CHANDLER BAKER
Cutting Teeth
July 18, 2023
Flatiron Books / Macmillan Audio
At the Little Academy, mothers fret over their preschoolers, who have developed an unsettling medical syndrome. The children’s odd craving for blood is considered relatively benign (to everyone except their beleaguered moms) until a young teacher is found dead and the only potential witnesses are ten adorable 4-year-olds. Then it becomes clear that the police are looking at the children as not just witnesses, but also suspects…and they’re watching their mothers as well.
Darby, Mary Beth, and Freddie have very different parenting styles, though they’re united in their love for their children. They’re not thrilled about the biting episodes sweeping through the class, of course, and they’re coping to various degrees with the pressures of being a good mom, which suddenly seems to include, in addition to everything else, offering themselves up as sustenance.
Each of them was there at Little Academy the day of the murder, and as the police begin to look at them more closely, their children’s ability to bleed them dry is becoming not merely metaphorical. Exploring the standards society holds mothers to—along with the ones to which we hold ourselves—and the things no one ever tells you about becoming a parent, Cutting Teeth is a witty, original story of parental love that asks if there is anything a mother is not asked to sacrifice for their children.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.
