A review by readabookmofo
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

 The real horror in Baby Teeth is not a child terrorizing her mother; the real horror is a woman and her daughter pining and fighting over the love and affection of an incompetent man-child. 
 
There were some very unsettling scenes in Baby Teeth,
namely when Hanna torments the helmet-wearing child. That was pretty rough.
I welcomed free birth control. Aside from that, there wasn't much else I liked in the book. 
 
I'll start with what bothered me the most. Plot holes galore. Suzette, the mother, complains incessantly about how her husband, Alex, doesn't believe her about their evil daughter. This went on for years. She never thought to record anything? Set up hidden cameras?
In the middle of the book, we get a flashback to what started it all, when Suzette stuffed uneaten food into Hanna's mouth. Hanna states that she starts being horrible to Suzzette to "test her love for her", but that is just dropped into a random ether of nothingness and never revisited again. At some random point, it turns into a strange Electra complex, so I'm unsure of the point of the flashback.
 

Suzette's character is extremely infuriating. She's highly dependent on gaining her self-worth from her husband's love and his approval of her appearance. Not only does she have these character qualities that never develop or grow, but she's also incredibly ignorant.  

When the possibility of child abuse at her husband's hand is raised, she actually states his being Swedish as a reason for him not being capable of abusing Hanna. Say that again? And there's a completely unnecessary tidbit where she assumes a teacher at a school they visit is gay because of the way he dresses and carries himself. And don't forget when she wanted to ask the doctor where she was from; no, where she was really from. These scenes were odd and felt out of place. 
 
Alex's character was equally infuriating. Believing his child over his own life partner was appalling. But as soon as Suzette makes a legitimate mistake, she's met with pitchforks. He keeps using the same excuse of, "Well she's not like that with me" as proof positive of Hanna being a good kid. He gets a bit better toward the end, but at that point, the damage had been done.  

One of the biggest downfalls of this book was how repetitive it was. This is the bulk of the book: Hanna does something bad, and Suzette tries to tell her husband about it, but he doesn't believe her. Repeat. I got so tired of the "Mommy has to die" line. It got old very quickly. This, combined with so many unnecessary scenes (such as painful detail into how Suzette draws a proportionate human figure), made me almost DNF this book.  

Baby Teeth just didn't hit the mark for me. There was so much potential in the story idea. It would have been great if Stage took an angle of focusing the horror aspect on a woman being forced into a life of classic gender roles. Or if the focus was on the parents realizing how much happier they were without Hanna and leaving her at the boarding school for much longer than needed.
The focus was on Hanna terrorizing Suzette and just being an evil child; it was dull and added nothing new to this common trope, which I'm quite tired of. Have we not had enough of women being gaslit (for lack of a better word) and made to appear unhinged, not only in fiction but in real life as well?
 

There are so many more things I didn't mention that made this book subpar. I haven't completely written off Zoje Stage, but it certainly wasn't the ideal introduction to her work! 
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