of speech and mannerisms in the slightest. Her editor would have done better to tell her to hold off on that. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.