I did not know what to expect with this book. I was initially intrigued by the title and cover (eye-catching, striking, gets creepier the longer you look at it), but it took me wholly by surprise and I absolutely adored it. I'm all for the combination of genres you might not think belong together, and this book is a perfect example of how horror and romance can and should be combined. There are some truly gruesome scenes and descriptions, but also some truly touching moments that stuck with me throughout my reading of this book. I love being surprised by a book.

I did enjoyed this book. What an incredible story! I do like main character, she's developing nicely during this book. I enjoy writing style, so easy to follow, just nice storytelling. I hope to read more by this author in near future.

Is it normal to say that a book full of gruesome, terrifying body horror is super sweet and kinda cozy??

Someone You Can Build a Nest In kept taking me by surprise. I knew that reading a fantasy book from the monster's perspective would be fun, but I didn't expect it to be so heartwarming. I'd go from laughing out loud to absolutely horrified, then tearing up and screaming at how cute the love story is. And the Ace rep!!! I had no idea!!! That was such a nice addition to a story that I already loved.

I adore Shosheshen and her perspective on life as an outcast from society (seeing as she is a shapeshifting monster) and her finding a home in Homily. The book took us on an insane journey of what it means to find a home, what forms a home can take (is it laying your eggs inside a corpse so they can feed on it, or is it cuddling with your girlfriend?) and what a found family can really become. 10/10, loved it so much. Can't wait to get a copy for my shelf!!

When a monster, Shesheshen, falls in love with Homily, she becomes torn when she learns that Homily s there to hunt a shapeshifting monster, aka Shesheshen. She must find the truth of the situation to avoid losing both her love and her life.

I was expecting this to be spookier especially based on the cover. It was more romance and more cozy than I thought it would be. Those genres are fine in of themselves, but I was expecting spookier with the title and even the fact that monsters (really aliens though) exist in this world. I also just didn't love the writing style but that can be more of a personal thing.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

Absolutely knocked me for six. Amazing concept and nailed in spectacular fashion. Just fascinating and terrifying and charming all at the same time. Wonderful.

Wow. This book. I was planning to include some quotes that I found beautiful, but unfortunately, it would seem that my kindle didn't save any of my annotations. Oh noooo, now I have to buy a physical copy and re-read it and find all the beautiful quotes again...

If that doesn't tell you how I feel about this book, I don't know what will. I LOVED this book. It is so hard to describe what the vibe of this book is accurately because there are a lot of really important elements to the book. I feel like some useful buzzwords for this book would be sapphic monster romance, cozy quest fantasy, and intense body horror? This book is such a strange and LOVELY combination of genres. Definitely check Trigger Warnings though because while this has a lot of elements that fall outside of horror, there are some very effective depictions of some horrific kills and fights, as well as parental abuse.

Shesheshin (our main character) is a female blob monster that eats people and falls in love with a woman named Homily that saved her when people tried to murder her. Shesheshin decides because Homily was so good at caring for her when she was so vulnerable, Homily would be an incredible person to be a parent for her eggs. That she wants to lay in Homily's lungs. Yeah. Gross. Anyway, John Wiswell constructs such a beautiful and believable romance between these two women it's shocking. I have no idea how a man was able to write such a successful and realistic sapphic romance and also included incredible asexual representation. So much more happens in this story, but there's no way I could write more about it without spoiling.

In all seriousness, please pick up this book if this sounds like something that you would like. Even if it just sounds weird, please give this a chance.

I LOVED this book!! It was so unique, I’ve never quite read anything like it. It’s a really strange mix of cozy fantasy, dark fantasy, and a bit of horror/gore mixed in. It’s never scary, but it is very gory so if you’re prone to squeamishness, this isn’t the book for you! I’m so-so on gore but I was totally fine with this book, because Shesheshen was such a great narrator and filled the book with a lot of dark humor. I absolutely loved the budding relationship between the two main characters, and the main plot line was intriguing and kept me on my toes.

