This book was one of those that you wanted to be good but it just never quite got there. I wanted to like it. It took me forever to finish it. I think I read like 6 other books while simultaneously reading this one. I wanted to like these characters but I just couldn't. I have no idea in the end why the child acts the way she does. I have no idea why the mother is the way she was. I mean, we all have things in our past that have shaped who we are as people and even as parents but not to the point of this woman. Why did she ever have a child when clearly she didn't really want one? She didn't want to share her husband with her child and she certainly didn't want to give up any of her own time or life. Don't get me started on the ending., This just ended so abruptly that I kept wondering if there was something missing in the ARC I had. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you had a bunch of time to waste and couldn't find anything else, ANYTHING else to read.

No psychological suspense or thrills.

An unredeemable horror story about a Jewish mother with a goyishe kop who uses f--k as an adjective when speaking to her seven-year-old bad seed (who uses that word in her own head a few times and acts it out once — calling to mind Regan MacNeil), and an oblivious husband. It's set in my neighborhood; but for how wrong it gets it, it might as well be the The Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

The writing is flat, overladen with obscenities. Only the shock value (the medical gore; the dog who ate the woman's face) is effective. Repulsive.

It took bookish me WEEKS to want to pick up another read after slogging through this downer that had received critics' advance praise. #oncebittentwiceshy

Thanks, though, to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the Read Now opportunity.

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage has been compared to two books I really enjoyed reading - Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. To me, the comparison does not hold true. This book lacks the intensity or the depth of characters that those books had. Those books left me with a lot to think about; this one just does not. Sadly, I was not the reader for this book.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2019/03/baby-teeth.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

This was creepy and unsettling all in a good way if you like psychological thrillers. It hooks you from the start, which I like and keeps you turning those pages! It is also one of those books that you don't forget easily.

Creeptastically wonderful! Right off the bat, I can't wait for more books by this author! A purely un-put-down-able thriller. The mother and daughter characters were well developed and believable which I need in a horror/thriller. I could empathize with the mother and the was fascinated by the genius 7-year-old. I won't give anything away but would highly recommend it especially with its shocking conclusion of a story. Well done!

I finished this book last night and am still not sure what rating I should give it. This was not a book that I liked the story, but I couldn't stop reading it. I wanted to find out what was going to happen, so that means it should be rated higher. This is supposed to be a thriller, but I did not find it a thriller, I found it a horrific family drama. This is the story of Hannah and her parents. It is told from the viewpoints of seven year old Hannah and her stay-at-home mother, Suzette.

Hannah is a beautiful young girl who refuses to speak. She will growl, grunt and scream, but will not form words. When Dad is home, she is smiley and delightful. When he’s at work, she does her best to make her mom’s life a living hell. Hannah is home schooled because no school will keep her. She snarls and growls at the students and teachers, hurts other children and has even started fires. Suzette has her own problems. She has Crohn's Disease and has symptoms, surgeries and a lot of anxiety and emotional baggage. She is worried that it is her fault that Hannah is the way she is and that guilt is not helping anyone. When Hannah begins to act even more strangely, as well as trying to hurt her mother, something needs to be done.

This is not a fun read. It’s hard to imagine a child who hates her mother so much. Children normally love their parents no matter what so this is hard to wrap your head around. The fact that we don't know why Hannah feels the way she does makes it even more powerful. It reminds me a bit of the horror movies I watched when I was younger. I found the book to be well written, but it is a tense and disturbing read. My biggest complaint is the ending. It seems that there might be a sequel to this one based upon the ending and I am not a big fan of being left hanging. If you’re in the mood for a thrilling, yet creepy family drama, then this is the book for you.

was a gripping thriller that took you to every aspect of trying to figure out what was really going on and what was going to happen next! This was such an amazing book and I can’t wait to see what else is released from this author!

Baby Teeth was a rough ride for me. I typically would not have finished a title I was having this much trouble with, but I stuck through it. I feel there was a TON of extra scenes that just reinforced already known characteristics and without these repetitions, this book could have been a faster read and more succinct. It was scary and weird, and it had unreliability at every turn, which I loved. Overall I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Talk about some birth control after reading this on my honeymoon! I compare this one to We Need to Talk About Kevin due to the atmosphere and overall sense of dread. Boy did Hanna freak me out! Stage does an amazing job of not being over the top but just scary enough!

I have mixed feelings about Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage. On the one hand, the story is similar to other things I have read. On the other, the author does a nice job of showing a plethora of issues faced by parents: self-doubt, tantrums, differences in parenting styles/opinions, and feelings of failure when your child is different that other children. While I had a hard time believing the extreme denial of the father, I really enjoyed the alternating perspectives between the mother and the child. The daughter's inner monologue give the reader a clear understanding of why she's doing what she does. Overall, I think that Zoje brings something new to an old idea and provides a page-turning novel.

You’ve never met a kid as twisted as Hanna Jensen. Maybe you think you have. Books (and films) like William March’s The Bad Seed don’t really compare, and I may even prefer to hang out with Damien from The Omen.

From the outside, the Jensens (pronounced Yensen) are a beautiful family: Suzette, Alex, and of course, seven-year-old Hanna. Alex is an architect specializing in green materials, and Suzette is an interior designer turned stay at home mom. They live in a gorgeous and sterile home that Alex designed—one that hides a dark secret: Hanna. You’d think school would be a reprieve for Suzette, but Hanna has been kicked out of several, so Suzette is forced to homeschool her. To make matters worse, Hanna is nonverbal and likes to make things as hard as possible for her mother. It’s not that she can’t talk, it’s that she just prefers not to. Also, it annoys Suzette, which is a bonus for Hanna. Hanna delights in torturing her mother and just about everyone else, except for her beloved Daddy. Here’s an example of a night with a babysitter, who annoyed Hanna when she asked her mother—after hearing she didn’t talk—if she was potty-trained:

She sprang up and jumped over the back of the couch, racing to get upstairs.

