Review | Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Hanna is a seven-year-old child whose behaviour has caused problems at school. She is now homeschooled by her mother, Suzette. Hanna adores her father but seems to despise her mother. In her mind, her mother is in the way of her being with her father forever.

Suzette is a stay-at-home mother who quit her job due to her health issues. She has Crohn’s disease, and a past life of childhood abuse. As a result, she clings to her husband, Alex. Hanna’s behaviour causes her to feel even worse, especially when Alex doesn’t seem to see the problem. The mind games between Hanna and Suzette escalates until it appears only one of them can survive.

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 pretty disturbing book! What do you do when you give birth to a child who appears to want you dead? Hanna is super smart and cunning for her age, which makes her appearance as a little innocent girl all the more deceiving. Her dark thoughts and plotting to take down her own mother was hard to read! Not only did Hanna want her mother to be gone, she also takes pleasure in seeing her in pain. As the book goes on, Hanna starts talking about a woman who had been previously killed in a witch-burning decades ago. The book makes you wonder if she’s doing all these nasty stuff on her own or if there’s a supernatural spirit guiding her. Especially when she starts targeting other people.

The book also shows how Suzette and Alex are not blameless as Hanna’s parents. Suzette’s health issues makes her insecure and often irritable. Her own mother neglected her as a child, which causes her to fear that she will do the same to Hanna. But in her desire to be the perfect mother, she inadvertently pushes Hanna away. She curses and yells at her daughter, and there are flashbacks of her losing her temper in a way that seems disproportionate to Hanna’s misbehaviour. Meanwhile, Alex is in denial of his family situation and pretends everything is fine and dandy. He takes Hanna’s side, even when Hanna does creepy things.

Despite all these shenanigans, the actual story is pretty mild. After a while, scenes of Hanna’s torture of Suzette, Suzette’s breakdown and Alex’s disbelief starts to become repetitive. There’s no suspense because we get both Hanna’s and Suzette’s point of views, so we know about Hanna’s plans in advance. I also felt that some scenes were put in for the shock value instead of making the characters fully dimensional.

I would’ve loved it if the ending had more punch. Hanna did some horrible things and I expected her to do something she couldn’t come back from, or for her to suffer consequences for what she did. Neither happened, at least not in a way that was satisfactory. I think there is a larger theme of repeating cycles of abuse and regrets of parenthood that could have been handled in a better way but it was dumped in a single conversation. So although I usually enjoy the evil children trope, this book fails to reach the heights of my expectations.

About the author: Zoje Stage

Photo by Jay Mistry