1 star

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’m sorry to say that I absolutely hated it. Great cover, but I disliked nearly everything inside it.

For one thing, I found it extremely boring. It is very drawn out. I stuck with it, hoping there would be an interesting ending or explanation, but no luck. It is just a very long, rambling Electra complex. It takes forever for anything to really happen and with all the buildup it didn’t even come off as that creepy. It tried to play off the fear of children wanting to murder a parent, but goes about it in a very boring fashion.

I also was instantly turned off by the amount of backstory given for Suzette. Before I even had a chance to see her in the present, the book gives me a whole detailed explanation of her entire life. While I did like the idea of presenting a character living with Crohn’s disease, I didn’t even have a chance to form an opinion about her before the narration delved into her experience with discomfort and neglect growing up. It was incredibly boring and repetitive throughout the novel.

The biggest issue I had was the number of stereotypes and misconceptions this book perpetuates. I don’t have a problem with books about creepy kids, but I hated all of the terrible ideas this book reinforces: the creepiness of non-verbal children (because of course they’re up to something), children faking being physical abused by a parent, that it’s okay if verbally abuse your child when they do something wrong. I also didn’t like the weird undertones of mental illness, especially considering that they were never really fleshed out. Terrible messages and what’s worse was that the ending didn’t even clear anything up. spoiler> Maybe if she were possessed or something you could argue that those stereotypes make sense, but she’s not. She’s just a very smart kid who wants to marry her father and murder her mother. The book makes a halfhearted attempt to smoosh together a bunch of ways a kid could be creepy from mainstream media (demonic possession, mental health issues, influence of favorite toys) without taking any of them anywhere.

With all the negative, I did think that Stage had some interesting descriptions, especially from Hanna’s point of view. Some of the narration put forth interesting ideas, but for the most part I was just bored with the whole thing. It didn’t really go anywhere and mostly just felt like an excuse for Suzette to complain about living with Crohn’s disease and how terrible her mother was.

The slow pace and reliance on harmful stereotypes created a frustrating and dull reading experience. I could see how some people may enjoy this book, but it just wasn’t for me.

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