Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Published by: Penguin Michael Joseph
Publication date: 22nd October 2026
Content warnings: blood, gore, torture, murder, stalking

“Some hungers are insatiable…”

Okay, wtf was this?! I really wanted something extra weird and next level creepy for my spooky month of reading, and this fit the bill perfectly. It was so far out of my comfort zone I wasn’t sure if I was going to finish it at first, but holy sh*t. The author writes the gore and the horror SO well and I just couldn’t look away. I’m happy to be sharing my review for Milkteeth by Caitlin Starling!

About the book

Beatrice is a broodmother: a vampire responsible for nursing newly made fledglings through the first years of their unlife. She nests in an abandoned, isolated warren of office space beneath her patron’s skyscraper, raising two fractious fledglings.

But when she decides to take on a third fledgling, Beatrice finds herself strained by her own ravenous hunger – her body is changing too, transforming her into something even more monstrous.

Desperate to master herself once more, Beatrice courts a mortal who might be able to unravel the secrets of her unnatural anatomy. But their connection threatens the secrecy of her vampiric coven and all that Beatrice holds dear to her unbeating heart.

The beginning

I found this book really difficult to get into at first, I’ll be honest. I am a fan of horror, but vampires are certainly something new for me, and I’m not sure I like them very much 😂 Despite that, what really kept me reading was just how beautiful this author’s writing is. I mean, wowwww. It was such a joy to experience. It’s vivid, it’s gory as hell, it’s engaging and at times, I did struggle to stop reading, even though I didn’t have a clue what was happening at the start! After a while though, I did begin to follow the story. We meet Beatrice, a broodmother – she’s a vampire, nesting in an abandoned office space, bringing up two fledglings. Seeing how she lived her life, quite literally feeding those fledglings her own blood, but also sometimes masking as a human when she felt like it was terrifying. I have not read anything like this and it was weird as hell. Being a vampire and the process of becoming one felt a bit confusing and if I was honest, I found myself not caring about all the detail we were given about it. I was staying for the gore, the horror, the unpredictability.

“I cracked open his chest. I split his ribs. I managed to take one great bite before the muscle seized and died; I swallowed just in time, while it still had life in it yet. Fresh and hot and perfect.”

Beatrice chooses to take on a third fledgling, Lu. But it isn’t long before her body starts changing. A ravenous hunger begins to take hold, and with feeding responsibilities, keeping these fledglings safe and hidden, as well as keeping herself alive, she finds it harder and harder to cope. I enjoyed the introduction of a mortal doctor who begins to work with her to understand her body, to help with all these changes. A person who I felt a little fearful for, if I was honest… Beatrice has such a striking motherly instinct with her fledglings, the similarities between a breastfeeding mother and how she quite literally offers her own blood to feed them, even though they weren’t biologically her own, was quite fascinating, actually. I also loved how the author seems to break the fourth wall, addressing the reader as if they too are a new vampire learning the ropes. There’s a lot to unpack about Beatrice and the other vampires, but what really intrigued me were their lives before turning. Their mortal lives. The more I read, the more things made sense, and the more I wanted to keep reading!

The middle

As things progressed, I did find parts of the book to be painfully slow paced. Much of the book up until this point was just vampires feeding off one another and preying on unsuspecting victims, and though the gore and the shock of it was excellent, it did get a bit stale after a while. I think there is so much focus on the “shock factor” of a vampire ripping a body to shreds, the intense, horrifying detail of it all, that the plot seemed to be lacking a bit. There was only so much blood sucking that felt entertaining to me 😅 Beatrice loses it one day, her ravenous self fleeing through a hole in their ceiling to the mortal world, a world full of blood she had no fear of taking in this state. This was pretty scary, probably the stuff of nightmares. It was so easy to visualise, the descriptions consistently fantastic, whatever was going on, however intense the scene. I enjoyed seeing the increasing confidence of Beatrice’s fledglings over time, as well as that growing relationship between her and the mortal doctor… that was until things went wrong. I felt so sorry for this character getting caught up in all this!

“We are not the only dark things in the night. Mortals do horrific things to one another. And humans love nothing so much as a human monster. So let us build them a fiction, and see what they do with it.”

