A man discovers an abandoned infant in the woods. He becomes obsessed with the child and raises her with his wife in his basement. Years later, a catastrophic incident occurs and the couple's adult son takes the girl to Stockholm and enters her to perform in a performance show. From there, the girl meets a fellow outcast named Teresa on the internet. Together, the two become close friends but their pairing proves to be deadly.
The novel provides examples of:
- Chastity Couple: When they're little, Teresa worries that Johannes expects them to be boyfriend and girlfriend, but he assures her this isn't the case and ends up dating another of their classmates. She also initially thinks that she might be attracted to Theres, but when Theres finds the concept alien, Teresa drops it and is just as happy that it's not going to happen.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Theres is this as a result of her upbringing. Or she might have been that way in any case, she's certainly different.
- Coming of Age Story: A very creepy one, too. Teresa was a fairly normal child but grew up to be a mostly shunned outsider; Theres started out weird and just got weirder.
- Creepy Child: Theres is the most prominent example, but Teresa and the other "Wolves" have shades of this as well; they just had normal upbringings and are better at hiding their quirks.
- Downer Ending: The "Wolves" murder thirty people at "Sing Along at Skansen" and are all captured, and Theres and Teresa are about to head into the wolf enclosure, all but ensuring their own deaths.
- Dual Wielding: The Wolves do this when perpetrating the massacre at the concert; they all have a knife and a power drill.
- Eaten Alive: What is about to happen to Theres and Teresa at the end of the novel. Wolves are not renowned for being understanding about incursions on their territory.
- First Period Panic: Averted; Theres gets her first period just after she and Jerry move into a new apartment, but her only response is to blankly tell him that she's bleeding. Jerry is the one who gets nervous (because he hadn't anticipated this happening) and has to go out to get her some pads.
- Halfway Plot Switch: First chunk of the novel is effectively about Lennart and Leila raising Theres before she kills them. Then there's a significant chunk about Theres growing up, followed by a section on Teresa's life before the two finally meet around the midpoint of the novel.
- Horrible Hollywood: In Sweden. Personified by Max Hansen, a sleazy and perverted talent agent that attempts to take advantage of Theres in more ways than one.
- Improvised Weapon: When Max Hansen tries to seduce Theres, she breaks the stem off her champagne goblet, and stabs him with the broken end.
- Intertwined Fingers: Theres does this to Teresa in the very last scene of the book as they prepare to commit suicide by wolf.
- Lies to Children: Lennart convinces Theres to not leave the house by telling her, that the world is full of "big people" who want to eat up the "little people" like her, to the point that she is terrified of going outside. This ends up shaping her entire worldview, which isn't normal to begin with.
- Literal-Minded: Theres is this. Being told that love is something found inside the mind, she believes it to be a literal object and dismembers both of her adoptive parents to find it. Jerry also notes later that she will accept anything anyone tells her, as long as it doesn't contradict something she was told before.
- No Name Given: Theres is given no name by Lennart and is only named afterwards by Jerry. She calls herself "Little One" for a long time.
- Teens Are Monsters: Teresa gets drunk at a party and ends up vomiting after trying to give her classmate Micke a blowjob. One of the "cool" kids films the whole thing and uploads it to social media.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Max Hansen develops a masochistic complex, after being wounded by Theres. When "The Wolves of Skansen" ultimately torture him to death, he has an orgasm.
