Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for sending me a copy in exchange for a review.

This was so gruesome from the start and I was not expecting it! I think the uk cover kind of hides the fact that there is body horror throughout and makes it look like a cutesy fantasy romance which it is not. Don't get me wrong there is a lovely romance between Shesheshen and Homily, but it didn't feel like the focus of the book to me.

The plot was really good, with plenty going on that I didn't feel bored once, and I loved the twists and turns of it all.

I don't want anyone going into this thinking it's all cute lovey dovey and romantic because this is gross to a high degree. But I loved it!

Also, Blueberry the bear needs their own novella.

Thank you Netgalley, Quercus Books and Jo Fletcher Books for sending me over an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows Shesheshen, who’s a shapeshifter. She’s seen as a monster by humans and gets attacked by hunters in her lair during her hibernation. After she’s attacked, she eats the hunters and uses their body parts to transform to a human. Not much later, Shesheshen gets injured and is saved by Homily, who shows her kindness and takes care of her. Unfortunately, Shesheshen finds out that Homily is hunting the monster. Shesheshen decides to help Homily in her quest to kill the monster.

This book was so weird, but in a good way. I had a lot of fun reading it. The writing style was very descriptive, and while that isn’t always for me, the writer did it really well in this one. The descriptions in this book were very gory and detailed, so be sure to check the trigger warnings before reading this book. The plot itself was fun and truly one of its kind. I loved the fighting scenes, and the characters were well developed. I also liked the dynamic between Homily and Shesheshen. I loved seeing their relationship grow through the story.

In short, I had a good time with this book, and I can definitely recommend this to people who are looking for an unique take on fantasy!

Oh wow! That was totally unexpected.
Shesheshen is a monster, but when she meets Homily she finds herself becoming so much more than just a monster.
This book has so many layers, and getting to the truth means learning about love. Love that comes in many forms; familial love, romantic love, self love and abuse that masquerades as love.
Darkly grotesque and yet heartwarming, this is a book to fall in love with.

This was such an interesting story, told from the point of view of a monster, who is hunted because they just happen to feast on human bodies to survive. It begins from the nest, which is the body of their father, that it used to feed and grow .. all pretty squeamish.

Shesheshen awakes from hibernation weak and has had to build her body in disguise of a human with the bones and remains left in her cave in order to escape the hunters that have entered. In her escape she ends up being helped by a human and treated with kindness and so begins an unsuspecting love story, filled to the brim with gore.

I really liked this alternate point of view and I would recommend it to lovers of fantasy who like a bit of blood and guts!

Thanks you to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

A fun, quirky, enjoyable fantasy. Someone You Can Build A Nest In is a quick, entertaining read exploring some interesting new concepts.

I was very lucky to be able to read this book early.

An enjoyable quick read from start to finish. I went in with no expectations and only read a small summary of the story.
With that in mind, having the summary did help me understand the sorry early on. Reading a love story from the perspective of a being that doesn't have the same concept of feelings that humans do did need some time to comprehend what was going on. But once I understood the POV it was very fun and interesting.

The story played out well, taking its time in the right places and letting the characters breathe when they needed to.

Overall I would say that if you're in need of something different to read, or in a book slump, this is the right book to sit down on a lazy Sunday and be entertained

For about the first 50 pages of this book I was not sure that a story about a shapeshifting wyrm that used the body parts of its victims to shape itself would be for me. Someone you can build a nest in was such an unexpectedly delightful love story about two unlikely companions that featured discussions of humanity, implicit neurologically diverse relationships, and queer love.

This is a surprisingly sweet and funny book coming from the point of an amorphous blob monster that lives alone in a castle. After being woken early from her annual hibernation Shesheshen hunts and is hunted by the local gentry and a pair of monster hunters. Along the way she falls in love with the daughter of the Baroness of the town who saves her when she falls off a cliff. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments when Shesheshen doesn't really understand being a human (well she wouldn't, would she?) and Homily, her girlfirend just thinks she's being funny. Her inner dialogue is funny as well as she spends a lot of the book not quite understanding what is going on around her despite the world at large just considering there to be a terrifying wyrm haunting the vicinity. I think my favourite thing in the book was the monster's pet/friend bear (that is blue) called Blueberry. A lot of the pther characters in the book you can root for the monster to eat as they are AWFUL for a multitude of reasons.

