Review by Elita Menezes
Simon & Schuster, 2024
416 pages, hardcover, $24,99 CAN, 9781665903523
Young Adult, ages 14+
Mystery, Thriller
I was going to do what Mom wanted. I was going to protect my little brother, which would also protect the entire family. Because if Dom went down for this and it got out to the public, we would all go down for it.
And I was not going to be the one who let the Behres die not even a year after Mom did.
If you found your sibling — who already has a murder charge on file — standing over another dead body and insisting they didn’t hurt anyone, what would you believe? The sound of their pleading? Or the blood on their hands?
This exact scene sets off Tender Beasts, a mystery that tackles the interplay of appearances and reality, set through a string of murders, inherited traditions, and a family that slowly unravels as the bodies pile up. The book takes place in Toronto and follows the Behre family who seemingly built their fortune through hard work in the face of racial prejudice and poverty.
The protagonist, Sunny, is as her name implies — an amicable person who stays optimistic, even through her mother’s death and her brother’s arrest. However, through her first-person account, readers find that her positive exterior doesn’t match her inner thoughts. She’s much colder than she lets on, creating a contrast between how she acts, who she is, and which version matters more to her. Sunny’s voice is one of the most compelling pieces of this story; she’s an active, flawed character who is loyal to her beliefs and feels a sense of superiority to those around her, but knows she can’t show it for the sake of her image.
Slowly, Sunny finds a new understanding of her family; most notably, of her younger brother, Dom, who has always been an outcast for no visible reason. He is blamed for the murders that arise, and Sunny tasks herself with helping him after she receives a note from her mother that reads “Take care of Dom.” Throughout the ordeal with the police, the public, and the family, the book shows how privilege, media, racism, and distrust interact to control both parts of a story — the spun narrative and the harrowing truth. As more secrets come to light, things become even more morally complex and layered. The descriptions of violence and terror (clarified in the book’s content warnings) are intense and don’t hold back, creating a suspenseful, disturbing atmosphere in a truly enthralling way.
Family is the biggest focus of this book in terms of relationships. It’s interjected with journal entries from when Sunny’s mother was a teenager, detailing how their empire came to be. I didn’t initially find these entries as compelling as the main plot until the end, when the stories finally intersected and showed that their family had been broken from the beginning. Sambury has deft control of the mystery she builds — the details stay scattered until she allows them to come together. Even though I tried to solve the book as I read, I was never sure until the hair-raising climax.
Tender Beasts is a well-crafted book, complete with hidden twists that keep the story dynamic. With the deep history of the Behre family and the constant complications in the characters’ lives, it’s a story that will keep you reading until the mystery is clawed open.
Elita Menezes is an arts student at UBC. She plans to major in creative writing and loves experiencing stories in any way she can. Some of her favourite pastimes include laughing at bad movies with her friends and (thinking about) writing.
YOUNG ADULTING 