About This Book
In Cherry, Nebraska — population 312, wedged between nowhere and nothing — werewolves have mortgages, raise kids, and make it to town council meetings. Mike Bockoven's Pack treats lycanthropy not as a curse but as inheritance, folding the supernatural into the rhythms of small-town life with disarming normalcy. When cracks appear in that careful balance — a first transformation gone sideways, secrets a spouse has kept too long, a new sheriff asking the wrong questions — the tension builds from the inside out. The horror here isn't the monster; it's how quickly the life you've quietly built can unravel.
Bockoven writes with the dry, grounded voice of someone who actually knows these people, giving Cherry a texture that feels lived-in rather than invented. The novel earns its scares by making you care about the community first — the humor is real, the domesticity is real, and that makes the darkness land harder when it arrives. It's the kind of horror that works because the stakes are domestic and specific, not cosmic and abstract. Readers who like their genre fiction with genuine character work will find Pack rewarding in ways the premise alone doesn't quite suggest.
