Welcome back!

I’m a changed woman. A newly lustful reader. A cerebral shell for the gutteral depths of literature. An hour ago, I finished Boys with Sharp Teeth by Jenni Howell, and I fear I’ll never be the same again. When I first came across this book on Netgalley the synopsis grabbed me immediately. In this Ya Dark Debut, we have Marin, and she is a woman on a mission.

She found her cousin, Sam, the light of her life, her reason to keep going. She’s found him dead. Facedown in a creek too shallow to drown in, covered in bruises. When she reports this to the local law enforcement, they tell her he drowned due to an overdose and begins to sweep it under the rug, but she knows that’s not the truth.

Sam didn’t partake. He would never leave her. Not willingly, not in an voluntary way. She knows that whatever happened to Sam is the fault of the well to do he was hanging out with at his job. Sam, the Night security guard at the fancy academy up the hill; Huntsworth Academy. She knows that the truth and the blame lays with the three of them. Henry, Baz and Adrian. She’s determined to get her answers, her truth and to bring them to justice. To right the wrongs for Sam.

She then creates a cockamamie scheme to go undercover at Huntsworth Academy, she’ll become a new person, befriend them, get the drugs, or hard evidence and bring it to the police chief right after. She’ll show them, exactly what a girl from Aberdeen is capable of. She won’t let piles of money or celebrity ties keep Sam from getting justice.

When she arrives and actually meets the friends Sam was spending so much time with her plan begins to derail. Surrounded by people who don’t know her history, aren’t judging her in ways that she’s used to, she begins to indulge. In the oppulance, the excellent education, the vapors of power, and she begins to split. The idea of only being there for Sam, and the idea of this is what she can have if only she’d been born completely different.

Adrian, Baz and Henry are more haunted then she expects rich people to be, and while they begin to bare themselves for her to befriend, layers of herself being to peel away as well. The story continues this frenzied decent into what’s truly real, what is physical, and what she can actually believe.

This Dark YA Debut is cerebral and gutteral in its utter betrayal of everything you know and hold deal, and will lay it bare in front of you, with a single question. Do you know how far you’d go?

I feel like books like this only come around once per blue moon. Books that have such a uniquely abstract voice that have a feather-light touch. Books whose voice tempts you into the darkest depths of what a human has the emotions for; despair, revenge, desire, need, control, ownership, love, and when you are siren-called you answer.

Boys With Sharp Teeth will scuttle into your brain, carve a place for itself with its claws, and just live there. for the rest of your days. I absolutely devoured this novel and it’s a 2025 favorite.

Boys With Sharp Teeth by Jenni Howell releases on the 8th of April. I gave it a solid 🥕🥕🥕🥕🥕 and highly recommend it to everyone who doesn’t mind a bit of dark reading. Please for all that’s holy, read it. If you’re the same as you were when you’re done, read it again. You’ve missed something.

Until Next Time,

Gabs

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