What a fun fantasy book!
From the title you know you are hopping into a fun ride of a novel with a good pinch of gruesome humour. This is a very unusual love story with lots of heart. It shows that the monster isn't who we always think they are, and people are the worst predator of people.
Through the narrative, we follow Shesheshen, a completely in-human monster in her biology and psychology. It is very well done, well written, immediately engrossing, and extremely refreshing. I think that the challenge was making us like a real terrifying monster, and doing that in record time. It made the whole story compelling, and I didn't want to let go of the book.
There are some very well defined trauma moments and deep psychological analysis of the characters. I very much liked how love is not portrayed in traditional lights, but is what you want it be, and the one with the healthiest outlook on family and love wasn't the one that should have had that insight.
This was a great surprise of a book, to anyone who likes very character driven stories, monsters that revers stereotypes, cute romances and are ok with a side of gore.

This deliciously insane book is easily one of my favourite books of the year already. The book follows Shesheshen, a shapeshifter, she eats her family, she encounters hunters who enter her lair and she eats and uses their body parts to transform, and then one day she is saved, while in human form and injured, by Homily – a woman who shows her kindness and takes care of her – something Shesheshen is not used to. Unfortunately it also turns out that Homily is hunting the dreaded shapeshifting monster, oh and she’s the sister of someone Shesheshen recently just ate!! Shesheshen vows to help Homily in her quest and in doing so, starts to love for the first time.

This book is just delightful – from the opening chapter you just know you’re in for a wild ride and it doesn’t hold back. Yes it’s violent and somewhat b!oody (although not gratuitously so) but it’s also so much more. There’s such humour, Shesheshen is not used to human ways and constantly misunderstands what is said to her, especially by Homily, leading to many confused, blunt and odd responses. The title is a clever one because it has 2 meanings – in the literal sense, to mate Shesheshen must place her egg in a living nest that will consume it’s carrier, could Homily be her nest? But this is ultimately a love story though – and could Homily be the nest that Shesheshen could call home? From the opening chapter you wouldn’t think that this book could be so endearing and yet it is, Shesheshen and Homily are such a charming couple and their interactions just make you smile. Homily is a lovely creation, she is made to feel inferior and berated by her family but with Shesheshen she sees someone who believes in her and in turn starts to believe in herself. You could say the same for Shesheshen, she is ‘seen’, she is loved and starts to see a future for herself as more than she allowed herself to be. This is an incredibly sweet book, bizarre and in the best way and also incredibly body positive – so I loved it in every way you can love a book.

Thank you NetGalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review – I adored this read and would recommend it to anyone

This was absolutely wonderful!

I laughed, I cried, I felt all the feels.

I absolutely adored Shesheshen and her whimsical descriptions of herself, and the relationship with Homily as it developed throughout the book. Laurent made me chuckle and despair at the same time, poor man, and still I feel like he wasn't punished enough in a weird way.

I did find a few spelling errors and missing sentences, but that will probably be corrected before printing.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this wonderful book and I look forward to more books from John in the future!

I will be writing a more lengthy review on Goodreads and my social medias as soon as I'm able to :)

Reviewed in exchange for a free ARC

Ok, so I loved this book. It was delightful monster romance of my heart, ok?

Shesheshen is a shapeshifting monster who believes that the greatest gift a person could give is to be a nest for her eggs and her offsprings' first meal. She's basically an amorphous blob who can take human form, When she's attacked and forced to flee for her life, she is rescued and nursed back to life by Homily and begins to realise that there might be more to love than laying your eggs in someone.

The problem? Homily is part of a monster hunting family, and they're out to kill the monster that cursed them. Sheshesen, apparently. Though she has no memory of this.

It's a fabulous book. One part sapphic romance, one part fantasy, and one part a discussion on what it means to be monstrous. It was fabulously weird and I loved every word. Homily was a very easy character to love, but Shesheshen herself, in all her inhuman glory was particularly spectacular.

Words are not enough for this one. I loved it. Please read it.

Thank you to Quercus Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinions!

Unfortunately, I DNF'd this at 26%, because even though I think this is well written, I'm unable to connect with the characters or the plot at all. Going into this, I've read other comments and I knew that this book will be weird, but I think I might have overestimated my tolerance for weird things as it seemed too much for me. However, I'm sure that there will be quite a few people, who will enjoy this, this one just wasn't for me personally.

This is hands down one of the weirdest books I have read in the last couple of years! That being said, it is absolutely amazing!!

