Book Title: Greenteeth
Author: Molly O'Neill
Date Started: March 16th 2025
Date Completed: March 25th 2025
Genres: Historical, Adventure, Fantasy
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Star
Final Rating: Four Stars
Review:
◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆
Greenteeth is a love letter to the folklore, mythology and fairy tales of the British Isles. Taking inspiration from a breadth of sources, a Jenny (river-hag), a witch and a goblin are sent to all corners of the UK on a classic adventure quest done right.
This book was so much fun, with so much heart. Someone please make it into a Dreamworks animated series or film. It marries together wondrous discovery and friendship with real struggles of identify, belonging and activism. I loved that the characters were all fallible, and their conflict often comes from understanding each other as much as the antagonists.
I'm so happy there's a resurgence of retellings of UK myth alongside the Classical and Asian reimagining that have recently come to prominence. And Greenteeth really does tick the box of every beloved cornerstone of our storytelling canon; from Fae to Avalon to unicorns to witches to the Wild Hunt to goblins and more. And it recognises the darker origins of these storytelling traditions; the novel is mostly 'cozy' but respects the primal aspects of old lore. Even as someone who wrote their dissertation on fairy tales (in film specifically), there were new things for me to uncover and devour.
While the hype around this book seems moderate, as a debut novel it really does leave a lasting impression - and for someone who love folklore and myth as much as I do it's a dream. I hope O'Neill does more work in this sort of storytelling.