Firstly: thank you to NetGalley and to the author, Caylan MacRae, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a honest review.
"Cutting Tour Teeth" was a 5★ read. It comes out on March 31st, and I'd recommend everyone pick it up! It's really, really good.
Have you ever read a book so devastatingly good - so immersive, so gripping -, that it completely destroys your sanity? Well, that was “Cutting Your Teeth” for me.
This is a book about loneliness, about family - given and found -, about hope in all its shapes and hues, and about the things that haunt us in our nightmares. It’s violent, gory, bloody, visceral, and it creates a sense of anxiety the reader can’t escape. It’s also tender and beautiful.
“Cutting Your Teeth” tells the story of ‘Ezra’, who has been on the run for the past couple of years. From the very first line, we are aware how desperate he is. All alone, hunted down, cornered. Ezra is the type of person who never had a chance.
When we meet him he’s beaten down, tired, and ready to leave his last identity - and the life that came with it - behind.
But when everything feels like crashing down, Killian appears in his life. And so does Marigold, certified best girl and holder of the only braincell in the whole book.
Killian is charming, has an Irish accent, and makes Ezra feel like home. He’s also awkward, insecure, and is holding more secrets than anyone can hold.
There’s a lot to this book, and I’m really trying to avoid spoiling anything. I think the anxiety and stress it makes you feel at the pit of your stomach are vital for this story. The stakes are through the roof.
“Cutting Your Teeth” is a vicious book.
I loved how the author handled the thin line of trust between characters with backgrounds that make them inherently untrusting.
There’s a big part of this story that circles around building a community, and I think that’s so important. It’s hopeful. Creating a family, a place to belong to, even when the world seems to have completely given up on you. Even when it seems there’s nothing else. I think it’s a message that will touch and impact most of it’s queer readers. It sure did with me.
Also, this book has one of the best written - most vile and repulsive - antagonists I’ve ever read. All of them, really. For very different reasons.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The most obvious one, Ezra’s father, is an intimidating, fear-inducing individual that makes Ezra - all of his masks and walls - crumble. It turns him into a small, defenceless child again, reminding him of all the abuse he suffered and still suffers at his hands. Izel, the cryptid, the eldritch vampire that has been around - has been draining Ezra’s families for centuries -, is straight up out of a terror movie. Or my scariest nightmares.
But what really bothered me (in a good, impactful way) was Fran. How cold and clinical she was about ending other people’s lives. About completely erasing a person from existence. She couldn’t care less if Ezra lives or not, if he suffers or not, if he has to disappear and give himself into the abyss for her to reach her goals. There’s only two things she cares in the world: science, and Nora. And for that, I can’t make myself hate her. It’s such a good dichotomy, a perfect balance, and it makes the characters themselves hesitate and let her go because, at the end of the day, her heart is in the right place. Her reasons make sense. And that crushed me.
END OF SPOILER
“Cutting Your Teeth” is everything to me. A well-deserved 5 star read. A book that left me awake and anxious at night, and delivered everything it promised.
Ezra deserves the world. A hug, safety, finally being at peace. Being loved. Having a family.
You’re going to love this book if you like: feeling emotionally distraught, never recovering from something you read, found families, great character and relationship development, the personification of sunshine and goodness (it’s Marigold), vampires, the existencial horror of having to keep on living, idiots in love. Oh, and Neil Josten.
And if you’re like me and can’t deal with the anxiety of not knowing how it ends: Yes, it has a happy ending.
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