I did enjoy seeing the changes in these characters over time. Beatrice’s fledglings growing in confidence, wanting to explore, seeing what they were capable of, no matter how much Beatrice warned them and worried about them. There was some good vampy drama going on and it did make things interesting for a while. For years, Beatrice had known her purpose, her desire to feed her brood. It was her identity. But now she craved more. She craved flesh, not just blood. Erm, terrifying. Her fledglings were tempting, but she knew they didn’t deserve it. But would that stop her urges in the end? There was some self restraint there, as unpredictable as she seemed at the moment, but I didn’t trust her to keep it under control. The constant hunger completely altering the (un)life she lived. There was a real good crossover of Beatrice’s life as a vampire and the ‘real world’ above her, and when she has an unexpected meeting with her mortal son, it stirred a bit of emotion within me. How must that feel, to leave your son, for fifty years to pass, for him not to know who you are?

The end

After a slow middle, the ending chapters were probably some of my favourites in the whole book. Things turned chaotic and uncertain, and even though the entire book had been pretty dark until this point, it got even darker, even more haunting than before. Yes, there is still lots of the same drinking blood and clashing vampires, but there was something much deeper now. Beatrice’s fate, the consequences of the things she’d done were very real for her now. Her changing form was completely horrifying to visualise, and once again the author really excels at describing everything so brilliantly. Before things went so terribly wrong for Beatrice, the doctor instructed her to inject herself with Filgrastim, the effects of which, well, you’ll find out when you read. But as she requests more of this medication, I wasn’t sure I was prepared for the horror that would be unleashed if she did successfully inject it. But part of me was desperate to experience whatever would happen. I had a weird desire to see her monstrous and overpowering.

“I barely heard her, already out the door, already facing down the uniformed men. I think one managed to ask me to come along for some questioning, before I snapped his neck.”

I would have loved to have seen the look on my face as I read those last few chapters. Beatrice, what on EARTH have you become?! Holy sh*t. There were some fiercely horrifying moments in that ending which I think I wanted to be drawn out a bit more (ha, says the one who complained about the slow pace 😅) They were definitely scenes I’d love to see play out on the big screen! When I’d finished reading, it was those chapters that kept playing over and over in my mind, and even though I would have loved an extra chapter, an epilogue, it was still shocking, still intense and eye-opening. And it finally became clear why it felt as though Beatrice had been talking to the reader throughout the book! It wasn’t quite that, as I’d originally thought, but I did love how this was revealed, a nice little twist I didn’t expect. From this, I’m not sure I’d be in a rush to pick up something else by author, but good god, if any of her other books are this creepy, then I’ll be returning to her each spooky season, without a doubt. A decent palate cleanser for me, and perfect if you want something gory af for your Halloween TBR!

Overall thoughts

Milkteeth is a supernatural horror, an incredibly dark, terrifying, vampire-riddled, gore fest, an unsettling look at motherhood that I just couldn’t stop reading. Beatrice is a broodmother, a vampire responsible for nursing newly made vampire fledglings, raising two of them in an old abandoned office space. But when she takes on a third, she starts to change. She becomes ravenous, her body slowly transforming into something monstrous. In a bid to make sense of it all, she becomes involved with a mortal doctor, but their connection threatens to unravel all her secrets, everything she holds dear. If you are squeamish in any way, shape or form, this book is not for you. It is graphic. These blood-sucking, organ-feasting, meal-hunting vampires are absolutely terrifying, the description making me nauseous at times. But jesus, this author’s writing is fantastic if you can stomach it!

I’ll admit, this book was so far out of my comfort zone and I really wasn’t sure I’d like it much after not really gelling with the start, the slow pace of the first half and the somewhat lacking plot. I couldn’t seem to grasp the vampire “lore” easily (which is probably because this is so new to me) and characters had such obscure names that I struggled placing them at first. There was also lots of bloodsucking which started to get a bit stale. There’s only so much I could take that was entertaining 😅 HOWEVER, I had much more fun with the latter half of the book. Seeing Beatrice in varying states of hunger is now burned into my brain and the unleashing of her wrath was quite the reading experience! This is the perfect spooky season read. It’s horrifying, nightmarish, a story of hunger and desire and love, completely and utterly brutal. If you’re already a fan of vampy horror them you will most likely adore this!

Huge thanks to the team at Penguin Michael Joseph for my gorgeous proof copy! You can grab your own copy of Milkteeth from Amazon* or wherever you buy your books. Make sure you’re following the author over on Instagram for more updates!

* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Thanks so much for your support!

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