Blog

This means war: A mother and her young daughter go head to head in this disturbing psychological mind-fck.

Welcome!

I try not to cuss. I really do.
But what the actual fck did I just read?
There. I said it.

I needed a few days to ruminate on this one.. and by ruminate, I mean recover. This book left me practically brain dead and emotionally drained. I would give the author a round of applause if I didn’t have to consider the amount of therapy I may need after reading it.

There will be spoilers..
It can’t be helped.

Trigger Warnings: Violence. Harassment. Assault. Domestic/Child abuse. Disturbing sexual content. Self harm.

---

(Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Any purchases made through these links may earn me a small commission with no additional cost to you. In other words.. You will not be charged for using my links.)

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Standalone (thank goodness)

First line: Maybe the machines could see the words she never spoke.

Four Stars!
🌟🌟🌟🌟

---

About the book:

How do you summarize a book like this?

Hanna is a very mature, imaginative, and highly intelligent seven year old.. uncomfortably so. She doesn’t speak, it gives her power to withhold her words, something she can deny her mother. Silence is her weapon and shield.

Hanna kept her words to herself because they gave her power. Inside her, they retaied their purity. She scrutinized Mommy and other adults, studied them. Their words fell like dead bugs from their mouths.

Hanna

Suzette struggles with Crohn’s disease and OCD. The trauma from her mother’s neglect and indifference have followed her into adulthood. It has caused her to question her own parenting and effectively creates a wedge between her and Hanna she’s not sure how to mend.

Alex, her husband, who absolutely adores his sunshine girl.. would never believe what happens while his back is turned.

She wasn’t sure anymore which failure should bother her most. That Hanna wouldn’t talk, that Alex wasn’t fully on her side, or that she’d lost faith in her own instincts. For too long they’d tried to justify, each in different ways, Hanna’s aberrant behavior.

Suzette

Hanna is vicious, manipulative, and so very clever.

Suzette is unassertive, superficial, and overwhelmed.

A war has raged between mother and daughter for as long as both can remember. Hanna’s hostility gradually increases to blatant acts of violence and, before Suzette knows it, her daughter’s overwhelming hatred begins to tear at the seams of their ‘perfect’ world..

It was unacceptable; Mommy was failing her tests to prove her motherly love. And the more she failed, the more opportunities Hanna tried to provide for her to redeem herself. Though she wasn’t always sure of the rules to their war games. And when she scrunched up her brain, she couldn’t quite remember who had started it.

Hanna

Hanna’s done sitting by idly while mommy twists and uses her daddy all up. No. She has a plan that will get rid of Suzette for good.

Overall:

W.. t… f..

Nothing I say here can cover how unsettling, twisted, and dysfunctional this book was.

I wanted to feel more sympathetic towards Suzette, I really did, but she mostly just annoyed me. Yes. She was recovering mentally and physically, exhausted, and at the end of her rope.. but I feel like she never should have allowed things to get as far as they did. Many choices and actions could have been made on her part that may not have ‘solved’ their issues.. but might have prevented such a damaging outcome.

After buckling herself into her car seat, Hanna gazed at Suzette, expectant and unblinking. She tilted her head and quirked her mouth, and Suzette knew exactly what she was threatening. A tantrum of her own, unless Suzette handed over the goods.

Suzette

Alex. The husband. Almost willfully ignorant to his daughter’s true nature, he puts Suzette in the difficult position of ‘handling’ Hanna’s moods on her own. He would flit in and out of there lives, only seeing the best in both Suzette and Hanna, giving very little actual support to either. Too often he doesn’t believe Suzette’s ‘claims’ of bad behavior, causing her to feel insecure, and leaving her to face their child’s aggression alone. I didn’t like him.

She couldn’t expect Alex to really help—not until he got to experience firsthand Hanna and her other self, the self who knew more than any seven-year-old should.

Suzette

Hanna.. Wow. The author created something deeply unsettling with her. A dark, unfathomable nightmare beneath the guise of a sweet, seven year old girl. Who would ever guess that a little one could be so messed up on the inside? One moment you long to hold her, comfort her in a way that breaks through all the madness.. but it never lasts long. Your instincts know what she is.

If Stephen King and V.C. Andrews had a love child.. this book might be it.

Every win for Hanna was a you-lose for Mommy.

Hanna

Liked:

Not once did I feel like I had read another version of this before. It’s unique and unpredictable. The pace starts off slowly, building momentum around the halfway mark, before exploding into motion towards the end where we’re presented with an unpleasant, yet convincing, conclusion. The characters are all damaged, none of them are likable, but they come alive on the page. This story begins to feel real to you.

I appreciated how well the author portrayed Suzette’s feelings towards her poor health.. you don’t see a lot of literature on Crohn’s disease and I think it was a very well written glimpse into the effects such health issues can have on a persons physical and mental wellbeing.

Disliked:

Suzette’s inability to get the help both she and Hanna need. Alex’s lack of real involvement with his family.. and just him in general. Suzette may come off as weak but, with everything she goes through, I don’t think so. She’s just tired of dealing.. which I found understandable. Alex is just unreliable.

Appearances meant way too much in this story. I found the attempt to seem like the perfect family was detrimental to all of their relationships.

I think my biggest issue is that we never really learn of how, when, or why this war between Suzette and Hanna began. She’s seven throughout most of the book, seven!, and it’s made to seem like this had been going on for quite some time.. but what set them off? The world may never know.

---

There’s a lot to wrap your head around in here.. for that reason and others, it won’t be a read everyone will enjoy.

If you’re interested in some pretty unpleasant psychological warfare between a mother and daughter that will have you seriously questioning the mental stability of every child you see for weeks on end, have at it, and good luck.

Have you read this book? What did you think?

Follow Read Betwixt Words on WordPress.com