Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill
- Wardley Love
- Jun 27
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 17
A darkly playful debut that blends gothic folklore with girlhood trauma, Greenteeth is part monster tale, part feminist reckoning, and entirely ungovernable.
If you enjoyed Our Wives Under the Sea or Boy Parts but wanted something stranger, swampier, and more bite than balm, Greenteeth offers a subversive and unwashed kind of magic. Nothing feels safe. Least of all you.
🚀 The Setup
Temperance is sixteen. She is angry, strange, and barely tolerated in her small town. The rumours call her a witch. A liar. Maybe even a little touched. One afternoon, after another incident involving the pastor’s son, the town falls silent. They tie her up and throw her in the lake.
She should have died.
Instead, she meets someone else at the bottom. Someone older. Someone worse. Jenny Greenteeth, the local legend with skin like rotting kelp and teeth like glass. A creature parents use to scare their daughters. A creature who is just as tired of being hunted.
Jenny does not kill her. She offers her a deal.
What follows is part survival story, part pact-with-a-monster tale. Temperance claws her way back to the surface, reeking of pond scum and vengeance. Together, she and Jenny decide it is time to clean up the town. And not gently.
There are goblins in the tunnels beneath the church. Secrets buried beneath the school. The pastor is not what he seems. And neither is Temperance, anymore.
This is not a tale of redemption. It is a story of reclamation. And the water remembers everything.
✨ What’s Good
Molly O’Neill writes like someone who swallowed the swamp and came back up grinning. The prose is sharp and slick, full of dirt and teeth. The world feels thick with mildew and menace, but it never overwhelms the characters. It just seeps into them.
Temperance is one of the most compelling protagonists of the year. She is not polite. She is not kind. She is furious in a way that feels both mythic and familiar. Her friendship with Jenny is the pulsing heart of the book. It is messy, dangerous, and oddly beautiful. Neither of them gets softened. That is the point.
What works exceptionally well is the book’s refusal to explain itself. The folklore is layered and tangled, just like the real thing. O’Neill trusts the reader to feel their way through it. No neat lessons. No glowing swords. Just girls and monsters, teeth and mud.
A subtle feminist thread runs through the entire novel. It never lectures. Instead, it lets the fury speak for itself. It enables the hunger to grow. The girls in this book are not saved. They save themselves. Or they drown trying.
⚠️ What’s Slightly Less Good
The plot can meander. Much like the lake itself, it pulls you into strange eddies that may or may not pay off. Some readers might wish for a more focused narrative arc or a clearer antagonist. Others will enjoy getting lost in the weeds.
The goblins are a delight, but they occasionally shift the tone too far into mischief. It is not a dealbreaker, but it might jar readers who are more invested in the emotional weight of Temperance’s journey.
Secondary characters sometimes feel undercooked. The pastor is menacing, but others blur together. The town is more of a mood than a place. That works thematically, but it leaves some scenes feeling hollow.
🧹 Final Thoughts
Greenteeth is a feral, unforgettable debut. It is damp and vengeful and full of girls who refuse to behave. Molly O’Neill does not just retell folklore. She cracks it open and lets it rot.
This is not a story about healing. It is about survival. It is about rage that does not need approval. It is about the kinds of monsters that live in every small town and the ones you find inside yourself when the water gets too dark to see.
Recommended if you like:
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
Break by Hannah Moskowitz
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson
The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg
Feral girlhood, swamp monsters, and everything that festers
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