A truly excellent novel, all-around!

🌈Queer rep: FF main relationship, lesbian love interest, asexual main character and love interest.

Review will be live at this link on 10/24/2024: https://apex-magazine.com/book-reviews/book-review-john-wiswells-someone-you-can-build-a-nest-in/

Although it is a monster romance this was very cozy - Shesheshen's discovery of love was a joy to read. I loved her shifting powers and how she used them to help Homily and build a new future together. The drama and action were palpable, and the ending was unexpected!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Someone You Can Build a Nest in, but I was delightedly taken by surprise. The novel manages to be very tender and light-hearted despite also providing buckets of gore and body horror. I enjoyed Shesheshen's narrative voice - there was a great balance between her lack of understanding of humans, and her ability to process emotions all the same. This was very nearly a five-star read for me - I had a brilliant time reading it. However, the latter half became slightly action-heavy for my tastes, and I felt less invested than I had previously - I much preferred the sections of Shesheshen and Homily interacting and getting to know each other. That said, this is an at times very funny, but also heartfelt and moving book, which deals with some very human themes amongst its narrative of monsters.

I ended up enjoying the book when my book club selected it. Very fun. A more violent "cozy fantasy" book.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is the story of Shesheshen, a shapeshifter most commonly mistaken for a worm-like monster and hunted by nearby townsfolk for most of her life. That is, until hunters invade her home for the final time, injuring Shesheshen and leading her to flee. It is then, hurt and alone, that Shesheshen is saved by Homily, a human woman who takes Shesheshen under her wing, believing her to be human as well. As Homily and Shesheshen grow closer, Shesheshen must grapple with the idea of what it means to be human, and what it takes to fall in love with someone while being unable to tell them the truth about oneself.

This book was so unique and intriguing! I loved this take on the classical monster story, especially with the added element of romance between Homily and Shesheshen! I loved the descriptive nature of Wiswell's writing, even the gory details concerning Shesheshen's shapeshifting. Everything was so vivid! Shesheshen herself is such a great character, bringing humor and levity to an otherwise fairly grim story of revenge and curses. Her struggle to understand humanity and it's oddities was so fun to witness!

I do feel as though this book had a couple of places where it might have ended, and found myself wondering if some pieces of the plot were expanded on a bit too much. Overall, though, I enjoyed this!

I wasnt able to get to this one before the publish date. However now that I have read it I am giving it 4 stars.

What better to read during Pride Month than a sapphic monster romance? A man-eating shapeshifter falls in love with the daughter of a powerful monster hunting family in Someone You Can Build a Nest In, a delightful fantasy romance debut by John Wiswell that came out earlier this year.

Shesheshen is roused from hibernating in her watery cave by a band of monster hunters who have come to slay her. She uses all of her best tricks to fight them off—disguising herself as a human and incorporating pieces of the environment or her past victims to lend structure to her gelatinous body—but she is left weak and hungry by the effort. When Shesheshen goes into town to hunt, she is nearly killed by the villagers but is rescued and nursed back to health by a kind-hearted woman named Homily. Unwilling to eat someone who has done her such a good turn, Shesheshen stays by Homily’s side and soon finds herself falling head over tentacles in love. For the first time in her life, Shesheshen is feeling the biological urge to plant her eggs in someone—and Homily, always so nurturing and self-sacrificing, would make the perfect nest. But as Shesheshen learns more about her own nature and falls even deeper in love with Homily, she realizes that maybe becoming a nest for her parasitic young to eat their way out of is not the best fate for someone she cares about. Also complicating matters is the fact that Homily doesn’t even know that Shesheshen is the Wyrm of Underlook, believing her to simply be a fellow human named Siobhan. But Homily has been keeping secrets, too. It turns out that she is the eldest daughter of Baroness Wulfyre, a cruel and bloodthirsty ruler who is determined to destroy the Wyrm of Underlook at any cost. Shesheshen will have to insinuate herself into the Baroness’s hunting party and wait for the perfect opportunity to rid herself of her most dangerous enemy and free Homily from the constraints of her abusive family—oh, and try not to traumatize Homily too much in the process.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is a particularly fun take on the monster romance genre, especially since we get to experience it from the monster’s perspective. Shesheshen is well and truly inhuman, and the foreignness of the way she experiences her body, human society, and the world around her is beautifully conveyed in Wiswell’s evocative prose. As an oozing blob that incorporates pieces of others into her body, Shesheshen is lovingly (or sometimes guiltily) aware of where each of her borrowed bones and organs comes from. Shesheshen is surprisingly vulnerable for a monster, weak and hungry after being woken from hibernation and often more scared of her hunters than they seem to be of her. But while the townsfolk whisper about her strength and fearsomeness, Shesheshen mostly survives by her wits, studying the humans and learning how to pass among them, sabotage their plans, and sow deception. The more time Shesheshen spends among the humans—or more particularly, around Homily—the more human-like her own thoughts become. And ideas that once seemed so natural, like the urge to lay eggs in someone else and her fond memories of eating her way out of her father’s body, become difficult to square with her burgeoning romance.

