Someone You Can Build a Nest In

by John Wiswell

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all she's fallen in love.
 
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth. 
 
However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.
 
Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?
 
Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly dangerous—and deadly—Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Romance, Queer, Fiction, LGBT, Audiobook

363 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 2, 2024

About the author

John Wiswell is a disabled author who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He won the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Debut Novel for Someone You Can Build A Nest In, and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for Open House on Haunted Hill, and the Locus Award for Best Novelette for That Story Isn't The Story. His fiction has been translated into over fifteen languages.

Reviews

[Allie N. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started off so good and yet.... AND YET.... the idea that a bog monster would immediately be able to identify an abusive familial relationship when she has no concept of friendship, let alone family, and is constantly being like 'your abusive mother/brother/sister/etc.' making it sound like a 21st century human talking was so annoying. Therapizing in fiction is probably the worst shit an author can do imo and even worse when your character isn't intended to be human at all!!! If I had known this was cozy fantasy (or cozy horror, which is the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard) I would have never picked it up.

edit: wait I'm not done I hated that everyone Shesheshen ever ate was a bandit or a bad guy or someone you were meant to hate, and yet is described as a 'predator' like no give me a MONSTER give me a creature who preys on whatever gives her the highest advantage--the weak, the old, the young--and truly have Homily reckon with the fact that the only love she has ever received is from a creature who cannot even comprehend love the same way, who has hurt innocents not because they were innocent but because she was a hungry monster and nothing more. What a fucking cop out to give Shesheshen morals right out the gate like huh?? what you afraid the readers aren't going to connect to the POV MONSTER CHARACTER THAT THEY KNOWINGLY SIGNED UP TO READ

[Veronica Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

All of it stank wholly of deliberate smoke-- the thing humans called incense. [...] Shesheshen never trusted deliberate smoke. Humans were seldom up to anything good when they burned things on purpose.

This book sits very nicely in the tradition of the "alien observes humanity" POV-- this involves a kind of "other" figure, usually an alien, making unintentionally humorous observations about humanity as they become better acquainted with us. My favorite example of this is the entire sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, though the others that come to mind are any Animorphs book from Ax's point of view, the Coneheads movie (not sure how that one holds up, it's been awhile since I've seen it), and of course, the spectacular opening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which includes this paragraph that makes me laugh every time I read it:

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

- Douglas Adams

lulz.

Shesheshen isn't an alien, she's a monster, but her position in the story is the same. She is an observer, and often a confused one, whose position as an outsider gives her tremendous insights, both humorous and deeply profound, sometimes at the same time. She's also wearier than you usually see with this type of narrator, because she's lived near humanity (and feasted upon it, naturally) for quite some time, and it's always trying to kill her, and she doesn't understand what its DEAL is, and really, isn't that the most goddamn relatable thing you've ever heard.

This book is about her journey toward connectedness-- coming of age, but the exact opposite of the typical coming of age narrative, which involves setting out on your own and forming your identity independently of the systems that raised you to adulthood. This coming of age is about trust, vulnerability, and understanding-- about what we might call 'becoming human' if we believed that becoming human was actually all that great, and I don't think Shesheshen does.

I often talk about science fiction and fantasy exploring things through exaggeration, and depending on who I'm talking to, I get a sort of puzzled look a lot of the time-- but this is exactly what I mean. Fantasy isn't just an escape, though it is often that and truly, thank god for that. But fantasy also makes things bigger and more extreme or dramatic so that you can actually look at them. That's what Shesheshen does with humanity, with love, with family, with the exhausting and horrifying but meaningful task of knowing someone and being known. You can see them all, at last, because she shows them to you in a strange new way.

This book is about her. Her voice, and also her body-- the inventive, sometimes gross, fascinating way that her body operates. This is the second book I've read recently where I felt like someone understood how to write about a being that wasn't a human, and to show the inevitable conflicts and tensions that would arise if we encountered something that Wasn't Us-- a real alien figure, not just some humanoid guy in a rubber mask. (The other was The Stardust Grail, which is also excellent and you should read it.) Like is Shesheshen's POV relatable? Yes. Is she gonna rip out a dead body's esophagus and tell you about it? Also yes. You must simply learn to see through the eyes of the monster.

And like. It's really goddamn funny. But in a sly way where you'll have to stop in the middle of a set of deadlifts to laugh at your audiobook. (Or is that just me?) I'll leave you with two quotes that weirdly happen to come from the same page but delight me nonetheless:

From what she knew of civilization, all children were parasites. You were supposed to grow to like that about them.

and

Self-conscious, Shesheshen picked up her two forks again and tried to capture some of her pasta. Two forks were not enough forks for this. The spaghetti was versatile in its resistance. "Slightly strange. It's like an evasive bread."

I'll never look at pasta the same again.

[Miranda Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Her lair had unwelcome visitors again. They did not even wipe their shoes."

