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A review by toofondofbooks_
With Teeth by Kristen Arnett
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-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
4.0
Sammie Lucas is a lesbian mother who, on the surface, has the perfect queer family unit. A beautiful home, a wife she loves, Monika, and their son, Samson. Everything is perfect, except...Monika isn't around a whole lot, and if she's honest, she's afraid of her own son...
This book had me by the throat from the first sentence and then it wouldn't let me go for the next five days. It didn't matter what I was doing, I wanted to pick this up and shut out the world. Don't get me wrong, it's not a riveting tale or anything. It's not plot driven at all, it's mainly a character study of Sammie and how she's clearly very troubled and was never meant to be a mother. I hated her with every fiber of my being. I hated her on every page, every sentence. She was at best, whiny, and at worst, violent. It was crazy how unreliable of a narrator she was. She also struck me as someone who would go to a Planned Parenthood protest on the weekend, but I'm not going to tell you why.
I was so fascinated by this terrible character and her terrible interactions with her son and wife, fascinated by her dealing with religious trauma, her hypocrisy, her complete inability to connect with her son and then complaining about how he was suuuuch a problem. It was insane. The behavior of everyone in this book is absolutely unhinged, but Sammie takes the cake.
It's safe to say this book had my attention, but that being said, the writing wasn't really remarkable and the references to teeth (other people's teeth, what Sammie's teeth were doing, biting, etc) seemed a bit shoe-horned in and obvious at times. I also thought I was going to combust at times at how ableist the treatment of Samson as a character was. You can chalk that up to his parents being bad people - and they are, but it was just too much for me and it made me *too* angry.
Anyway I know that I'm probably going to read a lot of GR reviews calling this bad lesbian rep, but sometimes even queer people are bad and unhinged, and I think it's important to write about that. Argue with the wall. Overall, a really intriguing read.
I forgot to mention that there are little vignettes at the end of every chapter that show contrast between how Sammie sees certain situations happening in a chapter vs. what an outsider experiences and I think they were genuinely my favorite part of the book and I can't believe I didn't mention this somewhere above. Oops! Here it is.
This book had me by the throat from the first sentence and then it wouldn't let me go for the next five days. It didn't matter what I was doing, I wanted to pick this up and shut out the world. Don't get me wrong, it's not a riveting tale or anything. It's not plot driven at all, it's mainly a character study of Sammie and how she's clearly very troubled and was never meant to be a mother. I hated her with every fiber of my being. I hated her on every page, every sentence. She was at best, whiny, and at worst, violent. It was crazy how unreliable of a narrator she was. She also struck me as someone who would go to a Planned Parenthood protest on the weekend, but I'm not going to tell you why.
I was so fascinated by this terrible character and her terrible interactions with her son and wife, fascinated by her dealing with religious trauma, her hypocrisy, her complete inability to connect with her son and then complaining about how he was suuuuch a problem. It was insane. The behavior of everyone in this book is absolutely unhinged, but Sammie takes the cake.
It's safe to say this book had my attention, but that being said, the writing wasn't really remarkable and the references to teeth (other people's teeth, what Sammie's teeth were doing, biting, etc) seemed a bit shoe-horned in and obvious at times. I also thought I was going to combust at times at how ableist the treatment of Samson as a character was. You can chalk that up to his parents being bad people - and they are, but it was just too much for me and it made me *too* angry.
Anyway I know that I'm probably going to read a lot of GR reviews calling this bad lesbian rep, but sometimes even queer people are bad and unhinged, and I think it's important to write about that. Argue with the wall. Overall, a really intriguing read.
I forgot to mention that there are little vignettes at the end of every chapter that show contrast between how Sammie sees certain situations happening in a chapter vs. what an outsider experiences and I think they were genuinely my favorite part of the book and I can't believe I didn't mention this somewhere above. Oops! Here it is.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Alcoholism, Excrement, Vomit, Medical trauma, Homophobia, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Body horror, Sexual content, Grief, Misogyny, Animal death, Kidnapping, Alcohol, Cursing, Child abuse, Child death, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Stalking, and Domestic abuse
Moderate: Miscarriage and Murder
Minor: Pedophilia and Rape