There has been a fair bit of interest in What Big Teeth since its release in America earlier in the year and it is easy to see why. Billed as “Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children meets The Addams Family”, thus was a very strange, beguiling and very difficult to categorise dark fantasy. The American Amazon site lists it for ages 14-18, which I would agree with, however, adults could read this without ever catching on it was technically a teen novel. This is very mature YA which bleeds very closely with adult fiction, the fact that many existing reviews do not even mention it is YA would back that assumption up. It is most definitely aimed at older and capable readers, as it is very slow, atmospheric and lacks many of the traditional features of a YA teen novel, such as friendship, romance or a particularly big finish which resolves all. Alternatively, we are presented with one girl’s attempt to reconnect with her monstrous family after years in the wilderness. Part of the fun of the novel way trying to figure out what type of creatures Eleanor Zarrin’s family are? Hints and slights are dropped here and there, but it is never really clarified, and the novel admirably refuses to tread any of the tropes connected to Paranormal Romance or popular authors such as Sarah J Maas or Leigh Bardugo. Also, the word ‘werewolf’ is never used and there is nothing in the family history to say this is what they are, but they are ‘wolfish’ in some way, vividly drawn and altogether unpleasant.

The story is bizarre and takes its time setting its stall out in a dark gothic setting and will undoubtedly be too slow for younger readers. However, it is not particularly violent, and I would not recommend restricting any reader from trying it, although a certain level of emotional maturity will be required. Eleanor has been at boarding school for years, abandoned by her family, What Big Teeth begins when she returns to the remote New England family home, and it becomes quickly clear the family members can turn into monsters. It is initially vague whether Eleanor is the same as the rest of the family, an incident from years earlier is referred to, as is a confrontation at school where she bit another girl. Thinking of the potential teen readership again, not a huge amount happens in the first half of the novel, but things begin to move in the second half after a death and the arrival of her grandmother who begins to shake the family up in all sorts of ways. Eleanor is more like her Grandmere than she realises and a strange relationship forms and as the novel develops, we realise everybody is even less human than we thought. I loved the vagueness of the setting, the time period and Eleanor’s search into what and who she exactly she is. Some of the imagery in the final third was really wild and blew me away. In some ways What Big Teeth a very dark coming of age with Eleanor an outcast in her tight-knit family searching for answers to which nobody is prepared to give and, in the end realises there are more than one type of monster, and some are more powerful than others. AGE RANGE 14+