sorren_briarwood 's review for:

Cutting Your Teeth by Caylan MacRae

3.0

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I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Cutting Your Teeth is the kind of book that makes me remember how irritated I am by the vagueness of star-ratings. I’m rounding this up to a 3, because a 2 simply feels too low, but whilst there are plenty of titles I’ve rated 3-stars that I would still recommend in certain situations, I unfortunately don’t think Cutting Your Teeth is amongst them.

Cutting Your Teeth started strong for me. I like MacRae’s fresh twists on the vampire genre: there were some simple, yet entertaining and believable worldbuilding elements, such as the vampire support group, and I felt like the vampires themselves felt a bit more believable than those I’ve come across in similar media, simply for the breadth of responses to their new way of life (or undeath)- rather than all being “old souls,” or modernising without a problem, they responded diversely. On the other hand, a few magical elements- such as supernatural bonds- were intriguing, but not used in a particularly interesting way, and felt more like a cheatcode to speedrun relationship development- but I'll get to that. I did also appreciate that the cast was fairly diverse- vampires can sometimes look a bit homogenous. Another element I really liked was the casualness of the queer representation- no coming out or health class exposition here.

Unfortunately, I found it really difficult to get invested in these characters. I love found family stories, and romances that grow from that dynamic even more so, and especially romances that evolve from a transactional relationship into one of genuine affection. On paper, I should have been head over heels for Ezra, Killian, and Marigold, but I simply wasn’t convinced by their relationships. There was some cognitive dissonance with Ezra’s apparent lone wolf attitude and (reasonable) trust issues and his immediate absorption into this trio: the insta-love wasn’t relegated just to the romance, although I would say that Marigold and Ezra’s bonding moments actually made their relationship feel more meaningful to me than that between Ezra and Killian.

Some of the themes also felt a bit heavy-handed: certain parallels between the main trio felt a little bit inorganic and I think similar ideas could have been explored without making their commonalities quite so overt. The result was that they blended together a little bit for me.

The prose in Cutting Your Teeth was serviceable. Some occasional awkward turns of phrase and overwrought similes, but I often find issues with action scenes in self-published debuts, and MacRae’s flowed well and were easy to follow. I think MacRae’s writing was at its strongest when Cutting Your Teeth leaned into its horror elements: Ezra’s initial transformation sticks in my head as one of the strongest moments of the book. For a book marketed as horror, I wanted more eerie scenes like that one, but the novel felt more action-oriented as it drew on, which made it feel less like horror to me- in a way that reminds me how giving a player in a horror game a weapon makes them braver, and act like they’re playing an FPS game instead. The fast-pace made this a quick and compelling read… To begin with.

Sadly, as Cutting Your Teeth dragged on, I think some of its strengths also worked to its detriment. With so much constantly happening, and in such a short timespace, there was little time spent with the characters and I found myself unable to care. Ezra and Killian’s voices were a little bit similar, and everyone felt a bit vague and depthless- a lot of focus on tragic backstories, which I honestly adore, but less thought put into what these characters are like in a normal conversation, what their hobbies are: what they’re actually *like*. More than once, I confused Ezra’s ex and his sister, because they were only ever described in generic positive terms, and used as a plot device to pressure him into making his next move. And though many were intriguing, there were also a huge number of side characters in this fairly short novel, none of whom I really felt invested in. I hadn’t grown attached to anyone at all by the time the denouement kicked in, and I found myself more invested in reaching the end of the book than unravelling the mystery and determining the fates of the characters. This is a shame, because there were some twists and turns that I’m sure would have entertained me if I had felt at all attached, but as it was, I kept glazing over. The resolution fell flat- I just didn’t feel like these characters knew each other well enough to have earned an ending of that tone.

Overall, Cutting Your Teeth was a bit of a letdown for me, but not a dealbreaker- I would absolutely be interested in MacRae’s future work based on the strengths I mentioned… But I probably wouldn’t read a sequel, which was heavily teased at the end of this narrative. I wholeheartedly expect this series to improve as it goes on, but I’m just not willing to stick it out based on the overall malaise I’m left with after feeling the first novel.