It follows Shesheshen, a shapeshifting slime monster, as she falls in love with Homily and struggles to keep her identity as the Wyrm of Underlook a secret. I absolutely adored the depiction of Shesheshen, I find with a lot of sci-fi/fantasy books that the main alien characters are always too human like, that is absolutely not the case here. I really enjoyed watching Shesheshen struggle with human interactions, emotions and body language, as well as her interesting attempts to come off as normal.

My favourite part had to be watching Shesheshen try to figure out how she could covertly eat her girlfriend's abusive family members without alerting anyone that she is in fact the monster they have all been hunting. I really loved how she slowly adopted certain human characteristics and emotions the longer she spent with Homily.

This book is very gory, with lots of descriptions of death and the consumption and reuse of deceased bodies and bodily parts, so not great for anyone who is very squeamish.

I will absolutely be recommending this to people once it is released!

Someone You Can Build a Nest In was for sure one of the weirdest books that I had the pleasure of reading this year, and I am not complaining at all!

I am a HUGE fan of making non-human characters decidedly other, so Shesheshen was an absolute delight to behold. Wiswell went all-out on making this monster truly monstrous, while still toeing the line of keeping her relatable and likeable. It was a joy to discover not only the mechanisms of her body and being, but also her inner thoughts and feelings.

I really enjoyed the dynamic of the main relationship, I believe ace characters don't get the spotlight enough, so it was fun to see Homily taking centre stage and being such a loving, kind person while taking no real pleasure in sex and the like - I can't truly comment on the quality of the representation as I myself am not ace, but it felt genuine and positive to me.

The story sadly suffered from some pacing issues, which did make the book drag on much more than it needed to. Honestly, I think if this was cut down to like 3/4 of it's length, it would have been much more fun to me, personally, The way it was, I often had to sit down and force myself to read on through parts of the story I didn't much care for, so that obviously tampered my enjoyment.

I still had a good time with this book and would definitely recommend it to people looking for an unique take on fantasy, or looking for monstrous main characters!

Recently I’ve been looking for books that are a little bit more ‘out there’ and I don’t think they come more ‘out there’ than this. It’s a monster hunting romance book except we’re following the monster, and she’s the one falling in love.

Shesheshen, our monster, is basically a gelatinous blob of a creature - but one that can absorb and build up a skeletal structure out of anything. Which?! Hello, what a cool concept.

It’s so different from what I’ve read in the past, and I was constantly wondering just what on earth would happen next - all bets are off when the main character is a monster such as Shesheshen. Watching her trying to avoid not getting murdered by townspeople, falling in love, having to navigate social settings, and trying very hard to not implant eggs in her lovers lungs - it’s a ride, but you can’t help but find yourself rooting for her, even more so in the latter half of the book.

It’s queer, funny, endearing, and straight up gross. A monstrous ode to unconventional relationships, surviving family abuse, and finding who you belong with. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea (especially if you’re a bit squeamish), but there are many people who will absolutely adore this - and rightly so, in my opinion.

Thank you the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review!

I absolutely loved Someone You Can Build a Nest in!
Also look at that cover! It's gorgeous!
I was actually really excited to read this book especially when I heard the premise as I it sounded like a book that I'd love and I'm so happy that I was right.

I really loved the main characters and their romamce which was really sweet.
The writing in this book was also amazing and ill definitely be reading more by this author in the future!
Be warned though that this book has body horror and could get really gory.
That doesn't really bother but I know some people may not like it.

I definitely highly recommend this book to everyone!
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a review.

This was definitely an interesting read to me. Mainly from the mixture of romance and gore which can be a juxtaposition. I enjoyed it alot more at some points than others points.

We follow Shesheshen - shapeshifting monster, while she learns what it means to fall in love.
When Shesheshen is awaken from her hibernation (a lot of things happen to her) she meets human named Homily who saves her life and well they fight against the evil and all that while falling in love, learning eachothers secrets and understanding each other.
I'm making it sound really sappy, but make no mistake this book is very gory, the desctiptions are very detailed, also check trigger warnings there's a lot going on.
(I really liked the twist)
I have mixed feelings about this book on one hand I really enjoyed it but I felt something missing, I kind of wish there was little bit more build up to the romance, it felt really fast to me.
But the fights, the concept and characters were really interesting.
Will definitely reread it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quercus Books for approving my request to read an arc of this book.

I requested this book so fast, I loved the concept of this book and the cover and title both intrigued me. I was really excited to read such a unique story. However I had to DNF after 20 pages as while I’m usually completely fine with gore, this book and the descriptions of body horror and gore made me feel very uncomfortable. The writing was very descriptive and I think the story sounded amazing, it just wasn’t for me unfortunately.