Shesheshen spends her winters as an amorphous blob and the rest of the time, she cobbles together a body from the spare parts she's eaten (a spine here, a jaw from there, and a bear trap in the center).

"Inside her chest, where humans put their lungs, she placed an open bear trap. It was her prized skeletal possession. It did not trap bears anymore. Instead, she kept it as a secret pair of jaws, for when people needed to be bitten."

This year, her hibernation in the ancestral home of the Wulfyres is interrupted by the eldest son of the clan and two monster hunters.

"I want the wyrm slain before Mother reaches the countryside. Do you know how upsetting it would be for her to encounter that thing?"

Shesheshen doesn't know what a wyrm is but she's instantly aware of the danger. Three hunters, and she's barely had time to wake from her slumber.

After a harrowing battle, Shesheshen is on the run from the village - turns out when the humans actually band together, things can get quite hairy. She tumbles off a cliff and practically into the arms of Homily, another human, who believes Shesheshen is an injured human and tries to nurse the shapeshifter back to health.

Soon Shesheshen begins to think of the most romantic thing she could do for Homily - bury her eggs within Homily's abdominal cavity and let them eat their way out. But there's a problem...the more time Shesheshen spends with Homily, the more she cares about Homily's safety (and turns out, the eggs would not lead toward Homily's life being extended).

Meanwhile, the Wulfyre family continues to hunt down Shesheshen, claiming that she's cursed their lineage. The monster knows there's no curse upon their family but the Baroness and her children will not let Shesheshen run forever.

This... this was a really weird one. Strange and creepy and offputtingly cannibalistic... and yet oddly charming?

When I first finished this book, I had the distinct thought: What in the hell did I just read? and after a few minutes: Honestly, it was pretty good.

Ultimately, I think this one worked for me because of the author's commitment to everything - the shapeshifting body horror, the love story, and the overall atmosphere of the book.

I really appreciated how deeply the author sunk into the Shesheshen's viewpoint. I've read a few books from a creature's perspective, and often after a few token moments, it really just feels like I'm reading a book about a human.

This book never let you forget Shesheshen's body and her viewpoint - from her eyes rolling into the back of her skull to protect them to her tentacle suckers holding down her hat - her anatomy was emphasized and kept that otherworldly essence going.

There were moments that I felt were rather...a lot to read. Some of the eating scenes or the formation of her body parts were a bit too descriptive for my taste...but at the same time I was riveted by them.

Additionally, I thought Shesheshen's perspective on life was quite written. Reading about how she viewed humans was fascinating and kept me invested in the story.

Though, like many of the reviewers here, I did question how a creature who thought love was burying her eggs in a suitable mate and letting the children eat the human's body...could also instantly pick up on Homily's family's abusive tendencies.

"This was the same mistake so many humans made: believing someone would leap over trauma when it hurt them badly enough."

Shesheshen complained about having to speak to humans in the beginning and seems to have spent nearly her entire life hunting, eating, and hiding from humans...and yet she could pick up emotional abuse based on a few interactions with Homily?

And then it takes her much of the book to realize that maybe her Dad didn't actually love her and was just a body to incubate eggs in ?

But that aside, I did really enjoy the relationship in this book. It was beautifully written and the found family really cinched the book for me.

Ultimately, this book was gripping and I do hope for a sequel.

[Katie Colson]

My in-depth review, full of spoilers ---> WATCH

This is written by a man? A man named John ??? What Twilight Zone have I stepped into? This man not only wrote a lesbian love story better than most female author's I've read, but he also wrote strictly from the POV of feminism and did it with grace.
John Wiswell, I am here to enlist in your army. I know that whatever war you're fighting, I agree, and you're inexplicably correct 🫡

This book has everything. It's a macabre fairytale that's cozy, queer, weird as hell, funny, touching, deep and still has time for moments of gross and graphic horror. I'm sorry, was this written directly FOR me???

My mission statement: Read this book.
It might just go on my favorite's shelf.
The amount of tabs lead me to believe it will surely wind up there...

[Nataliya · Rating 1 out of 5]

“You want to know if I’m mad that the woman, or the monster ... or … or, the person that I like is eating [spoiler]’s remains?” Her words were rushed, like bigger ones were stuck behind it and shoving them out of her mouth. “Have you been eating people behind my back this whole time?”

Sappy and whimsical body gore with squishy slimy bits. Icky and at times revolting body horror interspersed with forced sappy instant romance.

But while the romance was eyeroll-inducing, the body gore quickly went to mundanely boring. And the amount of serious issues just metaphorically swept under the rug due to inner pushover goodness of the love interest (and that do not seem to re-emerge despite that said lover working on trauma recovery and hypothetical backbone) is ickier than any slimy squishy gore. Consequences only exist for the one-dimensional baddies, and only one-dimensional baddies can cause any trauma in the book that thrives on the idea of trauma. Leave your logic at the door as you come in, please.

