ALC Review: Boys with Sharp Teeth by Jenni Howell
- Story Eater
- Apr 1
- 3 min read
Release date: 8 April 2025
Rating: 2.5/5
Narrator: Jennifer Pickens
Narration rating: 5/5
Book box(es): OwlCrate Exclusive Edition
Synopsis: We Were Liars meets The Raven Boys in this mind-bending YA debut about dark revenge, twisted desire, and the sinister secrets lurking behind the walls of an elite boarding school.
Seventeen-year-old Marin James has spent her entire life living in the shadow of the exclusive Huntsworth Academy. And when her cousin’s dead body is found in a creek on school property, Marin knows exactly who’s to blame: Adrian Hargraves and Henry Wu, the enigmatic yet dangerously alluring leaders of the school's social elite.
Swapping her ripped jeans for a crisp prep school skirt, Marin infiltrates Huntsworth to seek justice. But her quest is quickly muddied by a confusing attraction to her new life, and to the two dysfunctional and depraved boys who somehow understand her better than anyone ever has.
When Marin uncovers an otherworldly secret the boys are hiding within Huntsworth's ivied gates, the lines between right and wrong, love and hate, and nightmare and reality begin to crumble -- and nothing is as it seems.
Welcome to Huntsworth Academy.
Review
I’ve read neither We Were Liars nor The Raven Boys; but I have seen Dangerous Liaisons, Dawson’s Creek, and some 21 Jump Street (the good one). Boys with Sharp Teeth is *kinda like the latter three. The Goodreads shelves for it are way off, though. Mind you, don’t go bombing the reviews because some folks didn’t shelve this one correctly because that’s dumb. As it is, I’m not sure how to feel about it. Howell’s writing style would feel pretentious if it weren’t so fantastic, but the content, though not explicit, doesn’t read like YA. I loved the general story concept, the dark academia setting, and the spooky reveal; but the specifics were just awkward.
Foremost—the premise. Infiltrating any kind of school nowadays, even private schools, isn’t as easy as just showing up and throwing a bunch of bunk around and sending a fake bad check in the mail. People would be conversing. Interviews would happen. Faces would be seen. All that jazz. Not to mention, folks from private schools—even the boarding ones—know folks in the towns nearby. Shenanigans on school grounds like the stuff going on in the book would close the school down for a bit. I could nitpick all day at the stuff that doesn’t make sense here. It’s not productive. Moving on.
The writing style and word choice both pleased and grated on me. On one hand, in combination with Pickens’ narration, the writing felt sophisticated and fraught with tension in every sentence; on the other hand, the writing also felt saturated with suggestively erotic descriptions for almost everything—and I do mean almost everything. The trees, the desks, the classroom, the library; everything was hypersexualized. A prude by no means, I still felt a bit grimy after I finished listening. The characters narrating all this stuff are kids, so, that’s gross.
Speaking of characters, I liked the inner turmoil Marin struggled with once she ingratiated herself with the crowd of suspects. Readers only get to know about 4-5 students at the school, so the cast is quite small. Some of their motivation still wasn’t clear at the end of the book, and what little was clear didn’t seem like it was good enough for all the holy cow that went down at the end. Again, no way that kind of stuff happens and local LEO’s aren't crawling all over the place, inspecting every person, place, and thing that was at the scene. I laughed at the absurdity of some of the logic and procedure way too much here. Still, as I said, the writing style pulled me in and had me in a stranglehold.
Overall, about 2.5 for the story and 5/5 for the narration. Pickens was perfect, and I think if I had to physically read this or it were read by a different narrator, I might have DNF’ed. I want to like the book more than I do, but too many things get in the way of themselves and the text reads like a rocket schematic from NASA for what really amounts to a build for a seesaw or something. Keep it simple, work on the logic, make some of the plot more believable; the story with shine and the supernatural aspect will be peek-over-the-blanket creepy. On the plus side, there was no explicit sexual content (suggestive or otherwise), and there was only a small spattering of explicit language (at least one f-bomb).
My thanks to Macmillan Audio for the ALC, for which I willingly give my own, honest opinion.
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