Baby Teeth

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I gave it 3 stars because it was entertaining but not perfect. I will round up to 3,5 stars because the author deserves it. Or maybe...Mommy was always fussing about how she looked, and she glowed whenever Daddy said she was beautiful.”

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🤔. The book opens with Hanna at the hospital having a CT scan. It’s not her first. There have been many tests. 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”. Alex/Daddy is in deep denial. He refuses to listen to his wife or any professional who dares to insinuate that Hanna is anything less than perfect. There's never direct evidence of her worst offenses and he dismisses the minor behavioral problems as the boredom of an extremely intelligent child. His peacekeeping attempts fuel the conflict between mother and daughter.A vengeful pit grew inside her and it remained to be seen how it would grow—very possibly into a tree with snaking branches and claws. How fun it would be to be such a tree, looming like a giant on a neighborhood street. People would pass beneath her, and the ones she didn’t like—snap snap crunch! She’d snatch them up and tangle her branches around them, and their bones would break with little crunches that would be mistaken for the snap of a twig. Her bark-self would absorb their yummy blood and the tree would grow and thrive. (Hanna) HERE’S MY REVIEW.... all little Excepts..... NOTE: I DO NOT KNOW HOW THIS BOOK ENDS - perhaps a girlfriend will tell me later - save me the reading time - so that I can move on to a book that is a better fit for me.....

Mommy needed a lot of medication. If something bad happened to her medicine, would something bad happen to mommy?”

Baby Teeth

Franklin, Ruth (2018-07-19). "What Do Novels About Evil Children Say About Us?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2020-10-02 . Retrieved 2020-09-23. I choose to stop this nonsense- I don’t want to be a stand for books where children are evil — for the sake of psychological pleasure reading. It is weird, but I like Hanna as a character. She is mad but the author did a fantastic job with her personalities. I wasn't afraid while I was reading, but Hanna's POV gave me a creepy vibe. When she stood in front of her mother with a hammer and her mother Suzette just creeps out, I thought that 'OK Suzette, you are more insane than your daughter. Just call the police PLS.' Suzette, Hanna’s mother, loves her daughter – as well as she can. She didn’t grow up with a loving mother so struggles with the parenting role. But she finds Hanna exhausting. When her husband Alex isn’t around Hanna speaks to Suzette. As Hanna becomes more and more aggressive toward her mother while her father continues to see her as his little angel, Suzette suspects there is something seriously wrong with their daughter. Can her little girl really be so manipulative? 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.

Suzette is a devoted stay-at-home mother doing everything she can to connect with her seven-year-old daughter, who cannot - or will not - speak. But ever since Hanna was a baby, Suzette couldn't help but feel despised by her. Manipulated. And scared to death. This novel is described as a thriller. I think it would be better categorized as horror. It’s told from the point of view of an exasperated stay-at-home mom, Suzette, and her seven-year=old daughter, Hannah. Hannah refuses to speak. 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. When Suzette tries to enroll her first in preschool, then kindergarten, then first grade, Hannah snarls at teachers and starts fires and hurts other children. Suzette has no choice but to do her best to home school her. She has battled debilitating health issues of her own since high school and having this out-of-control child is not helping her physical or mental health. I don't think I am giving anything away by saying that. You can deem that much from reading the synopsis, but this book is so much more than that.

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This is a book about a demented, cruel, entirely too precocious to be realistic, mute seven year old girl. It's about a mom who has no confidence in herself and a dad who is willingly oblivious to any fault in his child, placing his child before his wife, when there is any question about the child acting out. The ending could suggest a sequel, especially because it seems like the book ended when there was so much more to learn...when finally things were going somewhere. After reading the final chapter I was smiling. I was like, yassss, Suzette get it! To be honest, if I were Suzette I have no idea what I would do! Your child after you? Creepy AF. I would have set up a camera though and have her set up, but that’s just me and I’m all about that evidence!

There's a constant battle of wills between Suzette and Hanna, but they actually have a lot in common. In some ways, Suzette and Hanna's relationship seems like a continuation of Suzette's fraught relationship with her own mother. Suzette's mother was completely unmindful of the psychological and physical damage she was inflicting on Suzette. Like Hanna, Suzette was constantly disappointed by her mother and she wanted her mother to prove herself worthy of her love. Even when she was pushing her mother away, it was important to her that her mother make an effort to reach out: "It was a child’s selfish desire, but mothers were meant to be selfless." I received a copy of this book from St. Martin's Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I have a problem with the pacing. I was bored sometimes and to my mind, the book was overwritten. It has some unnecessary scenes. If I cut it off nobody would notice. I don't like that Suzette has Crohn's disease. It was useless. I also don't like when the author collects the problem. Less is sometimes more. Hannah was just enough. Zoje Stage is fearless. This book will surely be controversial and will likely be the subject of many heated debates among book clubs everywhere. I happened to love this book, but I recognize that this book isn’t for everyone. However, that’s why books are so special. A thousand people can read one book and have several different opinions and perspectives. I can’t imagine what Stage will turn out next, but, what I do know is, I will be the first in line!THIS BOOK seems to me - to be an intentionally disturbing novel - for the pure pleasure of the thrill. It’s ugly and non-inspiring. It ‘is’........absorbing.....but I’m not proud of myself reading it. Eliza Scanlan gives a fascinating performance as a young woman who's going through cancer treatment and falls for a drug addict who may or may not be good for her. Her parents (Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn) are dysfunctional and unraveling and have drug problems of their own. They don't like her daughter's boyfriend and under normal circumstances probably wouldn't tolerate him. But he's the only thing that brings their daughter some respite from the hell she's going through, so they sort of adopt him as their own. Behe, Rege. "Expect supernatural events and at least one "ruthless" surprise in Squirrel Hill writer Zoje Stage's latest novel Wonderland". Pittsburgh City Paper. Archived from the original on 2020-10-02 . Retrieved 2020-09-23.