Baby Teeth by Zoje StageMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This didn't feel like horror to me - more like just hellish parenthood.
The premise is a troublesome child who is an angel for dad but targets mum with psychotic behaviour.
Presumably, the horror is how demonic the child is, but honestly she really just strikes me as a bad kid, rather than anything supernatural. Because of that, it's hard to really get sucked into the novel. It really feels more like you're reading about the experience of a mother trying to manage a child with chronic bad behaviour.
There are some interesting ideas around parents hating their kids, or loving them unconditionally, or wishing to go back to the simpler time before kids, so I think these themes will really resonate with people who have kids and have secretly held similar thoughts. These are taboo topics that you're almost forbidden to discuss as a parent, so the sentiments in the book might help examine personal feelings.
As a childless adult, though, it just wasn't that entertaining.
There's nothing horrific here, and while the kid does some messed up stuff, none of it really jumps out as particularly demonic. A little evil, perhaps, but not enough to bring a lot of liveliness to the story.
I enjoyed it okay but it just wasn't anything particularly special.
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