This Woman's Lists Had Lists!

TITLE: Femme Feral

AUTHOR: Sam Beckbessinger

PUBLISHER: Penguin Books

PUBLISHING DATE: April 09, 2026

PAGES: 384   

SOURCE: ARC

FROM GOODREADS: The head of a company she started from the ground-up, the worried mother of a troublingly secretive daughter, and the wife of an easy-going man who always has her picking up the slack—Ellie is already juggling too much. So, it's an inconvenient time to find herself beset by strange physical changes: hair sprouting in new places, running hot, trouble sleeping, losing time, finding bloodstains in all her clothing. And underneath it all, a boiling rage that threatens to disrupt the life she's worked so hard to build. 

Her doctor diagnoses perimenopause. But it's another twenty-eight-day cycle that's taking hold, one that involves fur, teeth, and a not-insignificant amount of howling at the moon—and that gifts Ellie incredible strength and speed. Her new power's thrilling, as is releasing the anger she’s suppressed for years—especially as it turns out that there are some problems that can be solved with violence: The terrible new hire who is sabotaging her careful plans. The creep who's stalking her daughter. Only, the beast within isn't easy to control, and its bloody trail is getting harder to hide. With an obsessive hunter on her trail and a growing fear of what she's becoming, Ellie must find a way to yoke her fury before she tears through the people she loves. 

A deeply gratifying, highly addictive and provocative read, Femme Feral is an exhilarating expression of feminine rage, with a warning: If you swallow your anger, it's sure to come back with a bite.

MY THOUGHTS: I would like to see a finished copy of this book because I ran into problems with the formatting of my digital arc which I feel greatly impacted my enjoyment and it was so severe it even impacted my overall rating which rarely happens.  My copy read as one long 384 chapter.  And there are some multiple POVs in some areas of the book that I often didn't pick up on until I was a paragraph or two in which made for some very disjointed reading (and later a game at the end where I would see how quickly I could tell who was narrating).

Ellie is contently married, caring for a daughter with a history of anorexia and a father--in-law who has moved in due to medical issues, including dementia.  She also has a very prominent job in the tech industry for a business that runs and launches updates to a very popular wellness/meditation app.  Ellie is trying to juggle everything and does so by carefully orchestrated lists.  All of Ellie's lists made me overwhelmed so I can only imagine how her life felt.

Ellie gets passed over for a promotion about the same time she starts losing time and starts experiencing some health concerns.  She isn't sleeping well, is having hot flashes, is more quick-tempered than usual, and is experiencing massive hair growth.  Her doctor snubs it all off as perimenopause, but Ellie starts to think it's something more - especially when she awakens to find her neighbors fluffy dog clogging her downstairs bathroom drain.

Around town, pets are coming up missing.  An elderly lady recently lost her cat and given she had very little else to live for, she starts investigating what is happening in the neighborhood.  The local cops think she has lost her mind, and her Facebook group is questioning her mental capacities.  However, she is determined to unearth the culprit. I actually enjoyed reading from this POV more than Ellie because despite her problems, which I get, she was rather unlikeable.  

Overall, I just found this book middle of the line. While referencing a few things in writing this review, I guess the author has admitted to using ChatGPT to write a lot of it.  I don't use that a lot but it sure might explain some of the disjointedness.  If you pick this one up, just know there are actually werewolves but also a lot of descriptive animal deaths.  

MY RATING: 3 PAWS