the jumping between different memories was a bit hard to follow. but it was encouraging to follow sorcha’s journey rebuilding her life. i love supporting canadian authors!!

Milktooth completely captivated me from start to finish. I loved how raw, witty, and brutally honest the storytelling felt—it hit emotional highs and lows in the most authentic way. The characters were unforgettable, full of quirks and depth that made them feel so real, and the humor sprinkled throughout kept me grinning even in heavier moments. It’s the kind of book that lingers in your mind long after the last page, and I couldn’t put it down.

I received a free copy from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This was a painfully beautiful and deeply affecting read. The story follows Sorcha as she navigates a toxic relationship with Chris, and at times it’s hard to witness how his behavior escalates. The narrative shifts between different memories, which made the beginning a bit slow, but it also allowed for a layered understanding of Sorcha’s experiences and emotions. Despite the heaviness of some parts, there are hopeful moments—my favorite being Sorcha’s connection with her aunt.

The ending is abrupt, but fitting, as the story is less about closure and more about watching someone begin to reclaim their sense of self after trauma. The depiction of an abusive sapphic relationship is raw and realistic, and it reminded me how vital “chosen family” and support systems can be.

This book is intense and can be triggering for anyone who has experienced abuse, but it’s also empowering and hopeful. If you need a story of resilience and healing, grab a cup of tea, a scone, and settle in—you won’t want to put it down.

Loved this book, it had everything I wanted and so much more and I need to check out more of this authors work asap!

Phenomenally intimate account of a woman’s move through a controlling relationship (with history of her past ones) and the chosen family she’s able to stay tied to and find new members of. This might be up there with In The Dream House.

Well this is a good one for considering some moral issues. I’ve been left with more questions than answers for my own life, which is a powerful thought. I will be revisiting this book I think because there’s no way it’s just a one and done book

I was completely captivated by this book—it was impossible to put down. It struck a perfect balance between tension and comfort, blending the chilling reality of an abusive relationship with the healing power of chosen family and genuine friendship.

I ended up loving this book!

The story follows Sorcha who is trapped in a controlling and emotionally abusive relationship. It is beautifully written and I just couldn't put it down! It was a very gripping story about reclaiming life after trauma. I loved the LGBTQ+ representation. Check the TW but I would definitely recommend this one!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Nimbus Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It is hard to say that I enjoyed this book since that term does not really work for a book with this content and subject matter, but I was thoroughly engrossed in it. It tackled some tough subjects with authenticity and tact.

While it was very well done, there were a few reasons why I did not rate it higher. While I really like this author's writing style, I did sometimes have issues understanding who was talking in the book which is a formatting issue. In addition, the plot point advertised does not occur until a little over the half way mark, which threw off the pacing for me.

Overall, this book is realistic and worthwhile; I would highly recommend.

This was a beautiful read. Lots of heavy topics involved but the author handled everything so well. Sorcha’s story was at times heartbreaking but her outlook on things was overwhelmingly honest to read about. Not an easy read but one you will not regret/forget.

While I thought I would enjoy the book based off the premise, this was a tough read for me on multiple levels.

1. The trauma covered in this book is important but can be triggering for some. I highly recommend proceeding with caution because of the different types of DV mentioned. It is the main plot line so if that's not for you I would avoid this.

2. The writing style made things feel disjointed and I felt like it was really hard for me to relate to the main character. It wasn't awful but just not for me.

3. The ending felt very abrupt. I felt like things were finally happening when it suddenly ended.

Sorcha is looking for love and to build a family, and when she meets Chris, she thinks she's found the right person. Unfortunately, Chris isn't the best partner, and as signs of abuse start to appear, Sorcha retreats further into isolation. But when she and Chris undergo IUI to start a family, she realizes she can no longer ignore the cracks in their foundation.

This book started off slowly, and around 30%, I considered DNFing. The writing, though, kept me interested, so I stuck it out - and I'm glad I did. Things picked up around 40-50% of the way through, and I found the second half much more compelling than the first. The first half was a lot more scene-setting, while the second felt more plot-driven, although at its core, this is a pretty character-driven book. I always love the "found/chosen family" trope, though, and this executed it well.

Chris, in my opinion, could have been a bit more fleshed out. As it was, she felt like a full antagonist; I saw very few redeeming qualities or even a reason for why she was the way she was. She seemed awful from day one, and I have no idea why Sorcha liked her to begin with. The ending was also super abrupt, although I can understand why (the story the author set out to tell was resolved).

This isn't an *easy* book to read — depictions of abuse rarely are — but it's a hopeful one, in the end.

“It felt like walking in a neighborhood you think you know, and then after a while you’re lost but you can’t remember where you took a wrong turn.”