“Changing into your pj’s?” Abha asked.

Hanna nodded, grinning, so excited to execute her plan.

She was already half out of her dress before she got to her room. She threw it on the floor.

A minute later, she stood in the threshold of her bathroom, panties at her feet, and started wailing. For good measure she let out a shriek or two, in case Abha couldn’t hear her over the television.

The startled babysitter bumbled up the stairs, and Hanna made sure to keep crying, even though she wanted to laugh, as Abha took in the problem: the puddle of pee and pile of poop she’d left on the floor.

“Oh no, did you have an accident?”

Hanna nodded, still crying.

Hanna is utterly delighted with herself and ends the night by getting a hold of Abha’s hair, pulling it as hard as possible, and barking at her like a dog. Charming, isn’t she?

Meanwhile, Suzette—who suffers from Crohn’s disease and, after multiple surgeries, must deal with a special diet, among other things—must also deal with the horror that is Hanna while Alex works the day away and comes home to a little girl that jumps into his arms and smiles and coos at him adoringly. Alex has a blind spot when it comes to Hanna, but author Zoje Stage doesn’t go completely Gothic: Alex actually believes his wife when she tells him the things Hanna does, but Suzette desperately wishes Hanna would slip up and show her father some of the horrid behavior that she shows everyone else.

Suzette hopes she can get a school to take her, but Hanna is an expert at either putting school officials off immediately or getting herself kicked out. And now, she’s starting to do things at home that are downright dangerous. It doesn’t help that Alex is reluctant to believe that his daughter might have issues that need more help than a normal school can give.

Hanna was asked to leave Green Hill after five weeks. Suzette and Alex sat before a small panel of teachers and administrators and were informed that Hanna just wasn’t emotionally ready for kindergarten. Her “inability to interact” proved to be “more troubling than anticipated.” Alex, especially, grew offended as the meeting deteriorated and the teachers’ polite facades fell away. He’d never seen Hanna “snarl aggressively” and couldn’t believe their accusations that she “hid toys just so the other children couldn’t use them” and “broke things to be spiteful.” They feared that eventually Hanna would hurt another student—“We suspect her of setting the cafeteria trash bin on fire”—at which point Alex demanded a refund for the remaining tuition and stormed out.

The story is told in alternating third-person narratives between Hanna and Suzette. Suzette’s passages show us a woman who has vowed to be everything her mother was not. Due to fraught childhood involving a mother who was distant and seemingly uncaring—and a horrifying struggle with Crohn’s that certainly didn’t help—Suzette tries her best to be a caring mother to her only daughter. But, as every parent knows, it’s not always that simple. Hanna is a monster, and at times, Suzette even blames herself for not being a good enough mother. In stark contrast, Hanna’s passages are disarmingly upbeat as she plots and plans against her mother and cooks up more diabolical and increasingly dangerous ways to terrorize her.

When Hanna—who is quite adept at using the internet—decides she’s going to start claiming she’s a girl named Marie-Anne Dufosset who lived in the 17th century and was burned at the stake as a witch, she actually starts to talk. But she only does so in front of Suzette—and only to say creepy things. Suzette has just about had enough.

Stage does a fantastic job of steadily increasing the tension to a fever pitch, and Suzette is completely self-aware of her situation. She knows that their lives are the perfect setup for a horror movie. She even mentions to a doctor that she’s afraid no one will believe her and that Hanna will eventually drive her insane. Readers won’t have trouble believing in that possibility. This super creepy kid and her tormented mom will keep you up way past your bedtime.

This a toughy to rate. On the one hand, Hanna is creepy and you feel worried for her mother. On the other hand, however, it's a slice of their life. The conclusion doesn't feel cohesive enough.

I couldn't even get through the first few chapters of this book. It was very easy to put down. I had no interest in finding out more about the characters. It did not draw me in at all.

I made it to about 60% before I just got so tired of this book that I couldn't continue. The concept was very interesting to me but the execution lacked... something to keep me engaged and wanting to find out more. I felt very much like this was an example of "telling rather than showing" and I just couldn't get behind any of the characters. Alex is completely useless and awful, Hanna is psychotic, and the mom is just... Ugh, I just can't with it.

Lots of hype about this and it could have been terrifying. Creepy premise and some genuinely chilling parts. Overall, I found myself annoyed by the dichotomy of the 7 year old psychopath...typical magical thinking, common to her age/development level.....then her murderous side, that acts and speaks on an intelligent adult level. Even the most disturbed, yet brilliantly precocious could not plan and reason to the extent described within.

Zoje Stage did something not too often done here, she managed to write a creepy thriller without gratuitous violence or gore. Little Hanna is both terrifying and endearing, depending on her audience. While you fall down the rabbit hole of her world, you also get the perspective of her mother, which varies wildly. It's a pretty straightforward psychological thriller but different in that it has brilliant lines such as:

"Sometimes sleep was a commanding presence, a magician in a heavy cloak. Sometimes the sleeper was the cloak itself, soft as water, heavy as the ocean's depths. There was no stirring from such a sleep. Not yet."

I do hope Stage writes a sequel, Hanna makes quite the promise and I want to see if she can deliver.

I'm sure this has been a very controversial book. Personally I could not finish it so I can't give a complete review. As a mother, it was just not my cup of tea. I can't imagine having a child that absolutely hated me and tried to sabotage me. And the mother was somewhat abusive in my opinion and acted like a child. I'm sorry that i couldn't finish this book. I know that it has received many great reviews and I'm not saying don't give it a try. It just really bothered my soul haha. Thank you Zoje Stage and Netgalley for the chance to read this.

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.