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**I received an ARC for an honest review**
Description
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, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first Jess thinks she understands what they’re up against, but she’s about to learn there’s more to these surreal and grisly events than she could’ve ever imagined.
And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.
Summary
I was delighted to receive an ARC of When the Wolf Comes Home by US author Nat Cassidy.
Review
When the Wolf Comes Home is a strong supernatural thriller but with emotional depth and compassion. Cassidy jumps straight into the plot with a savage, gore-filled beginning which is also setting the pace, introducing truly complex and compelling characters and an unrelenting pace for the book. The characters are emotionally complex – the truth of post-traumatic stress disorders and other trauma-based mindsets – are open, frank and compound the stark horror of this work. It is less the monsters who are monstrous forms than the humans who are monstrous which Cassidy highlights beautifully in a compelling and visceral work. The graphic splatterpunk horror sciences are vivid, shocking and graphic but serve the plot and character development and combining ‘in your face horror’ with a thriller-style pace to keep the fear pumping as the reader purses an escape with the characters.
Cassidy accomplishes a work that is multi-layered and focused on the theme of fear. The exploration of how far fear shapes our reality and how we re-shape that again into generational and emotional inheritance of fear. When the Wolf Comes Home asks readers whether we choose to be transformed by fear or destroyed and consumed by it.
Conclusion
When the Wolf Comes Home is a stark modern horror thriller. A great read for those who enjoy thriller horrors, unravelling government secrets and personal depth. The prose is fast, the work imaginative, graphic but still deeply human. This is a story about surviving trauma, living and controlling fear and how darkness can be within and without. An absolute must-read. Highly recommended!
** This is my personal opinion and does not reflect any judging decisions **
Leanbh Pearson 