Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker

Did I buy this for the synopsis alone? Yup. The cover art was just a bonus. I read this one after a disastrous book club pick (time traveling romance...not for me!). There was a LOT of mother aspects, mostly of children leaching the lifeforce from them...which is actually what happens during pregnancy. My cousin had cavities after being pregnant, even while taking care of her teeth because pregnancy requires so much from the mother that it was leeching from her teeth. Fun things to learn. 

Title: Cutting Teeth
Author: Chandler Baker
Page Number: 320 pages (hardcover)
Genre: fiction, suspense, horror, thriller, mystery
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Year: 2023

Darby, Mary Beth, and Rhea are on personal quests to reclaim aspects of their identities subsumed by motherhood—their careers, their sex lives, their bodies. Their children, though, disrupt their plans when an unsettling medical condition begins to go around the Little Academy preschool: the kids are craving blood.

Then a young teacher is found dead, and the only potential witnesses are ten adorable four-year-olds.
Soon it becomes clear that the children are not just witnesses, but also suspects . . . and so are their mothers.

As the police begin to look more closely, the children’s ability to bleed their parents dry becomes deadly serious. Part murder mystery, part motherhood manifesto, Cutting Teeth explores the standards society holds mothers to—along with the ones to which we hold ourselves—and the things no one tells you about becoming a parent.

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This book does revolve around motherhood, but not quite the way you'd expect. I feel like I could write an essay on the allegorical elements throughout the story. I quite enjoyed that actually. I do adore kids, I spent my college years as a pre-school aide for a job. All my little students were so darn cute! 

But it was nice to be able to bounce afterwards and go to a calm house without the second job of "raising a child." 

This book follows three mothers with their children at a church pre-school. They each have issues (minor to major) with the teacher, who comes highly recommended but can be firm about somethings. For instance, one mother is annoyed that the teacher wants to talk to both her (the primary parent) and her ex-boyfriend (a far more casual parent). There's also a very hot new pastor in the mix that intrigues Mary Beth. 

One day when the parents come to pick up their children, the police are there because the teacher has been murdered. The little children might be the only witnesses - and police interviews with the children are included, some are amusing as children's brains are imaginative. 

At the same time, some of the kids start craving blood. This is diagnosed as Renfield Syndrome, a real thing, in case parenthood wasn't stressful enough. It is incredibly rare and not in the DSM, if that allays anyone's fear. I thought it was interesting how the mother's dealt with being bitten and drawn for their children, who were possible killers (the worry is that they killed the teacher for her blood). 

​The POV exchanges between the mothers, which isn't my absolute favorite but it's only these three women thankfully. 

I normally avoid motherhood type books because I can't have kids and it's a weird subject for me, but this one is so abnormal that it didn't bother me as much. 

To note, while the kids being adorable little vampires seems like it would be a huge plot point, it's almost background for the moms, who are more concerned with cures, safety, their relationships, and work. So I think if you want to read a horror story about mini-Draculas, you'll be heavily disappointed. 

I rated it four stars because I thought the book was fabulous. I have another book by Chandler Baker on my TBR list.