“All Shesheshen could do for Homily was be patient with her, and make space for her, and eventually, one day behind her back, eat her mother.”

Therapy talk with the monster who’s mostly living by herself (and only eating bad humans) being amazingly well-versed in the details of human interactions with very much current flavoring of it all. A reclusive monster in a quasi-medieval setting must have learned all about humans and their therapy-sneak through digesting them. Other than periodic body horror and wanting to deposit her eggs in her human lover’s body (until suddenly she decides not to, because love) this monster had very much human feelings and deep insights into abuse and trauma.

If you’re going to create a very inhuman monster who doesn’t quite get that her approach of laying eggs inside an unwilling human host, having that host - sorry, “father” - digested from the inside may be a bit revolting to humans, and then immediately have her zero in on every intricacy of human abusive relationships with the aptitude of an eager therapist, then apparently you’re writing what amounts to cozy horror, which would be almost funny if it wasn’t so earnestly serious.

“Shesheshen wanted her to say something and was projecting that onto her while Homily suffocated. This was the same mistake so many humans made: believing someone would leap over trauma when it hurt them badly enough.”

The sheer degree of cheesy wish fulfillment in the end was incredibly saccharine. (Yup, I am mixing my cheese and sugar metaphors, and I blame the indigestion on this book).

The writing was not very good. The pacing was off, with drawn-out conclusion that made me wonder if the author wouldn’t have had more fun just writing a domestic comedy about shapeshifting monster domestic life. The characters, including the love interest, were cardboard cutout caricatures, and the setting barely sketched in with a crayon.

But my opinion seems to be an outlier, so take it with a grain of salt (like the monster should have done when digesting all those humans. Unless it’s watching its salt intake, in which case good luck).

1 star.

——————
Also posted on my blog.

[Rosh (will be MiA for a fortnight!) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a Nutshell: A quirky fantasy-horror-sapphic-romance with a shapeshifting monster as the main character. Not my usual kind of read, but I found the concept interesting, and thankfully, the book mostly lived up to the potential. Recommended to those looking for an eccentric fantasy.

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Plot Preview:

Shesheshen is a shapeshifting monster who had been hibernating in bliss until her sleep was disturbed by hunters intent on killing her. Using her present skills and her past kills to construct a body for herself, she somehow fools the hunters, even eats one of them, and escapes out of her home. Unfortunately, she ends up falling off a cliff, where she is rescued and nursed back to health by Homily, a kind human woman who has no idea about Shesheshen’s true identity. Unfortunately, the cliff isn’t the only thing Shesheshen fell over. She also falls in love with her saviour. But not the way you think. You see, Shesheshen believes that true love means finding the perfect person to lay your eggs in as that is the ultimate sacrifice of love – being a willing co-parent (and tasty food) for your little ones. Homily seems like the perfect “somebody to build her nest in.” But just as Shesheshen is about to confess her love, she discovers something shocking: Homily is in the area to hunt for a shapeshifting monster that has cursed her family. Whoops!
The story comes to us in Shesheshen’s third-“person” perspective.

Let’s be clear: I am no fan of monster horror stories. But seeing the idea of a shapeshifting monster falling in love with a human female only for her to want to make a nest out of the human body – the premise hooked me faster than Shesheshen hooked her “teeth” into humans. I always love novelty in plots, and this book has oodles of it.


Bookish Yays:
🐻 An unconventional narrator in the form of a shapeshifting monster – offers a somewhat eccentric but entertaining feel to the plot. Some of her thoughts are unintentionally funny.

🐻 The description of Shesheshen – doesn’t stop at simply saying ‘shapeshifter’ but actually goes to detail how Shesheshen derives her shape. Loved the conceptualisation.

🐻 Plenty of dark humour in the plot, thanks to Shesheshen’s observations on various topics, her struggle to keep her lust under control, and Homily’s family.

🐻 The character names – hilarious! Whether Homily or Plutocracy or Catharsis, the names add to the fun of the book. Can’t forget the monster’s name – ‘Shesheshen’ is as quaint a nomenclature as the being it belongs to.

🐻 Interesting that a male author can write two such enticing female characters, without ever mentioning their physical appeal. Granted, one of them is a shapeless bog monster, but the other one, and the various other female characters as well, are also not sexualised.

🐻 I expected a mostly straightforward story, but there are some interesting and unexpected surprises along the way. One of them caught me totally unawares!

🐻 When I took this book, the title had a small role to play in my decision. Never realised that it would be applicable so literally! An apt name for this book.

🐻 Blueberry the bear – I wanted so much more about Shesheshen’s furry friend!


Bookish Mixed Bags:
👹 Considering that the narrator is a cannibalistic monster, there are obviously many gory scenes. Though these are not written in a deliberately gross way, they are still *tough to digest*. Of course, the genre of this book merits the use of such content, so this is more of a ME problem than a BOOK problem.

