NIK VS. WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME

Nik bravely faces the challenge of explaining what happens in a book where knowing what happens ahead of time would spoil the surprise. But is it a book about a werewolf? You’re about to find out why Nik thinks that’s a stupid question.

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.

Title: When the Wolf Comes Home

Author: Nat Cassidy

Genre: Horror

Pages: 304

Format: Paperback/eBook/Audiobook

You’ll be forgiven if you go into this book believing it to be one of the surprisingly rare contributions to the Werewolf subcategory of Creature Horror. That is, you would have been if you hadn’t just read the previous sentence, where I not-so-subtly hint at this not being the case. To be less subtle: THIS IS NOT A WEREWOLF NOVEL! I wanted to get that out of the way before there was any chance of anyone else posting a review of the book expressing discontent that it was not—as they erroneously believed—a werewolf story. There aren’t many of them, but those reviews do exist.

So, what is it about?

That’s a trickier question to answer. First and foremost, I’d say it’s about fear, and the way fear finds a way to override our rational minds, even when we know it’s happening—even when we know nothing good can come of it. As you’ll learn—assuming you read this book—there’s a whole lot to be afraid of in the world around us, especially if you’re a sheltered (and already scared) five-year-old boy.

It’s certainly about more than fear, though. It’s very much a story about love, and the way love and fear can coalesce into something destructive and far more harmful than hate could ever be. It’s hard to accept—or even understand—but Cassidy tackles something that feels too big for this (or any) book, but he tackles it well and with surprising grace. I suspect most readers will walk away with a clearer perspective on how maybe (sometimes) abuse and abandonment are less the product of hate, and more the result of the ways love and fear come together in wholly inappropriate forms.

It’s also about family, and the myriad ways our families can surprise us, disappoint us, and leave us with questions for which we’ll never discover suitable answers.

It’s about creativity and the limitless potential of—especially a child’s—imagination, but also the limitations of that creativity when not informed by experience. As you’ll learn by the end, maybe—at least in extreme, and thankfully fictional, cases—it’s better when there isn’t experience to reinforce it.

It’s about grief, too. There’s plenty of that to go around as the story races off to a conclusion that’s sure to make you feel something. Maybe you’ll be angry. Perhaps you’ll feel a little bit heartbroken. It could be that you’ll feel a sense of resigned satisfaction, knowing that there was no other way it could have ended.

As this fast-paced, almost dizzying story drags us along, from one disaster to another, we might be tempted to ask Cassidy to give us a break and a moment to catch our breath, but the author is not inclined to show that sort of mercy. Jess and the little boy she’s struggling to save, and desperately trying to understand are hopelessly out of their depths, and we get to feel a little fragment of that as readers. Perhaps, much like everyone else who gets involved in their journey, we’re destined to suffer—at least in some small way.

I suppose you’re still wondering what it’s about. I’m afraid I can’t tell you more without spoiling some of the best aspects of this book. I think you’ll understand, if you take my advice…which is to read it for yourself.

If I were inclined to describe the experience of reading this book in a reductive sense, I’d describe it as being one part Stephen King’s Firestarter and four parts “It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby—famously adapted by Richard Matheson into a screenplay directed by Joe Dante for Twilight Zone: The Movie, way back in 1983. There are bits and pieces of other stories and novels that I could toss into the mix, but if you anticipate an almost perfect amalgam of those two elements, you’ll have roughly what Nat Cassidy has prepared for us. His actual influences are far more widespread and diverse, as you’ll learn from his in-depth Afterword.

Nikolas P. Robinson is an avid consumer of books, movies, and television, especially where horror, science fiction, and fantasy are concerned. When he isn’t consuming media, he’s creating it as an author, photographer, videographer, and news producer in Portland, Oregon.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.