In addition to being a sweet romance, Someone You Can Build a Nest In also tackles darker subjects like familial abuse. Homily is terrified of her mother, who never misses an opportunity to sling hurtful words and express her disdain for her oldest daughter. Her siblings can be just as bad, tormenting her with sadistic glee. As Shesheshen eventually comes to realize that what she initially viewed in Homily as innate altruistic kindness, was often instead a desperate people-pleasing urge or a defense mechanism developed to try to minimize the abuse. Homily feels like she must always be useful in order to justify the existence her mother says she doesn’t deserve, and she’ll readily endure pain and suffering in order to help someone else. As she recognizes the actions of the others around them as abuse, Shesheshen confronts her own instrumentalizing thought patterns and lends her support to Homily, encouraging her to stand up to her family and to prioritize her own needs and desires.

A gelatinous monster might not normally be your romantic ideal, but as a reader you can’t help falling for Shesheshen as she shows more heart in this book than any of the humans who actually have one. Someone You Can Build a Nest In was a jaw-dropping debut, and I can’t wait to see what John Wiswell has in store next.

This review has been shockingly hard to write. I read the book, largely enjoyed it aside from a few quibbles, hammered out half a review, then spent the next couple months unable to finish it. Or read/review anything else. Finally, I mostly rewrote it from scratch. So: Someone You Can Build a Nest In had me at “asexual monster romance” – well, and all my friends who weren’t in a reading slump saying it’s weird and good, a bit gross yet somehow cozy. In the end, I’m a little more ambivalent on it than I would have liked, but I guess that’s life.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifting blob monster. When she is pursued by hunters and falls off a cliff, she is rescued by kind, gentle Homily. Unused to kindness, she may have fallen in love just a bit. There is just one problem. Homily, too, is looking for the monster who is said to be responsible for the family curse. Shesheshen knows there is no such thing, but how is she going to prove it? And how is she going to break it to Homily that she is not human and may have – oops – eaten her brother?

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Someone You Can Build a Nest In is the ways it blends seemingly opposite tones – there is squishy body horror in the way only a shapeshifting, people-eating blob monster can provide, yes, and an extremely abusive family, but at the same time it also manages to be very funny and sweet. Shesheshen’s commentary on human habits was priceless (and dare I say, occasionally a big ol’ neurodivergent mood). The tonal difference between US and UK covers? Both fit, somehow, and I couldn’t decide which to include. And yet it mostly worked for me.

But not entirely. For one, it’s more than a bit clumsy when it comes to its themes, and I found Homily a little too perfect and with it too bland to be a good love interest. Whatever flaws she was supposed to have, the book didn’t sell me on them. Several elements of the book were also too stressful for me. The scenes involving Homily and her awful, abusive mother, for example (“eat her already,” I may have thought more than once 😂). Or several scenes where Shesheshen almost confesses the truth to Homily, but then something interferes. I know, I know, that’s on me since it’s the whole premise of the book. Or perhaps it’s just the overthinking from all the time I spent trying and failing to write something, anything about this book.