👹 The sapphic “romance” has its appeal. I loved the idea of an almost-parasitic love story with Shesheshen mostly viewing Homily as a potential nest. But I gotta admit, it is a bit too unconvincing and straightforward. The complications of such a relationship aren’t addressed at all.

👹 The pacing is somewhat mixed. The start of the book is fine, but the second half gets bogged down by a few repetitive discussions and needless developments.

👹 Homily’s family is the epitome of a dysfunctional family. While this does bring some serious themes to the book, it is weird to see Shesheshen identifies Homily’s generational trauma and repressed feelings and what not. There is much pseudo-human awareness in her narration that doesn’t make sense considering her background. No way she would have known so much about mental health and therapy.

👹 While there are plenty of entertaining characters in the book, they seem almost caricaturish at times. Hardly anyone is realistic or layered. What you see is what you get. They do their jobs well, but I wish there had been a greater complexity to their portrayal. I wish at least one of Homily’s family members had been more “normal.”


Bookish Nays:
☠️ The ending drags. The epilogue is a bit too cheesy for this genre.

☠️ If you are the kind of reader who likes to see characters get comeuppance for their unethical decisions, you won't be very happy. Shesheshen gets away with quite a lot in this book, not getting even a slap on her shapeshifted wrist.


🎧 The Audiobook Experience:
The audiobook, clocking at 9 hrs 36 min, is narrated by Carmen Rose. She does a fabulous job of expressing every character. As the storyline is linear, the audio would be a great option of trying out this book.


All in all, I mostly had fun reading this unconventional debut novel. It was not at all my kind of book, but the different approach and the freshness of the storyline satisfied me to a great extent. I am not sure if there is a thing such as “cozy horror”, but this came pretty close. It would help if you can suspend disbelief, as you should for most fantasy works.

Recommended, though I am not sure to whom. Maybe to cozy fantasy/romantasy fans who don’t mind macabre body horror and are willing to lay logic aside.

3.5 stars, rounding up for the creativity and humour.


My thanks to Tantor Audio for providing the ALC of “Someone You Can Build a Nest In” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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[Ali L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cozy sapphic ace body horror monster romance wasn’t something I had on my bingo card for 2025 but so far (33 days in) not a lot that’s occurred this year was on my bingo card so sure, why not. Shesheshen is a shape-shifter who minds her own business and hangs out with her friend, a bear named Blueberry (🥹) until monster hunters totally home-invade her and wake her up from a nap. This sets of a series of events that force her to flee and run into Homily, whose family is pretty Disney-villainesque (with amazing names - I unironically want to name my non-existent son Catharsis). Shesheshen becomes smitten with Homily and decides that she’s the perfect person to lay her eggs into so her offspring can slowly eat their way out. It’s not how my relationship works but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Do these crazy kids make it work? Does Homily escape her abusive family? Does Shesheshen just eat everybody? Does Blueberry just eat everybody? How many times can the word “tissues” be used in one book? Better check it out. Beware: if you’re easily icked out by bloody bodily bits being described in graphic, drippy detail, you will be queasy. Yay love!

[Me, My Shelf, & I · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hi, I loved this and am about to make it part of my whole personality. Please read this book. Edit: I read this less than one week later and loved it just as much a second time.

Edit 8/15/24: This has continued to remain my favourite book so far in 2024 and I don't anticipate m/any major contenders to challenge it in the last third of the year.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is a delightfully cozy, funny horromantasy about what it means to be human, what it means to truly love someone, and healing from traumatic families. It's told from the POV of a monster that slowly finds itself falling in love. She has a blue bear (creatively named Blueberry), a remarkable ability to re-create perfectly detailed human hands, and devilishly sinister threats like "if you lie I will eat your lips."

#MonsterLife:
Unfortunately, the human she thinks she's falling in love with is part of a family that's out hunting her, so she has to do things like: borrow (aka digest) an olfactory system so she can blend in-- so tedious to maintain, not kill humans who are being rude at any moment she wants to, and even tie deer antlers to sheep and try to convince her beloved that that's the monster they're hunting.

The Writing:
If not already apparent, I was enamored by the humor which consistently dropped little nuggets that perfectly tickled my funny bone. But I also enjoyed the way a non-human monster viewed humanity and blending in with phrases like "romance was awful," or "arguing was the hardest form of talking." And equally they could say the absolutely sweetest things that made me genuinely buy into the romance such as when her gf is injured and "she wanted to... spend the rest of her life protecting that shoulder."

The Ending:
Some of the twists were well-telegraphed and easy to guess, but others were very fun developments that felt organic to the story and further reflected the characters' inner selves and their growth. I like when knowledge of a magic system is expanded on by the end of the book for both the reader and the characters. All of it was very satisfying for me.