What a devastating read. A fair warning to those who choose to read it, it can be triggering if you have been in an abusive relationship of any kind. However, the way the book was able to capture the reality of an abusive romantic relationship, especially in a sapphic couple, was great. It’s something that you don’t see in a lot of books but it’s a very real thing that happens. It’s also hopeful toward the end which I enjoyed because it’s good to remind survivors of DV or DA that it will not be the end and that good things are still to come.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! I absolutely loved this novel, it broke my heart but did do its best to put the pieces back together. TW, it does deal with domestic abuse in a queer relationship. I know the comparison is too easy since there aren’t many books dealing with the subject, but if you loved Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House then I’d definitely recommend reading this fiction novel to explore the topic further.

Sorcha is tired of the fleeting hook ups that litter her late 20s, so when she meets Chris, looking like a dyke Leo di Caprio from the 90s, at the farmer’s market, she lets herself be swept off her feet, tugged along by her desire for a stable relationship and a child. What follows is a devastating spiral which sees Sorcha trapped in an increasingly (emotionally) abusive relationship, all the while gaslighting herself that everything’s fine. This book really nails the ‘frog in a pot of boiling water’ analogy. Chris really gets under your skin, like I felt anxious and claustrophobic as a reader so I’d say Burnet does an excellent job of depicting an abusive relationship.

There’s also some mystery and intrigue in the form of a family drama, and I enjoyed the way Burnet wove Sorcha’s backstory throughout the book. I definitely agree with another reviewer than some of Sorcha’s behaviour/inner monologues in the second half come off as biphobic, but I think (hope) it’s meant more as something Sorcha has to unpack and unlearn than an actual representation of something normal to think - if that makes sense!

Overall, a fantastic debut full of emotional depth.

This was a borderline weird girl book. It was about a lesbian couple named Sorcha and Chris. Without giving up too much of the story, Chris becomes emotionally and verbally abusive. We follow the POV of Sorcha, who is desperate to have a family but also not to bring a child into a volatile relationship. The author did a great job of depicting what feeling stuck in this situation would feel like.

I did enjoy this book. It made me actually get to know and care about the characters. I liked the tooth drawing at the start of the chapters. However, I didn't love how it was written. Sometimes, it would be hard to understand when someone was talking with the lack of quotation marks. Sometimes, it would float around too randomly, and I would get lost as to what was going on and how much time had passed.

Thank you, Jaime Burnet, NetGalley, and Nimbus Publishing, for the ARC of this book.

This book is such a perfect examination of abuse, how it can start slow and then ramp up. Sorcha initially has an excuse for everything Chris does that her friends see as red flags. As time goes on and the abuse ramps up, Sorcha can no longer make excuses and begins to look for a way out for herself and her future child. I really enjoyed this book even though it was a tough read at times.

My fourth grade teacher would spend about half an hour a day reading out loud to our class. As someone that was already an avid reader by that point, this book-focused time was something that I both looked forward to and dreaded in equal measure. I looked forward to it because any time spent amongst the magical worlds of stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, A Wrinkle In Time or even Where The Red Fern Grows was something that felt meaningful and necessary to my existence. They were an escape from those parts of the real world that would keep my eyes open at night - unable to calm my brain, unable to dream. But I also dreaded our time with those books because it meant that eventually, we would have to leave those worlds and wait an entire day to find our way back to them. I longed to skip ahead with my own copies of the books, but I felt some sort of allegiance to experiencing the stories at the same pace as the rest of the class and not ruining things.

As I grew up, I found solace in books where the worlds that were presented to me were quite a bit less magical and more grounded in some form of reality. Stories that enveloped themselves in pain and regret, stories that basked in the triumph and the fall of love, stories that didn’t shield me from their pulsing, damaged hearts and invited me inside to bathe me in warmth as they simultaneously ripped me to shreds. I began to live for stories that exemplified what the London-based band Shame once wrote, “They say ‘don’t live in the past’ and I don’t. I live deep within myself, just like everyone else.”

Despite the difficult subject matter of Jaime Burnet’s Milktooth, I mowed through it in two sittings over the course of one day, but then found myself pausing to write or post anything about it over the past…two months (?!?) as the intense struggle at the core of the story rattled around my brain like a handful of forgotten stray coins loosed from a pair of jeans in the dryer. Milktooth and it’s narrator, Sorcha, have lived with me over these past months in a sort of delicate balance of wanting to hold on to this story just for myself, while also feeling like I am bursting at the seams to talk about it, open up about it, connect it to every experience I’ve ever known - connect it to every feeling that I’ve ever hidden deep inside of myself.

