Everyone has a motive, especially vampires.

My relationship with vampire novels, especially ones that fall in the romance category, is like a person who loves spicy food even if it gives them stomach problems most of the time. The reason I keep diving in despite that? The possibility of finding novels like Cutting Your Teeth. Many of the common tropes are there: much older vampire saving young human damsel dude in distress, some new twist on traditional supernatural lore, and a small dose of chosen one. Author Caylan MacRae crafts an LGBTQ+ narrative that transcends these.

A supernatural mix between horror and romance, it’s the very real characters and their very real problems that anchor this story so much for me. I wouldn’t have thought I’d find topics like childhood trauma and existentialism in my vampire novel, but I’m thankful for it. The plot reminded me of an onion, layers upon layers yet still managing to be cohesive all the same. And parts are going to leave a bad taste in your mouth, but they are supposed to. Don’t forget those couple of elements of horror tossed into the blender even if sweeter moments can lull the reader into a false sense of security.

Tone and word choice round out why I enjoyed Cutting Your Teeth so much. The main character, a barely ex-teenager on the run, keeps the right amount of sarcasm and edginess without feeling overdone. I blame my decision to read the novel on the cage fight in the first chapter and excerpt. The description made it easy to picture what was happening, and more than in just a visual sense because of the frequent appeals to other senses too. That same quality persisted throughout. In fact, the novel was pretty near perfect with only a few scattered errors.

I highly recommend Cutting Your Teeth to any fan of supernatural, or any Supernatural fan for that matter. I hope the inclusion of an impala and the chemistry between characters (not just the romantic leads) were a nod in that direction. If not, the chords struck were very similar. A world was built with this first book, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens to it in the rest of the series.

Cutting Your Teeth is available to buy on Amazon.

Verdict:

RAVEABLE