Overall:
Don't be surprised if you hear me screaming about this book or re-reading it within a week. I absolutely loved it and if I didn't have other commitments would probably immediately start a re-read.

Does the ~dog die?:
Blueberry is attacked and injured in an attempt to use their relationship as bait, but able to be fully healed and recovered.

Audiobook Notes:
The narrator did an absolutely stunning job. I loved the way she was able to slightly alter her speech so that it was very obvious and differentiated between the voices in a way that felt natural and not at all distracting.
Do note: they have an English accent and speak a little quickly compared to other narrators (I normally listen to audiobooks at 3x speed but initially adjusted this down to 2.5x speed because I was driving and she was just a little too fast with the addition of any single other distraction).

Thank you to Tantor Audio and NetGalley for granting me an audio ARC. All thoughts, opinions, and incessant screaming about this book are my own.

[K.J. Charles]

Monster romance. Shesheshen is a shapeshifting gelatinous blob that absorbs the bones of its victims along with whatever else eg bear traps and uses them as bones. Homily comes of an aristo family that has made its life work to hunt down and kill the Wyrm, ie Shesheshen. But Shesheshen, masquerading as human, falls for Homily, which means the next step is to kill her and lay eggs in her.

It's a truly fantastic set up and I read the first chunk with massive enjoyment. The book then goes down a different direction, tackling Holiy's abusive family, and...eh. I just didn't believe a monster that grew alone in a swamp and eats people could so easily recognise the complex dynamics of emotional abuse and trauma responses in humans. I felt like the therapy language was a short cut to an understanding that would have been more powerful if we'd seen it grow organically. I also never really connected with Homily, perhaps because Shesheshen's view of her was so often mediated by analysis.

This probably lands very differently for people for whom this is a more habitual way to speak so there we are. I thoroughly enjoyed Shesheshen's terminal approach to interpersonal problems, and all the gelatinous monster fun to be had, and indeed the hilariously squicky henchman.

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
this was very fun. i love the idea of cozy horror and Shesheshen was such an interesting character. but i think this would have worked better as a novella. it dragged on a lot

[milo in the woods · Rating 2 out of 5]

i actually think it is a big pussy move to give your eldritch horror a moral compass. i think shesheshen should have been way nastier.

i felt like homily didn’t really have much of a personality, and i also struggled with her family being villainous in such an overwrought manner. this story definitely had potential for me but the execution was not successful.

i wonder if it would have been more to my taste as a novella, because all the action scenes in the last half felt jumbled and unclear and could probably have been condensed to one scene.

[Tricia Levenseller · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wild ride! I never knew what would happen next. Dying for more monstrous main characters.

[Christine Sandquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utter delight from start to finish. I can't recommend this enough! Shesheshen is fabulously alien and monstrous, and she never loses that even as she gains an understanding of love and empathy. The romance is slow and sweet and does a wonderful job of focusing on each of them as full people.

Wiswell, as an author, recognizes the fine line between being caring and supportive and being traumatized and self-sacrificing. He leans in, asking difficult questions: do you love your partner for who they are, or are you in love with their trauma? And what if their trauma is part of what has made them who they are?

[G? · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the grotesque descriptions of monsters and how alien all of it was, but the novel falls a bit flat for me. And I won’t go into actual spoilers, but the plot twist/ending reveal was such a goddamn let down.

Shesheshen is a very interesting character, but the main problem is halfway through the novel, her internal dialogue is Too Human sounding, in my opinion. Her relationship with Homily is neat on paper, but it feels almost one dimensional with how fast it develops at the beginning, and then stagnates for the rest of the novel while the plot moves to be about Homily’s family issues.

Speaking of issues, why does Shesheshen even know the word “allosexual” if she’s a man-eating, eldritch monster that only hangs around humans long enough to eat them? How does this word exist in this setting in the first place? I think it’s neat and interesting that Homily and her are both ace, but in terms of setting and proposed time period of this medieval-type fantasy novel, I find the word ‘allosexual’ to be really jarring to come across, since it’s such a modern word that only been used in the last 10-20 years.

Same thing with the usage of the term “enby”. I actually have more problems with this, since it seems like the author thinks of nonbinary people as just a third gender that you can easily categorize people into, when thats very much not the case. How is it possible for Shesheshen, who’s never even interacted with some of these characters, to be able to pinpoint when someone is nonbinary or not? Nonbinary people do not all look the same, and in fact: nonbinary is literally an umbrella term used for any gender that isn’t necessarily /just/ man or woman. I love the inclusion of trans characters in media, but when used in this way of just having the main character basically look and point and some side character and say “this is a nonbinary character”, it comes off as just trying to add trans characters in a checklist type of way.

I want to clarify that there’s nothing wrong with the inclusion of either of these types of characters, in fact I welcome more representation to be shown! But it’s a bit frustrating as someone who is nonbinary (and aro for that matter!) to feel like proper research or thought wasn’t put into how it would come across. And I know this won’t probably be issues for other people, and it likely comes off as really nit-picky, but these two points bothered me for the rest of my reading experience.

