Wake the Wild Creatures

A new novel by Nova Ren Suma

Now available in hardcover & ebook from Little, Brown
Audiobook now available from Hachette Audio, narrated by Helen Laser

Order the hardcover | Order the ebook | Order the audiobook

About the book:

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 goal: 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. 

Praise:

“A ferocious expression of girlhood, of its seething potential, its most wild and secret places, from one of our greatest and most inimitably talented authors writing today. This is an urgent, important, and timely outing that must not be missed and Nova Ren Suma’s particular brand of magic has earned a place alongside—and is perfect for fans of—the works of Shirley Jackson, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kelly Link.” 
—Courtney Summers, New York Times bestselling author of Sadie and The Project

“Mesmerizing and fierce, vivid and dreamlike, Wake the Wild Creatures is Nova Ren Suma’s finest novel yet. I was enraptured from the first page to the last. Rarely has a novel made me think so deeply and so much about the confines of our lives and the expansive possibilities that might await us should we choose to trust our intuition and our own power to decide.” 
—Nina LaCour, bestselling author of Watch Over Me and We Are Okay

“A luminous, hard-eyed stare of a book, Wake the Wild Creatures kicks open the cage girls are born into, and casts a powerful spell of rage and hope from which I emerged blinking and reluctant, wrapped in wistful magic, and longing for the forest. Nova Ren Suma can write.” 
—Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Strange the Dreamer and Daughter of Smoke and Bone

“Timely and atmospheric, Wake the Wild Creatures explores the meaning of community and the places we call home. Nova Ren Suma is a master storyteller, and one of my favorite novelists. This book is one long, lyrical poem. A must-read for 2025.”
—Shea Ernshaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep and A History of Wild Places

“Nova Ren Suma has done it again: Wake the Wild Creatures is a visceral, stunningly written fever dream of a story. It wrapped itself around my throat and heart, and had me desperate for Talia to find her way home. This book is feral and magnificent and will leave you with scars.”
—Emily X.R. Pan, New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After and An Arrow to the Moon

“With Wake the Wild Creatures, Nova Ren Suma’s singular talent is once again on full display. Talia, Pola, and Lake practically catch fire on the page. This is an inspiring, unsettling, and absolutely essential book about girls, the agents of their confinement—both physical and emotional—and their means of escape. Nova’s a genius, and I loved this book.”
—Samantha Mabry, author of Tigers, Not Daughters and Clever Creatures of the Night

“Written in prose that is both beautifully fragile and bared-teeth fierce, Wake the Wild Creatures is a must read. Nova Ren Suma further cements herself as one of young adult’s most singular voices.”
—Rory Power, New York Times bestselling author of Kill Creatures and Wilder Girls

“In Wake the Wild Creatures, Nova Ren Suma gives us a vivid, fearless heroine with a lightning crack of a voice. This is a story unafraid to use its sharp teeth, written by one of the best in the field.”
—Kat Howard, Alex Award–winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians

“In Wake the Wild Creatures, Nova Ren Suma has created a secret and wondrous sanctuary for every girl who ever wished she could run away. A literary balm for these troubling times, this beautiful novel might make you want to wander the woods in search of the seven pine trees, and the magic and safety of the Neves.”
—Ann Dávila Cardinal, award-winning author of You’ve Awoken Her and Breakup from Hell

“Nova Ren Suma’s Wake the Wild Creatures is raw, emotional, half-feral…but with delicate, stunning prose that tames the raging beast. A perfect balance.”
—April Genevieve Tucholke, New York Times bestselling author of Wink Poppy Midnight and The Boneless Mercies

Reviews:

★ “A teen recovered from an off-grid Catskills commune of female fugitives struggles to adapt to society in this evocative and empowering novel . . . Suma’s fiercely feminist offering unfolds from Talia’s somewhat alien-feeling perspective, her first-person narrative snaking along a nonlinear timeline to add context and resonance. Intersectionally diverse, insightfully rendered characters and their complex, continuously evolving relationships ground the tale, while a surreal setting and sensate prose impart an otherworldly air.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Suma’s prose is spare, but she shapes it into sentences that cut like diamond shards . . . Wake the Wild Creatures vibrates with rage but also reveals a scorching tenderness as it muses on the power and problems of community. What do we owe to one another? How do we care for our own? Pola is a terrible mother, but it’s impossible to hate her, especially when we come to understand the injustice she was fleeing. The magical elements start off subtle and dreamlike, but Suma’s narrative builds to an ending that made me tear up, in which the story seems to surrender entirely to fantasy.”
—The Washington Post

