Reviews - When the Wolf Comes Home

1.89k reviews for:

When the Wolf Comes Home

Nat Cassidy

4.33 AVERAGE

mamasquare's review against another edition

3.5

dark emotional funny tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

This one just did not hit for me. I loved Mary and maybe I did myself a disservice not reading Nestlings before this. TBH this book lost me when

characters from Roger Rabbit became real and started attacking people

and I couldn't ever quite get past that. It just took me out of it and kinda made me want to put it down, but it was engaging enough that I kept going.
I found several things in it predictable

like how Jess telling Kiddo "you're just like me" was absolutely going to come back and bite her in the ass. I was just waiting for that shoe to, very predictably, drop. So none of the "revelations" that came about at the end were any surprise to me.

It's hard when you have supernatural powers in a book and establishing and following "rules" for them and I don't feel like this book is successful on that front. The powers felt like they were only ever as effective and/or as strong as the story needed them to be at the time. I did think some of how they are effected through a child's mind, especially one who is so cut off from the outside world, was done well. But then at the end

where Jess is basically surrounded by Star Wars "force" ghosts being mean to her didn't really make sense. Jess is scared and upset in that moment and I get it, but it didn't work for me.

Kiddo is pretty well-realized and authentic throughout,

but then suddenly at the end he's not? He's talking like an adult and accusing Jess of wanting him dead? I guess that's supposed to be the influence of Jess' mind and her fear, but this is the problem when you give characters god powers that are not well-established or have any real restrictions on them. Like the Roger Rabbit characters can be real and go on a real rampage, but then just disappear b/c there's a "half life" on them, but then you can disappear a whole person and their entire existence through time and it's permanent? Why is that??

It is engaging enough and moves quickly. I do like how Nat Cassidy writes. I was often annoyed with the characters, but I didn't hate them and their dumb choices at least kind of made sense. I mean, when fear is the predominant motivator like it is in this book, you can't expect a lot of rational thinking and decision making. I hated knowing that pretty much everyone was just going to die. Like don't bother having any feelings about anyone b/c they're going to be gone in two pages, making any attempts at characterization feel rushed and pointless. The gore is there, but it never feels gratuitous. But maybe I'm just desensitized.