Very sad to say that I didn’t enjoy this book considering it has such an interesting premise, oh well.

[Ella · Rating 1 out of 5]

Look, I simply just don’t think that a shapeshifting blob of slime in a generic medieval stasis world is going to use words like ‘allosexual’ and ‘enby,’ and I certainly don’t think said slimy parasitic decidedly non-human creature is going to immediately be able to recognise abusive family dynamics in humans. Also, egad, the therapy-speak is grating and the ending is pure unprocessed glurge.

[Maja · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be the weirdest book I’ve ever read. I say that with love.

[Greekchoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun! I’m having fun!

A carnivorous shapeshifting monster falls for a sweet monster-hunter. This one’s got a voice on it: gross and weird and gory when it could have chosen to be treacly and safe and cozy. I love the use of metaphor here, where language usually associated with sensuality is taken literally, or applied to Shesheshen’s monstrous practicality. To DEVOUR your lover. To CONSUME them. All very good, plus a nice understated discussion of autistic masking where I think other authors would’ve been too obvious.

I see where some people have criticized this book for its blatant terms: Shesheshen does indeed know too much about human sexuality and abusive dynamics for a misanthropic monster. But I think Wiswell’s choice to place labels on these is both specific and intentional.

[Brok3n · Rating 3 out of 5]

Destination Uncanny Valley

I have mixed feelings about John Wiswell's debut novel Someone You Can Build a Nest In. Intellectually, it's one of the most interesting attempts I've read at a problem Science Fiction authors have always struggled with -- creating aliens that are actually alien. But emotionally, alas, I didn't really connect with it. Sadly, I finished the book with a feeling of relief.

I don't guess Wiswell was aiming at Science Fiction, but rather Horror Fantasy. Fine, I don't care where the bookstore shelves it. It stars an alien monster that a science fiction author would be proud of. What's more, the alien monster, Sheshehen, is the main point of view character. And she is truly biologically alien. She's a blob of flesh and can voluntarily take any shape and incorporate anything she eats. Does she have bones? If she wants to, and if she eats something with bones. Her life-cycle, though inhuman, is more familiar. Wiswell obviously based it on the truly horrifying Parasitoid Wasp -- they lay eggs in the body of a host, the eggs hatch and consume the host, killing it -- thus the title Someone You Can Build a Nest In.

This leads to some fascinatingly awkward etiquette problems, like this one

There was no easy way to ask if Homily wanted her to eat her mother.

Indeed, it's a difficult subject to broach.

Where Shesheshen's alienness slips is in her inner life. She thinks and wants and communicates in a very human way. In fact, she falls in love with a human. How does she have the capacity for a very human-seeming love? Her species reproduces asexually. In real Earth animals eggs are invariably the result of sexual reproduction, but Shesheshen's species seems to be all-female, and Shesheshen produces eggs without any conspecific males or mating with conspecifics. Perhaps she a hermaphrodite or parthenogenic, but it seems more likely that she is simply unlike any Earth animal. Furthermore, like Parasitoid wasps they do not nurture their young. It is difficult to understand how, with this biology, it makes sense for her to experience a very human love.

Well, of course it is not really that difficult to understand. Wiswell is bowing to the exigencies of fiction. He wants a point-of-view character that his readers (most of whom he assuredly expects to be human) can relate to. For me this doesn't quite work. The alien biology combined with the almost human psyche combine to place Shesheshen in the Uncanny Valley. One suspects that Wiswell may be doing this deliberately.

I personally am not a big fan of Romance novels, and while I appreciate the creativity of this one, it landed outside my sweet spot. It would not surprise me to learn that it works better for folks who have broader romance tolerances.

I thank NetGalley and DAW for an advance reader copy of Someone You Can Build a Nest In. This review expresses my honest opinions.

Blog review.

[Melki · Rating 5 out of 5]

What was this physical nonsense? It was her body. She controlled the nerve endings. It shouldn't be allowed to tell her how to feel. A single organ didn't command her.

Shesheshen is a terrifying shape-shifting monster. She uses components of anything she devours, be it inorganic or human, to build a body. Though she does need to occasionally satiate her hunger, on the whole, she just wants to be left alone. Unfortunately, there always seem to be a bunch of pesky villagers with torches and pitchforks rosemary soaked harpoons out looking to slay "The Wyrm", as she's called by the local yokels. It is through one such encounter that she meets Homily, a kindhearted, gentle soul, who sees the good in Shesheshen, and only seeks to help her. ZING go the strings of whatever stuff Shesheshen has inside her at the moment, and now she's feeling all sorts of confusing feels. Could Homily be the proper nest for Shesheshen's eggs . . . someone to hold the eggs within her lungs where they would be bathed in oxygen until they were strong enough to burrow out?

