Wake the Wild Cratures

Vanessa Bettencourt
May 6
3 min read

Book Info:

Wake the Wild Creatures by Nova Ren Suma

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Publishing Date: May 6, 2025

4.5

This was a complex read. Apart from the feminist and dystopian elements, it's an upper YA reader. It's the kind of book that it's best to experience (with time) and discuss even with more time and insight, but I want to point out that this is the first time I've read a book that describes well (emotionally) visiting a mother in prison. I think I never actually read such a scene in a book for young readers, and I truly appreciate it. Especially when the author says that the visitors are going to be inspected and will leave a part of them behind those doors (dignity, I suppose), but such a violation is worth it for a chance to see a loved one. That was a powerful set of pages because we are reminded that the person who is doing time is not the only one being punished. This scene is just one grain among other powerful scenes. It is a layered, complex, sometimes surreal story that is worth revisiting at different times in our lives.

Synopsis:

Already one of the most acclaimed novels of 2025, this extraordinary, timely, and must-read novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Nova Ren Suma explores young women’s freedom and rage as Talia plots her way back to her hidden mountaintop home after her mother’s arrest for murder.

I reached the clearing with the seven white pines and stopped to get my breath back. The mist filled my lungs, peppery and also sweet, and momentum pushed me forward. Giddy, I dropped into a bed of moss, soft and slick in spots, and rolled in it, howled for no reason, felt close to an understanding of some kind, as if an eye inside me was peeling open. It was the first full moon after I turned thirteen, and I knew that whatever happened in this next stretch of hours would change me forever after.I wasn’t wrong.

Three years ago, Talia lived happily in the ruins of the Neves, a once-grand hotel in the wilds of the Catskill Mountains, with her mother Pola and their community of like-minded women. Some came to the Neves to escape cruel men, others to hide from the law, but all found safety and connection in their haven high above civilization, cloaked by a mysterious mist that kept intruders away. But as their numbers grew, complications followed, and everything came crashing down the night electric lights pierced the forest. Uniformed men arrested Pola, calling her a murderer and a fugitive, and Talia was taken away.

Now sixteen, Talia has been forced to live with family she barely knows and fit into a world scarred by misogyny, capitalism, disconnection from nature . . . everything the women of the Neves stood against. She has one to return to the Neves. But as Talia awaits a signal from her mother, questions arise. Who betrayed her community, and what is she avoiding about her own role in its collapse? Is it truly magic that keeps the hotel so hidden? And what does it mean to embrace being her mother’s daughter? With the help of an unexpected ally, Talia must find her way to answers, face a mother who’s often kept her at arm’s length, and try to reach the refuge she lost—if the mist hasn’t swallowed her path home.

Fierce and lyrical, unsettling and tender, Wake the Wild Creatures marks the long-awaited return of one of the most distinctive voices in young adult literature.

Content Warning: arrest of a parent, misogyny

Book Links:

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218372399

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616206721/

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wake-the-wild-creatures-nova-ren-suma/1146241886

IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/wake-the-wild-creatures/2660c8e7b38b8c24

About the Author:

Nova Ren Suma is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling and #1 Indie Next Pick The Walls Around Us as well as A Room Away from the Wolves, both finalists for an Edgar Award, among other acclaimed novels. She was co-editor of the story & craft anthology FORESHADOW: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading & Writing YA, and her own short stories appear in various anthologies. She is a MacDowell fellow, a Yaddo fellow, and has taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She grew up in the Hudson Valley and now lives in Philadelphia. Her new novel Wake the Wild Creatures is forthcoming from Little, Brown in May 2025.