ISN'T PARENTHOOD ALL ABOUT SACRIFICE?

'Sharp, original, wickedly astute' Ashley Audrain, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Push
'Deliciously dark, Baker's novel exposes all the little horrors of motherhood.' Kirsten Miller, author of The Change

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 these 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 murdered, and the only witnesses are ten adorable four-year-olds. But as the police draw closer to the truth, it soon becomes clear that the children aren't just witnesses, they're suspects . . . and so are their mothers.

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.

'Bestseller Baker takes readers on a stomach-dropping emotional roller coaster in this suspenseful and darkly comic tale of motherhood and murder... a wicked thriller'. - Publishers Weekly

"Bestseller Baker takes readers on a stomach-dropping emotional roller coaster in this suspenseful and darkly comic tale of motherhood and murder... Baker's descriptions of the joys and trials of raising children bolster the mystery at the book's core. With winning cynicism, she delivers a wicked thriller that doubles as a glimpse at motherhood's dark underbelly." - Publishers Weekly

"Complex and gripping, featuring a brutal murder and an eye-opening look at suburban motherhood and the competition among the moms to be 'the best' ... Dark secrets, retribution, and the lengths a mother will go to to protect her child all feature in this twisted, disturbing story that will keep readers off balance from beginning to end." - Booklist

"

What could be a more perfect and hilariously dark metaphor for privileged modern motherhood than Baker's invention of "pediatric Renfield's syndrome"? Any parent who has imagined that their young children are draining the life out of them will both get the joke and feel the (piercing) pain....In keeping with the ruthless satirical tone, though, what they want to protect their kids from most isn't bodily harm-it's a bad reputation.
Red herrings abound and clues are dispensed tantalizingly. The building social tension is so good that the murder mystery can feel almost unnecessary. Will it come back to bite readers in the end? In the meantime, Baker limns the fascinating ways parents in a community can be simultaneously at odds with
and bonded to each other and how the pressure of parenthood makes crisis hard to define. Gruesome, funny, jam-packed, sharp as baby teeth.

" - Kirkus