Or does Shesheshen love Homily too much to let her be devoured by their young?

And, then there's Homily's terrible family, devout monster-hunters who would never approve of this newly hatched love . . .

You can probably tell that I enjoyed the heck out of this dark fairy tale. There's plenty of gore (digesting people is a messy business), but there's also a lot of humor, and Shesheshen's struggle to playact the proper human reminded me quite a bit of one of my favorite film characters - Bella Baxter in Poor Things. For poor monsters struggling to fit in, it's a strange new world to navigate, and it's easy to forget the very complicated regulations. Honestly, Shesheshen - there are only two rules you really need to follow: never say "No" to love, and only gobble up people who deserve to be eaten.

Many thanks to NetGalley and DAW for the fun.

[The Captain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ahoy there me mateys!  There is a lot of awesome in this story of Shesheshen the monster falling in love with a human.  I loved the tale being told from the prospective of the monster.  Shesheshen's viewpoint of humans and their particularities was excellent fun.  I found the beginning of this novel up through the monster meeting the love interest, Homily, to be captivating.  Homily, of course, thinks Shesheshen is a human.  The monster learning about how humans think about love was also wonderful.  The insight into monster ethics was excellent.

Sadly, I did not love Homily as a character, even though she was sympathetic.  She seemed very one dimensional.  As the novel progressed I found the romance subplot and Homily's family began to irk me.  I did not like the plot twist regarding Homily's mother at all.  The logic of the story did not always work for me.

I also wish the novel would not have taken the direction it did once the big bad was dealt with.  Part of the problem was all of the lying that Shesheshen did to Homily seemed to be brushed off with no real consequences.  The reasons for the lies made sense but were not resolved satisfactorily.  It personally never felt like the two became partners.  Plus the epilogue was odd and too long.

I am still extremely glad I read this though because the beginning imagery and plot is going to stick with me for quite sometime.  I could see meself rereading this book just because of how enjoyable it was.  Oh and Blueberry the Bear rocks!  So I do highly recommend it.  I think the problems are more me and not the book.  Arrr!

[Laurie (barksbooks) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has elements of many things I love to read. Monsters! And true monsters who eat some awful people as a survival mechanism! Monsters who may be more human than some of the humans in their orbit and who may even fall in love. All in one book. Fantastic!

Shesheshen was in her lair minding her own business and hibernating, as she does, when a group of idiot monster-hunters and a fancy man in gold armor wake her and invade her space. Of course, now that she’s awake she might be a little hungry and need a little meat. Ooops, too bad for them. Anyhow, she shapeshifts into a humanoid form, using some unique parts, and heads to town for more snacks but finds trouble and a kind human named Homily.

What happens next is a very strange and imaginative romance-tinged adventure as Homily and Shesheshen flee for their lives from the villains in town and their own secrets come around to haunt them both. At times the story is gross and gruesome, but it's also sweet and the author creates a good balance of melancholy and dark humor. The dialogue coming from Shesheshen was often hilarious to me.

“Can we not talk right now?”

“Yes, I love not talking.”

Talking was awful when you weren’t threatening people. ~ Shesheshen who is my favorite monster of all time now, lol.

I loved this story. It’s one of those books you can fall into if you’re into its characters and invested in their story and I was. There are plenty of characters I loved to hate and a few things that surprised me. Some might think it moves a little slow at times and I guess it does but that didn’t bother me for once. I’d pick it up to read a few chapters and end up reading a huge chunk when I should’ve been doing other things.

Definitely recommended to anyone who likes all of these things and doesn't mind the gory bits.

[Melanie (meltotheany)]

picked this up in flint w/ my family <3

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[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

the plot was more about mommy issues than it was about breeding, which surprised me, lol. this book is the epitome of "would you love me if i was a worm?"

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someone You Can Build A Nest In is a marvelously creative novel that is-at times-grisly, poignant and very entertaining. It provides intriguing examinations of the nature of humanity through the eyes of its protagonist Shesheshen: a shapeshifting monster who falls in love with a young woman named Homily who tends to her following a fall from a cliff during a pursuit by monster-hunters.

Although it does have its moments of coziness, Someone You Can Build A Nest In also touches upon familial abuse, trauma, the consequences of low self-esteem and the inevitable damage caused by unintentionally destructive coping mechanisms.

Shesheshen is an immensely unique protagonist and the novel does not shy away from the more disturbing aspects of her behavior. The body horror as she constructs her body time and again is fascinating, as it goes beyond the more traditional shapeshifting that is often depicted. Facets of her personality were also very relatable: the unease with interacting with others, the not always comprehending social customs and the concern of saying the incorrect thing due to ignorance.

Homily is an intriguing character as well. While immensely compassionate, she is also depicted an individual who is accustomed to self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. She also isn’t miraculously “healed” by Shesheshen’s affections, but they both make an effort to try and help one another and do so at their own pace rather than following any particular conventions.

