What attracted me first to Kritika Kapoor’s novel Wolfish was its cover. Rendered in psychedelic colours—purple, pink, and yellow—the cover is dominated by the snarling face of a wolf, its jaws open, teeth and eyes gleaming. The next figure that catches your eye is that of a young woman running from the beast’s open jaws, desperation writ on her face. Look at it long enough, and you will end up noticing the other minor details: palm trees, water, and sand. With a cover like this, along with a blurb from which screamed the headline “She wrote romances about monsters, now one is hunting her”—and a release date appropriately around the end of October—I knew I had to read it, for horror and mystery set in a contemporary Indian setting are something I always look forward to. (I had also read Kapoor’s previous novel, Batshit [2023], which had showed promise and piqued my interest in her second outing.)

Wolfish is the story of Tara Tandon, a writer of werewolf fantasy romance. As the novel opens, her writing career is in the doldrums and Tara is at the centre of a controversy regarding her latest novel. We meet her through her search history and tweets about her before she actually makes an appearance. The tweets call her writing trash, abusive, toxic cis het, and triggering, among other things. On the verge of being cancelled, Tara’s life seems to have taken a complete nosedive. The first time we meet Tara herself, she is standing outside a bar at 11 p.m., breaking up with Sameer. She has lost weight and is drinking too much, making her best friend, Ahana, worried about her well-being. A few pages later, she meets her agent, Vik, who isn’t satisfied with her professional trajectory, either, and wants Tara to dial down the “toxicity a notch.” Tara’s retort that her writings are the “last bastion of female fantasy” is countered by Vik calling them smut and telling her that she has a month to write something new. It is at this make-or-break point, when she seems to be hanging by a thread, that Tara comes across news of gruesome deaths of young women in Goa, apparently at the claws of some strange creature. The creature is being compared online to the werewolf in Tara’s novels, and this catches her attention. Unable to stop herself, and on the lookout for something new that can satisfy her publishers, she books a ticket to Goa.

Once there, she meets a suspended cop named Sunny who becomes her reluctant on-and-off partner in trying to unfold the mystery behind these killings. In her bid to solve the puzzle of these deaths, Tara gets embroiled with Ana, the leader of “Bliss,” a yoga retreat slash cult, and also with the sexy, rugged, and mysterious Noel, who seems to hold a strong attraction for her from the moment they first set eyes on each other. Tara’s already strange relationship with the beast, both in her head and in reality, also becomes stranger with the passage of time. As the novel progresses, and Tara delves deeper into the mystery surrounding Bliss alongside the deaths of the various women connected with it, the reader also gets a glimpse into the deep-seated fears, phobias, and traumas that Tara is carrying. Kapoor makes it clear to the reader that Tara’s spree of self-destructive behaviour, and her inability to get out of situations that are evidently dangerous, has something to do with abuse she suffered in the past. The message that Tara won’t be able to change her life’s trajectory unless she faces those head-on is also clearly conveyed.

In other words, the final solution to the mystery of these deaths—along with that of the strange creature’s increasingly frequent visits to Tara and her strange dreams—lies deep in the human psyche. As such, Wolfish presents as a novel in which the external monsters become an extension of the monsters we carry within. The carnage that happens on the outside is a result of the horrifying actions of demented, broken human beings who have divorced themselves from truth and created a warped reality of their own.

Wolfish is a plot-heavy novel which tries to pack a lot within its thin frame. The result is that it leaves the readers dissatisfied with some of its aspects. The book is carried entirely on the shoulders of Tara’s character. The other characters come and go and none of them are fleshed out enough to catch the reader’s interest. They often feel like props to move the plot forwards, easily disposed of or forgotten once their job is done: There is little to no character development for most of these characters, only revelations. Then there are the clichés of which Wolfish makes such liberal use, be it a yoga retreat for foreign women in Goa which is actually a front for something more, or the hot dude with whom the protagonist shares a crackling chemistry from day one, or the suspended cop who helps Tara. All these feel like stereotypical characters and situations that lead exactly where they are expected to, making the story feel flat and predictable in places.

Then there’s the complete absence of police work in the novel. It’s hard to believe that, despite all that Tara undergoes in the book’s plot, and despite more deaths happening while Tara is in Goa, the police simply make no appearance, even if just to question the suspects and witnesses. Excepting the presence of Sunny—with his advice that Tara not go to the police unless she is completely sure of what she saw—and a bare mention in the newspaper of the force’s findings after a death, the police are conspicuously absent from a story which is based on a string of crimes being committed on foreigners in a place which thrives on tourism. These sort of plot-related decisions only serve to raise constant questions in the reader’s mind, making it difficult for them to suspend their disbelief and lose themselves in Tara’s world.

In fairness, Wolfish makes use of the tropes of the genre within which Tara writes. While this can be a clever meta technique, however, it also severely limits the scope and writing style of Wolfish: The novel is made to conform to the genre’s specific requirements only. As a result, the bulk of the book is made up of scenes depicting the heat between Noel and Tara or descriptions of sexually charged scenarios. Many of Tara’s werewolf dreams and fantasies also carry a strong sexual element. What this means for the reader is a book which reads less like the horror/mystery novel proclaimed by its blurb and more like a werewolf romance. The book doesn’t deliver much on the promise of thrill or terror, even in the scenes where the beast makes an appearance. At one point in the novel, Tara’s agent Vik says, “[I]t’s all meaningless hotch-potch at this point.” With so many strands (romance, fantasy, trauma, feminism, mystery, horror, cult) running through this slim book, there were times when I felt the same.

The ending does salvage the book to some extent, though. There is a twist towards the climax which elevates the book, as the horrific reality behind the strange murders comes to the surface. The idea that humans have the power to unleash much more darkness in this world than any mythical being is reinforced effectively. But the message is not all bleak. There’s hope in the epilogue—hope that, if we fight our inner demons and face our traumas, we can change our lives and rise above the inner forces that lead us onto the path of destruction. But would I recommend Wolfish? Not if you are looking for a horror novel. While the book might be described as “Perfect for fans of Stephen King and The Haunting of Hill House” on its Amazon page, it doesn’t carry the kind of menacing terror that these books and writers are known for. It might work for a romantasy reader, but as a horror novel/supernatural thriller, Wolfish leaves something to be desired.