WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME by Nat Cassidy – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy
Published by Tor Nightfire on April 22 2025
Genres: Adult, Horror
Pages: 304
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: An emotionally charged story with plenty of surprises, When the Wolf Comes Home is Nat Cassidy’s best book yet.

“Love is a shape-shifting monster, she thinks, dizzy and horrified and exhausted and devastated. A werewolf with a bottomless stomach.”

The cover of When the Wolf Comes Home is a bit misleading. This isn’t really a werewolf story at all, although there is a character who appears to be a wolf at times, and the author explores the idea of “the Big Bad Wolf” of fairy tale lore and how it relates to fathers in particular. This is an emotional rollercoaster ride of a story: thrilling, insightful, emotional and brutal, and Nat Cassidy explores themes like fear, paternal relationships, and the power of imagination. The book is barely three hundred pages, and yet it has the emotional heft of a six-hundred page Stephen King tome. It’s masterfully paced and plotted, and Cassidy’s writing is simply brilliant. Nothing about When the Wolf Comes Home feels forced or contrived, which is sometimes the case in horror fiction, and I absolutely loved it.

My recap will be short because there’s an important element in the story that I consider to be a big spoiler, so I’ll be talking around it. Jess Bailey is a down-on-her-luck actress/stand up comedienne, living in Los Angeles and working the night shift at a shitty diner in North Hollywood. She’s recently found out that her estranged father has died, and although he left his family when she was only six and she hasn’t seen him since, her feelings about his death are complicated to say the least.

One night after work, she hears a strange whimpering sound coming from the bushes outside her apartment, and when she goes to investigate, she finds a little boy. Eventually Jess figures out that he’s running from his father, and he’s scared to death. Jess decides to keep him safe, but after a violent confrontation with an inexplicable wolf-like creature outside her apartment, Jess finds herself on the run with the boy, trying to stay one step ahead of the beast, who is clearly after the kid.

We also meet Special Agent Michael Santos who has been assigned the job of retrieving the boy, after a rash of weird events shakes up the city of Los Angeles. A “killer bear” is on the loose after mutilating a dozen people in an apartment complex, but Santos has inside information that involves the missing boy and his ex-military father. He also knows that Jess has fled with the boy, and now he’s hot on their trail.

As Jess and the boy (who doesn’t even know his own name, and yes, you’ll find out why when you read the book) try to stay one step ahead of the beast, even stranger things begin to happen. Jess is in the middle of a nightmare and it’s getting worse by the minute.

When the Wolf Comes Home has everything I love in a great story: a compelling plot with a couple of mind bending twists, stellar writing, relatable characters and deep emotional themes. Cassidy isn’t afraid to let loose with the horror aspects either, so do be aware that there’s quite a bit of violence and gore in the story. Jess is a fantastic character, a young woman who has tried to make it as an actor but has ultimately failed. On top of that, she has to deal with some emotional baggage brought on by the death of her father, who left his family when she was only six. Jess makes some interesting discoveries about herself as she and the kid are on the run, and I simply loved her character arc. I also loved Cookie, Jess’s mom and best friend, who we get to know briefly. Even the character of Santos is nicely developed. His chapters are a little on the weird side, and Cassidy keeps the reader in the dark as to why until the end of the story when everything is explained. I’m still recovering from that scene, to be honest.

Then there’s the main conflict between the boy and his father, which starts on a very predictable path but soon veers off into an unexpected twist. There are so many surprises in this book, the biggest one being why the father seems to be turning into a wolf-like creature. Parts of the story seem almost ridiculous at first, and I went through a bunch of WTF moments until things are finally explained (the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? plays an interesting role, for example!), but these scenes only made me turn the pages faster. And I have to mention one epic scene that takes place in Target, which was both hysterically funny and horrific at the same time. Thank you to the author for using one of my Happy Places™ in his story in a way I will never forget!

Cassidy channels both Dean Koontz’s Watchers and Stephen King (which I picked up on even before I read his Acknowledgments page), so fans of those authors cannot miss this book. The book ends in Shakespearean-like tragedy, full of emotion and heart-clenching sorrow—and one more surprise twist!—and I thought it was a perfect way to wrap up this exceptional horror story. When the Wolf Comes Home is one of my favorite books of the year so far and will be hard to beat.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.