Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Have you ever thought, "I'm just too comfortable around children.  I want to feel a healthy dose of fear when a six-year-old grabs my hand or a toddler smiles at me.  What if my instinct was instead to lock them outside and call the police?"  Buddy, have I got a book for you.

If the effect of the twins in The Shining is just starting to wear off, you need to read Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage.  Hanna is of great concern to her mother, Suzette.  Hanna does not talk.  She occasionally growls...or barks...or causes problems so major she gets expelled from school.  But actual conversation, not so much.  Don't worry, Hanna has no problem getting her point across.

Suzette, who has suffered with health problems all her life, wants nothing more than for her daughter to grow up healthy and happy.  But as Hanna's frightening and uncontrollable behavior escalates, Suzette realizes she wants those things less for Hanna's good than for her own sanity.  The gulf between mother and daughter widens as Hanna displays a new facet to her personality--possibly a new personality altogether.

And where is daddy dearest during all this distress?  He's often at work and only sees Hanna at her cheeriest, which is clearly intentional on her part.  She's a daddy's girl and as we find out during Hanna's chapters, her fondest wish is for it to be just the two of them with no pesky mommy to get in the way.  But how can she achieve this end?

I had absolutely no idea where this story would take me as Suzette's life spiraled out of control and Hanna's wicked little plans took shape but it was quite a ride.  The ending?  Simultaneously satisfying and anxiety-inducing.

I got a free advance ebook of Baby Teeth from NetGalley for review purposes.

The Nesting by C. J. Cooke

 You had me at *nanny in a remote, creepy house with a mysterious employer*

3/5 stars

The Nesting has some weaknesses of logic and plot, but it thoroughly makes up for it in atmosphere. There are multiple red herrings and I'm not sure how I feel about them.  They might also just be sidelines that fizzled out a bit.

This book is a solid 3 stars for sheer creepiness and entertainment value.  The Norwegian setting is a huge bonus for me because Scandinavia ups the atmospheric score quite a bit.  If I can know without the book even telling me that it is already dark outside at 3pm, I'm all about it.

We get an unreliable narrator, but for most of the book we can't be quite sure if she's imagining some or all of what is happening.  Other characters certainly seem to be having odd experiences too.  Do we have unreliable secondary characters as well?  Or do we have an ancient Norwegian spirit haunting the premises?  Or the ghost of a dead wife?  Lexi finds herself surrounded by people who teem with secrets, some well hidden and others poorly so.  Is a human being responsible for those bumps in the night?  Better read it and find out.

I got my ebook for free from NetGalley for review purposes.

Beachcombing at Miramar or The Narcissist's Lament

2/5 stars simply because there is the occasional sentence that doesn't make me want to tear my hair out.

Maudlin, self-involved whining disguised as wisdom.  Richard Bode apparently spent his time passing judgment on other people's marriages, jobs, beliefs, and hobbies.  Bode comes across as an insufferable man-child who believed anything that cramps his style is evil and he is justified in everything hurtful he does to other people because the only thing that matters is pursuing your own happiness, regardless of the consequences.  Everyone should do whatever they want, no matter the effect on others.  #noragretsnomesayin

UNLESS you're the guy with the surfboard on his car who passed Bode on the road way too aggressively.  Upon that man he quietly wishes death and destruction.  And by quietly, I mean devotes multiple paragraphs to him in a published book.  But surfboard jerk is just living his truth, man!  He's just living out what Bode preaches.  It's all about ME.  I don't want to have to work but I'm so worried about paying my bills.  I'm so lonely, but I gave up my marriage and moved away from my family.  Why am I so unhappy?  I want a woman, but not one who is human in any way.  I just want one who fishes and adores me and doesn't speak until spoken to.  Like Gauguin's girlfriend.

Yes, as if I hadn't already figured out how empty Bode's enlightened philosophies were, I found an astounding passage in chapter 14 about Tehamana*, Gauguin's Tahitian mistress.  Bode praised her to the skies because she was so quiet and asked absolutely nothing of the artist other than to wait upon him.  This is in sharp contrast to Gauguin's wife and the mother of his children, whom he left on another continent.  She was inexplicably bitter towards him.  Gag me with a seashell.

So Bode during the course of the book, goes about passing judgment on all he sees or has seen and pretending this was how he would find himself.  Funny place to look.  He never seemed to realize that criticizing others is perhaps not the way to finding inner peace.  Actual quotation: " I can indulge in endless prattle about my friends and neighbors, dissipating my life's energy a little at a time."  And boy, can he!  Oh wait, he included this in a list of things he doesn't do.  Did this dude even read his own book?

*If Wikipedia is to be believed, Tehamana was 13 when Gauguin "married" her and was one of three temporary wives he had during his idyll, but that's a whole different issue.  Bode's my problem today.