Such Sharp Teeth

Rory Morris has no desire to move back to her hometown, a place stitched through with bad memories — but her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant, alone, and needs her, so Rory comes home. One night, driving back from a bar where she has run into Ian, an old almost-flame, she hits a large animal with her car. When she gets out to check, something attacks her.

Rory survives, but she does not come away unchanged. She is suddenly, unnervingly strong; silver makes her skin crawl; and the full moon pulls at her in ways she can't explain or control. As she realises what she is becoming, she has to decide whether the wildness rising inside her makes her a danger to the people she loves — or whether it might, finally, be a kind of freedom.

Rachel Harrison's darkly comic werewolf novel uses its horror premise as a way into trauma, rage, and the difficulty of letting yourself want things. Such Sharp Teeth is by turns funny, bloody, and tender, a monster story that doubles as a love story and a portrait of a woman learning to stop making herself small.