I wanted to love this book so badly. I’m always looking for the next book that’ll crawl into my skin like The Raven Boys did. I found the pace of this book really difficult to sink into, and was unfortunately frustrated by the mismatch between marketing/cover and the story inside.
While the comparison to The Raven Boys is apt in the Ronan Lynch look-alike and the Henry who could’ve been Henry Cheng in another life, it was missing what I loved most about that series, and that was the connections between the characters. Marin faces a very similar situation to Blue in trying to assimilate into this group of rich, prep school, friends, but I never felt the love between Henry, Adrian, and Baz the way I felt the love Adam, Gansey, and Ronan shared. Boys with Sharp Teeth’s group seemed to function purely on obsession, especially obsession with Henry, in lieu of true connection bonding them. I also found that by 50% in, I really didn’t care about who killed Sam, and I really didn’t care about any of these characters.
While the paranormal element towards the end had interesting potential, the way the prose is structured makes it muddled and confusing until almost the very end. I honestly wish more had been done with it sooner and clearer, because the epilogue was where I finally felt like I could see where the tagline for this book was coming from. I could see her potential to become ‘worse’ than the boys at that point finally, but throughout the book I found myself having a hard time believing that she was worse than the boys, especially so the deeper and darker this book twisted.
I honestly wish I had gone in blind on anything beyond the title because I might’ve enjoyed it more without having set any expectations of what I thought this book would hold based on the description. It also makes me a bit sad that Baz is completely absent from the jacket copy and cover when she’s just as much a main character as Marin, Henry, and Adrian are.