When The Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy review

Doing innovative and fresh things with the werewolf sub-genre seems to be quite the conundrum right now in the horror genre.

Literary wise I can only point to Stephen Graham Jones’ Mongrels and Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella as sterling examples of incorporating different ideas and fresh takes; less said of Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man the better.

So we come to Nat Cassidy’s When The Wolf Comes Home, where budding actress Jess finds herself on the run for her life with a young boy, whose father may or may not howl at the moon…

Cassidy clearly knows the genre well, and adds in some tropes to establishing the lore of When The Wolf Comes Home, but then veers off into some different directions that have some success and sometimes feel a bit too removed.

When it comes to the gritty, under the fingernails themes of the novel, this is where Cassidy really shines, especially in the writing of our protagonist Jess.

Things do become a bit X-Men as we go on, and this can be where this could lose some readers. Ironically, these are the scenes that you would consider more horror-esque but with fantastical elements.

You can’t deny that Cassidy is throwing plenty of ideas at the wall, and for the most part they largely stick.

I have to say though, regardless of how we got there, the finale of When The Wolf Comes Home is absolutely stellar writing, as we unpick part of what has come before and are left with a conclusion that will sit with many readers; especially those with complicated relationships with a parent past or present.

A solid enough recommendation, with some caveats, When The Wolf Comes Home, shows that Cassidy could be one to watch in the horror literary world.

When The Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy is released on various formats on 22 April 2025 by Titan Books.