When the Wolf Comes Home – Nat Cassidy

When Stephen King raves about a book it basically becomes required reading. You won’t be disappointed!

Thank you Tor Nightfire, again, for the gifted copy

WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME – Nat Cassidy (Released April 22nd, 2025)

You can see my thoughts on MARY (here) and NESTLINGS (here)

Book 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.

My Thoughts: 5/5 stars

It’s so rare that I see some variation of Jessica for a main character in a book, and I am very happy to report that I didn’t spend the entire book being mad at her decisions. So that’s a big win! Jessa, or Jess, is a struggling actress and is on her way home from a bad night at her job at the diner. How could things get more complicated in her life, you ask? Well, she finds a 5 year old boy hiding in the bushes outside of her apartment. His violent father is coming after him, so she decides to take him under her wing and go on the run with him.

This is no ordinary boy, and this is no ordinary werewolf novel. This book is so much more than anything you’re expecting. The horror is all consuming. This isn’t just a bloody werewolf book, or a creepy kid book, or a road trip thriller of two people on the run. Nope. This is horrifying on different levels and in different ways. We have psychological horror, supernatural horror, parts of brutal gore and mental horror, grief, and a layer of emotion that can hit like a gutt punch.

Cassidy gives us a way to look at fear and how it can shape us into who we are and how we perceive things – events, relationships, friendships, everything. How it manifests in our lives, how we cope with it, and eventually face it.

I loved Jess. She isn’t without her flaws, but she does her best to help the boy and take care of him. There were parts with some humor and levity to break up the darkness. Cassidy knows how to create memorable characters, and I won’t forget about anyone in this for a while!

You try not to set expectations too high, but when Stephen King gives a book praise, it’s hard to keep things in check. When the Wolf Comes Home is also highly deserving of all the hype it’s been getting (and rightfully should be)! I loved both Mary and Nestlings, but I think this is my favorite of the three!