As fun as I found it, it sure is a hard one to recommend. Maybe too much horror and stress for a comfort read, maybe too light for horror, it’s easy to see all the ways it either would or wouldn’t work for someone. You kind of have to be in a mood to meet it where it’s at. Still, if the concept sounds good to you, I would say it’s worth checking out.

john wiswell said i take your cozy mystery and cozy fantasy and raise you: cozy horror. a blend of cozy fantasy with significant body horror (so be prepared for that)

some positives: i appreciated shesheshen as the narrator and her unique perspective on the world, grappling with her identity as a non-human creature rather than merely a human in disguise. i enjoyed how she remains puzzled by human behaviors throughout the story, attempting to define them for herself with varying success.

asexuality rep beyond the eldritch horror trope was refreshing. we often see asexual characters being portrayed solely as robots or monsters, so seeing a different portrayal was a welcome change. seeing shesheshen and homily's relationship unfold was another highlight, with its challenging conversations and unspoken emotions.

some things i didn't love: some parts of the book felt unnecessarily drawn out. there were moments where characters seemed to stall, waiting for the plot to advance. i hoped for more depth and understanding of the motivations behind the story's twist/reveal.

the anticipated conversation between shesheshen and homily didn't didn't hit like i was expecting after all the build-up. their confrontation about shesheshen's true nature and past actions felt abrupt and unresolved.

3/5

I’d heard of John Wiswell, one of the new generation of splendid young authors, so I grabbed a review copy of his debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In. On a panel at the recent Nebula Awards weekend, a speaker referenced this book as a fresh take on the theme of monster as protagonist, in this case monster as heroic, romantic protagonist. Such characters hold a mirror to our deepest fears, offering shared humanity as a path to laying our nightmares to rest. While Wiswell’s book is not an entirely new approach to the point of view of a monster/villain, he brings a wonderful combination of grit, darkness, and lyricism to the story.

Monster Shesheshen, a formless, pluripotent jelly, is rudely awoken from her sleep in the bowels of a ruined manor by human hunters. Quickly assembling hard materials to construct human-like body parts (a metal chain for a backbone, old bones for limbs, and so forth), she disguises herself as a refugee. The ruse works for only a short tome. The hunters are relentless, driven by the obsessive local nobility who, as it turns out, have their own share of horrendous secrets. Badly injured during a chase, Shesheshen experiences her first taste of kindness when a rejected daughter of the noble house rescues her. Bit by bit, step by step, they each heal one another. The monster’s quest eventually becomes how to build a life with, rather than inside of, the love of her life. And to survive her murderous in-laws.

It's a gorgeous, inventive, intoxicating love story, filled with heart-rending truths, self-sacrifice, and gradual unfolding of character. We should all have such a monster in our lives.

Highly recommended.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is an absurd story that somehow works. It’s a queer horror-fantasy-romance undefinable blend of a novel that explores the idea of being monstrous—or maybe, the idea of being human.

John Wiswell manages to write a monster character who really does feel alien. Shesheshen is not human. Reading her understanding of humans, the way she misconstrues human practices, creates a humorous story. It’s also simply fun to read a monster slaying sapphic romance where our main character is a monstrous shapeshifter who falls in love with a human. The course of true love never did run smooth, right?

In some ways, the story reminds me of The Salt Grows Heavy, though the two are very different. If you enjoyed reading from the perspective of a monstrous and entirely inhuman character in The Salt Grows Heavy however, you may enjoy this one.

While the ending meandered and could have been cut shorter, the story as a whole is simply a fun ride that’s accompanied by body horror and dry wit. You get to read about wrongdoers getting what’s coming for them in ways that’ll make you cry, “Huzzah!”, and again, a monster slaying sapphic romance. What’s not to love?