Book Review: When the Wolf Comes Home

Fear.

It’s an emotional response every living thing generates when put into a compromising situation. While it’s a commonly associated emotion, the products of our fear are often unique.  People may share similar fears, but we are all defined by our fears in unique ways.  Whether it’s spiders, heights, clowns, water or simple darkness, there’s always an element of our lives we cannot help but be inexplicably afraid of. Fear can be compromising in a lot of ways because it manifests itself deep within our psyche and can be truly immobilizing if we allow it to be. Whether you’re a young child or an old adult, fears often never truly leave us, we instead learn to cope with them in some way, shape or form. What if however, our fears were more than just cognitive constructs of our brain? What if the very things we feared deep within our subconscious became true? That concept is the terrifying bedrock for which Nat Cassidy’s latest horror novel lays it’s foundation upon.

Titled When the Wolf Comes Home, this horror story tackles the very idea of our fears coming to life with a mix of modern day and fairy tale elements.  The story follows central character Jess Bailey, a woman dealing with being in her early 30’s with an acting career which never truly got off the ground.  Working late shifts at a 24-hour diner, it’s fair to say Jess doesn’t think her life could get any more depressing. All it takes is one prick of a dirty needle in the diner’s foul bathrooms to put Jess on a collision course with an arguably far worse set of events to follow.  Coming to contact with a young boy on the run from his angry father, Jess soon comes to face a whole world of horrors when she discovers literal monsters trailing behind the boy wherever he goes.  With no choice but to go on the run, Jess and the boy navigate one bad situation after the other as they try to figure out what on earth is going on while trying to outrun the boy’s father and the FBI as things get progressively worse.

There’s a great balance of themes within the confines of this narrative.  While horror is the general genre this book claims to produce, that’s not to say there isn’t a lot of other concepts at play here.  The dynamic Jess and the young boy shares is the core crux of the narrative and Nat Cassidy does a superb job in fleshing it out throughout the course of the book.  Jess and the young boy’s relationship goes through a lot of tumultuous shifts and turns as the narrative plays out but it’s easy to see how it frames the entire story so effectively.  The horror element is also nicely incorporated throughout the course of the story.  I find too many horror stories don’t give you enough of a reason to care about the characters being killed off, in this books case the characters are front and center and Nat Cassidy does a phenomenal job fleshing them out to an extent that you feel a genuine emotional response when they do begin to drop off one by one. It helps that the monsters that chase Jess and the young boy are smartly realized in relation to the ongoing narrative. Their visualization and motivations feel relevant and not just one-sided. A lot of the book’s narrative works primarily because of how well structured the themes and events are.

The book is excellently paced as well when you consider its major events play out within a modest 290-page range.  I found Nat Cassidy gave a lot of the scenes just the right sense of timing to let them flesh out the character dynamics, incorporate the horror and tension and move on appropriately. Too many horror stories either rush you from section to section without any sense of development for the characters or they meander too long making the audience bored and unattached to the events of the plot.  Nat has a great understanding of pacing with regards to this book.  Tonally the book is excellently presented too.  I love how he’s able to strike a balance between the innocent and heartfelt moments, especially from the perspective of the young boy, while also knowing how to really raise the tension with how descriptive he can be on the horror.  Again, it balances out so well because you will constantly get into a false sense of comfort with this story, only for it to rip the rug out from under you and traumatize you all over again.

When the Wolf Comes Home is one of the better horror books I’ve read as of late.  I compare it to a modern-day fairy tale from the Grimm series.  It’s approach to very human elements grounds the story considerably while also allowing it to take those elements into imaginative and often scary places which doesn’t detract from the quality it presents but actually adds to it.  Many consider Nat Cassidy a modern-day Stephen King and while I’ve not read enough of either of their work to agree with that distinction, I can at least attest that Nat Cassidy is an excellent writer on so many levels and I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.