SYNOPSIS
One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy’s father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives.
As they attempt to evade the boy’s increasingly desperate father, Jess slowly comes to a horrifying understanding of the butchery that follows them―the boy can turn his every fear into reality.
And when the wolf finally comes home, no one will be spared.
REVIEW
Thank you Tor Nightfire for sending me an ARC of When the Wolf Comes Home to read and review. All opinions are honest and my own.
When the Wolf Comes Home hit me like a ton of screaming bricks and it might be a contender for my favorite horror book, if not ever, then in a very long time. The sheer raw imagination on display here is unbelievable. And I can’t talk about any of it in detail because to spoil this book would be a crime punishable by death.
The set pieces are literally jaw dropping in their creativity and depravity. Reading this novel felt like watching Evil Dead 2 for the first time when I was way too young. I was in awe at what was unfolding between the pages. A truly unique story, I haven’t been so excited while reading a book in, I don’t know how long. Like a kid in a candy store, there was always something to keep me glued to the page. Relatable, flawed and real characters; unbelievably imaginative kills (one of which will scar me for the rest of my life, holy shit Nat Cassidy, how the fuck do you even think of that); found family and daddy issues like you’ve never seen before.
Beneath all the blood, gore and viscera, there is a beating heart and Nat Cassidy has crafted a beautiful story of reckoning with your parents that can be effective to any perspective you read from. As a father with two kids from a previous relationship and one from my current, this book was eye opening. Reading from the perspective of a character who didn’t really know her father really struck a chord with me. It made me step back and re-evaluate my relationships with my kids. It made me want to be the best father I can be, but also realize I’ll never be perfect and that’s okay. If you’ve recently lost a parent, or have a troubled relationship with a parent, you might take away something completely different, and that’s the true magic of this book.
Fear is another theme running through the veins of this story. This is just my interpretation, but I feel like it’s saying that fear isn’t bad, fear is vital to being human. It’s how you manage that fear. You can lose yourself to it and never try for fear of failing. You can let fear rule your life and hide from everything. Everyone deals with fear differently and there are no easy answers.
A fast-paced, blood soaked, nightmare fueled road trip full of as much heart as it is gore, When the Wolf Comes Home will have you reading on the edge of your seat from start to finish. It’s not all carnage and mayhem though. Nat Cassidy poses many moral quandaries and dilemmas throughout that will have you questioning the characters decisions while wondering what you would do in these characters’ shoes. What would you do to protect your child? That question is brought up several times through this novel and it’s a tough one to answer. One might say, “anything”, but do you know what “anything” really means? Read this novel and find out.
RELEASE DATE: APRIL 22. 2025
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