“This psychological mystery with hints of a feminist utopia taps into and explores contemporary live-wire issues: gender warfare, abuse, power, vigilantism, and disillusionment with society. Readers will luxuriate [in] the lush atmosphere and breathtaking setting of a modern fairy tale; the alluring pipe dream of this feminist community; and catharsis in the cast of antihero(ine)s’ modes of revenge and self-determination.”
—The Horn Book

“Told in alternating timelines, the narrative weaves together Talia’s childhood memories and her present-day struggles. Talia reflects on the systemic inhumanity women face, uncovering the events that drove her mother to flee society. These themes echo in the experiences of her cousin Lake, whose story parallels Talia’s mother’s. The prose is poetic and haunting. Feminist and captivating.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Acclaimed author Suma imagines a utopia, the Neves, where women and children live without fearing the presence of men. The novel puts readers in the shoes of Talia, her mother, and the women in the Neves who are criminalized for fending off male abusers. Readers will be wholly invested in the struggling mother-daughter relationship as Talia continuously aims to please her seemingly apathetic mother. A compelling story about survival.”
—Booklist

Selected press links:

Excerpts

  • Exclusive excerpt of the opening chapter of Wake the Wild Creatures on People.com: “At first it was beautiful. A hunter’s moon hovered in the sky, tremendous and pulsing with light, making the air glow warm all around me. I was spending the night out on my own, near the perimeter marked with subtle symbols and stones, wandering for the joy of it, then running because I could. I lost hold of time passing, or maybe the hours themselves held still. Tree bodies everywhere. Knotted oak shoulders and the rough, ridged skin of red spruce and tall firs. The forest I’d known all my life was awake, and so was I: two quick legs whipping through the bright-gold dark, more animal than girl.” [KEEP READING]

  • Exclusive excerpt from Wake the Wild Creatures on Cosmopolitan.com: “Now no one is touching me. No one’s even near, because we’re on the side of the road, the truck angled across the lane, facing away. I’m at a distance, where the thickening of trees begins, while my cousin Lake is extending her arms at me to stay back.” [KEEP READING]

Essays

  • “Reimagining Disappeared Worlds: Nova Ren Suma on the Allure of Writing Lost Places” | Literary Hub

Interviews & Podcasts

Lists & Features

[Wake the Wild Creatures BOOK CLUB GUIDE]

  1. Wake the Wild Creatures moves backwards and forwards in time, revealing Talia’s story in a nonlinear narrative. How does this structure contribute to your reading experience? How does Talia change in the years between her story’s past and present? What do you think separates childhood from adulthood?
  2. Talia describes memory as “a wobbly thing” (p. 94). How do different characters’ memories compare to their realities? What makes some events lodge more clearly in our memories?
  3. How does Pola and Talia’s mother-daughter relationship compare to other mother-daughter pairs in the book? What values does Pola try to instill in Talia? What legacy does Pola leave for Talia? How do the decisions of adults affect children?
  4. How does gender affect the way the Neves functions as a society? Do you think a society like the Neves would be possible to sustain? Why?
  5. What role do nature and the wild play in Talia’s story? How does life in the wild compare with the structure and laws of the world outside the Neves?
  6. How does Talia describe the world around her? How do her descriptions make you think about our world differently? What parts of Talia’s narration do you think are literal versus figurative?
  7. Decisions in the Neves are made by consensus. What do you think that looks like in practice? What does it mean to live communally? How would collective decision-making impact the power dynamics of a group?
  8. Talia overhears one of the women of the Neves say, “There’s a reason each of us left. There’s a reason we can’t go back, and we need to heal from that” (p. 116). How do characters heal from trauma? How do other characters support that healing? What does it mean to feel safe? To create a safe space?
  9. Talia states, “Once a myth is formed, it takes over the truth” (p. 203). What does it mean to believe in something or someone? What is the difference between seeing and believing? Between reality and perception?
  10. In the end, Talia remarks, “The community may be dismantled, but I have everything I learned from them” (p. 363). Why is shared knowledge so important? How can you rebuild what has been lost or destroyed?

Wake the Wild Creatures was acquired and edited by Algonquin Young Readers, and was published by Little, Brown.