What Big Teeth
Ratings18
Average rating2.7
15
Ratings18
Average rating2.7
A Strand February 2021 Book of the Month "With a layered mystery, a haunting setting, and thrilling tension, What Big Teeth has an otherness to it that pulls you in and forces you to keep reading." —Tricia Levenseller, Publisher’s Weekly-bestselling author of The Shadows Between Us Eleanor Zarrin has been estranged from her wild family for years. When she flees boarding school after a horrifying incident, she goes to the only place she thinks is safe: the home she left behind. But when she gets there, she struggles to fit in with her monstrous relatives, who prowl the woods around the family estate and read fortunes in the guts of birds. Eleanor finds herself desperately trying to hold the family together—in order to save them all, Eleanor must learn to embrace her family of monsters and tame the darkness inside her. Rose Szabo's thrilling debut is a dark fantasy novel about a teen girl who returns home to her strange, wild family after years of estrangement, perfect for fans of Wilder Girls. This exquisitely terrifying and beautiful tale will sink its teeth into you and never let go.
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If you go in with low expectations it's an ok book. It's not good. It's bad until it's good like Riverdale on Netflix. The monsters were interesting though I guess.
DNF
While things start off interesting, with atmosphere and a flair for the cinematic, there seems to be something irreparably off about this book. The prose doesn't keep pace with itself - meaning that it's weirdly easy to miss important information and actions because nothing is given particular emphasis. There are all these possible mysteries being introduced at once, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be curious about or what I'm supposed to care about. It all just blurs together.
But most importantly, Eleanor is just an absolutely bizarre main character. There is nothing grounded about her, nothing relatable, nothing that actually sounds like a real human being. There is a fine line between making stylistic choices for the sake of creating a particular vision, and just sounding contrived. This is well over that line.
Creepy teeth-related stories always draw me in because I am one for the macabre, but this one just did not do it sadly. Maybe it was the writing style or maybe it was the characters that I just really couldn't get behind. I can see people liking this one - it's weird, yeah, but who doesn't like an odd book from time to time? For me, what really lacked was likable characters and a writing style that flowed. Sadly, this one just did not have that.
I went into this hoping for a werewolf book and I'm pretty disappointed that that isn't what I got, so I lowered it a star. But surprisingly, the book I got instead was still pretty good and gripping! I read the entire thing in one day and I had a really hard time putting it down since I flew through it so quickly. I did feel a little detached from all the characters, but I still enjoyed following them. I'm definitely looking foward to whatever this author writes in the future!
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, and NetGalley for providing me with an eBook copy to review.
