Title: Baby Teeth

Author: Celia Silvani

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Orion

Publication Date: 6th February 2025

Rating: 4.5/5

Cover:

Summary:

They said a mother knows best and I believed them. Was I wrong?

It is supposed to be a dream. James and I have been trying for years. But now it is starting to feel like a nightmare.

Doctors don’t ask questions, or care about how you’re feeling. They just tell you what to do. They never listen.

Mam and James don’t understand either. James thinks I’m being anxious and Mam says it’ll pass. It always does. That’s what she did when Dad died.

I’ve never felt more alone. Or scared.

Then I joined an online group for mothers. A sisterhood, really. They might be on a screen, but sometimes it feels like they know me better than James. They listen, they care. It’s all I could have asked for.

Until the worst happens and I see them for who they are. But if I leave, what if they come for me next?

Review:

I was completely consumed by Baby Teeth from beginning to end. It is not always an easy read and covers some quite sad topics but it is also incredibly compelling. There’s something about it that, despite not having ever been pregnant myself, felt really rather relatable in certain ways. Baby Teeth takes the reader into the mind of Claire, a woman first struggling desperately to get pregnant and then dealing with the reality of her pregnancy once it does happen. The book is crafted so well, in a way that makes it easy to understand why Claire ends up becoming sucked into an online world of ‘free birthing’, and into a community of woman who almost aggressively believe in absolutely no medical intervention in their pregnancies or parenting decisions. I found it genuinely quite chilling as I did relate, in terms of having had bad or traumatic experiences within the medical establishment, with Claire’s terror at the prospect of dealing with doctors and hospitals, and how that can affect your decision making process. Baby Teeth takes the reader far into this community of forceful women and demonstrates why vulnerable people can often find themselves caught up in a virtual world that can then have potentially dangerous real world consequences. Claire is not always immensely likeable, she is quite frustrating in many ways, and yet, there was something about her that made me feel compassion for her, especially her feelings of loneliness and struggles with the complexities of female friendship. She is so vulnerable and the way she gets completely consumed by the beliefs of others whom she only knows through a screen is really quite unnerving and gives the narrative a real sense of foreboding. I found Baby Teeth a compulsively readable and genuinely moving story that feels unlike any other books I’ve read on the complex and nuanced themes of anxiety, longing, pregnancy and motherhood. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a smart, sensitively written and absorbing read, although do take care if the subject matter could be triggering. A deeply compelling read. 

★★★★.5 

Huge thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and the publisher for my place on this tour and for the copy of the book. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

Buy the book:

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