In the first half of Milktooth, we are thrown into Sorcha’s current life as she spends her days working at a glorified mini-mart in the intensely gorgeous, but remarkably remote village of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Immediately, a number of hallmarks of abuse are present - the sheer panic she feels when missing a text from her partner, sneaking food that her partner wouldn’t approve of, the endless guilt of having to ask her partner to drive her anywhere, the disassociation that she works in a bookshop rather than a convenience store. As the story unfolds, we are given glimpses into the past where we allowed to see a happier, more outgoing and vibrant version of Sorcha in the larger city of Halifax as she immerses herself into a world surrounded by her found family of best friends.

Sorcha’s life is upended when she meets Chris, described early on as a lesbian Leonardo DiCaprio look-alike, and the two embark on an intense relationship that immediately consumes her and alienates Sorcha’s friends. Chris is jealous, possessive and becomes a wedge between Sorcha and her merry band of misfit friends and eventually convinces Sorcha that it would be best for them to move away from the distractions of the city to isolate themselves in a small town where they can work towards the process of starting a family together. Despite the lingering voice in the back of her head that she’s had enough of Chris’ constant emotional manipulation and her insistence that Sorcha choose her over her friends, she makes the decision to leave her life in the city and follow Chris just about as far to the east as she can go, to the middle of nowhere.

While what follows in the second half of the story becomes much more hopeful, that hope also presents itself attached to a significant amount of change and upheaval in Sorcha’s reality, which is, at times, absolutely gut-wrenching and nerve-wracking to read. Jaime does a phenomenal job of allowing us to live inside of the mind of someone being deeply emotionally abused and manipulated to the degree that you begin to feel it across your skin and in your bones. The tension and worry that she creates on behalf of the situation that Sorcha has found herself in is thick and I found that as I read along, all of my nervous tics came flaring outward in grand procession as I went along for the ride.

Milktooth is a piece of art that examines how the abuse that you accept from the people you trust implicitly early on in your life - your family - can translate into a reality where you will continue to accept that level of abuse until you work to break the cycle…and even then, it never fully disappears. As her story unfolds and she finds herself handcuffed even further to Chris via an IVF pregnancy, Sorcha discovers family secrets that unlock doors in her mind that had always been closed off to her and help guide her to the people in her life that have her best interests at heart without any expectation of receiving anything in return outside of love.

With Milktooth, Jaime has crafted a document that shines an essential and bright light on queer relationships, the machinations of abuse and the lifetime of trauma they create, the human ability to fight and to survive at all costs and the beauty of finding your place among a found family and allowing yourself even an infinitesimal shard of happiness. Milktooth is a force of nature in the shape of a novel that I will have planted in my brain for many years to come.

milktooth is a novel detailing the progression of Sorcha’s relationships – with her girlfriend, her friends, and her family. When Sorcha’s abusive relationship with her girlfriend Chris ramps up in intensity when they move out into a remote city and attempt for a child, she turns to her estranged aunt for help.

Burnet created a book that was both terrifying and heartwarming. The gradual ramping up of the abuse, both physical and psychological, was scary to bear witness to but written extremely well. Sorcha’s voice and the pacing of the book was incredible, and kept me invested throughout. The recurring imagery of the milk and the salamander was really interesting, and I felt like it fit really well. It was a devastating story, showing how hard it is to escape toxic and abusive relationships like these. The psychological abuse is quite detailed, so that is definitely something to keep in mind if that is a trigger for you. However, the story is also about Sorcha’s healing, and how it is possible to get away and the importance of a support system. All of the side characters, Sorcha’s friends, her family, etc., were also full of depth and there was not a single boring moment in the book. Definitely got emotional at more than one moment in the book.

I really enjoyed this novel, and will definitely be checking out Jaime Burnet’s future writing! Thank you to NetGalley and Nimbus Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a love letter to all those finding their way out of emotionally abusive relationships. The first half of the book had me both pinned to the page while simultaneously feeling sick to my stomach. Burnet captures the very real feelings of words being twisted, blame being turned, the fear and guilt. I appreciated that we got to see the build up of the relationship over time and see how it tied in with Sorcha’s identity as a queer woman and also her desire to have a baby.

At about 60% into the book, I felt it hit a bit of a lag after she’s in Scotland for a minute. It felt very repetitive of she goes to work, eats a scone or something milky, talks to Agnes about plants and life. I guess I just found it jarring compared to the pacing of the rest of the book, but maybe that’s the point.

And a slighter note, I found Sorcha’s thoughts mildly biphobic (judging the queerness of a queer woman dating a straight man as if it negates her identity) and I thought that was icky.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I loved the way the story flowed. The internal conflict of the main character felt really real, and I was rooting for her so hard. I think the way the abuse was portrayed was incredibly realistic, how easy it is to be manipulated and how trapped you can feel in that situation. It was lowkey triggering to read, but I persisted because I wanted that happy ending. I wouldn't say the ending was happy, but it was satisfying.