The plot overall is engrossing, the antagonist is quite monstrous and the conclusion really does wrap things up wonderfully.

Thank you to NetGalley, DAW Books and to John Wiswell for providing access to this ebook. All opinions expressed are solely my own.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

ETA: This won the Nebula for Best Novel for 2025, so why not pick it up and give yourself some joy?

This is a ridiculous book that I loved very much. Also, because I have low spoons at the moment and also because I couldn’t do better, here are some key moments from the blurb:

"Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she’s fallen in love."

"Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor."

"Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out."

"Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option."

"And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life."

I think you’ll agree whoever wrote that blurb deserves an award of some sort. And in my opinion, it perfectly represents what you will get in the book: a tongue in cheek, weird little story about a monster who learns to be a person, while gross and funny things are constantly happening to and around her.

Also, I WILL NOTE LOUDLY, both of the love interests in this book, Shesheshen and Homily, are not only homoromantic but ASEXUAL. There is also a tertiary character in here that is called the offspring for most of the book that made me CACKLE every time it was on page. The last time I laughed this hard at a book and tabbed so many memorable, funny, and utterly weird lines was Gideon the Ninth.

I don’t know what to tell you about all the mediocre reviews of this one. They just don’t get it. I thought this book was perfect and exactly what I wanted, and I can’t wait to see what John Wiswell and his weird little mind do next.

Read Harder 2024: Read a book based solely on the title.

r/Fantasy BINGO 2024: Book Club or Readalong Book (Hard Mode)

CBR BINGO: Bananas

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

When they named the offspring Epilogue I rolled my eyes so hard I fell off my bed but it wasn’t enough so I actually absorbed my kindle into my own beige wyrm flesh and used it to gouge my eyes from the inside out

[Laika · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the latest in my attempt to read every nominee for Best Novel and Novella in time to actual give an informed vote at the Hugos this year, and the first that I can be really pretty positive I would never have read otherwise. In this case, for good reason – I aspire to dip my toes a bit into romance as a genre sometime this year, but suffice to say that temperamentally it is just Not My Thing All the more so because the overall incredibly positive buzz about this book has been the kind (cozy, affirming, heart-warming, relatable main characters, etc) that’s honestly more of a red flag than anything to me. But I made an arbitrary commitment and have said I want to expand my horizons so – I really have no one to blame here but myself.

The story follows Shesheshen, the much-reviled and feared shape-changing ‘wyrm’ whose occasional man-eating predations have long troubled the inhabitants of the isthmus she calls home. After being awoken from her winter hibernation by a trio of monster hunters (properly: two monsters and an aristocratic blowhard who hired and is ‘leading’ them) and very nearly killed, she falls off the side of a cliff and very luckily happens to still look semi-human when her body is found by the travelling scholar Homily and nursed back to health. Shesheshen, have little (read: literally no) experience with being cared for and shown unconditional kindness, falls head over heels in love with her and very quickly begins dreaming of making a family together – which, for her species, means implanting her eggs deep within Homily’s body so their children will grow healthy and strong on her flesh as they hatch. Some issues of communication and cultural differences quickly present themselves.

For all that the romance is the centre of the book’s marketing (and, clearly, appeal), this is actually really quite a plotty story. Romance (and the romanticization of predatory or sacrificial relationships) are major themes, of course, but honestly it feels like the better part of the page count – and certainly most of the action and big set pieces – are instead dedicated to dealing with monster hunters, abusive family, and the overlap between the two. Theoretically, the book’s preoccupied with themes I am intensely interested in (romance aside) and would be very easy to sell on. In practice, everything came out so painfully heavy-handed and focused on making sure the audience both knew and knew the author knew the correct reactions to have that it became kind of insufferable.

I have, it must be said, something of a long-standing grudge against books that market themselves as and play with the aesthetics and genre trappings of ‘horror’ but are actually just life-affirming tales and acceptance and found family which happen to have some fangs and pseudopods scattered across the main cast. Which, to my great displeasure, was more or less exactly what this turned out to be. This is not a book that really asks you to sympathize with monsters – Shesheshen has theoretically been eating people for years and years as the mood and appetite took her, but the book is quite conscientious about making sure she does basically nothing actually unsympathetic while we know her. There is functionally never a point in this book where there is any sort of actual moral ambiguity or tension – it is clear within a page of meeting them how much you should like a character, with signifiers and symbolism applied so thickly it’s be impossible to miss, and the book absolutely never challenges or makes you go back and reconsider those judgments. There are a few somewhat engaging or slightly tense action scenes, but horror? It deserves the label less than the Adams Family.

While I might consider this false advertising, it’s really just more of a genre mismatch – this is a romance with some light horror aesthetics, not a romantic horror story (this is a meaningful distinction I will fight to defend the honour of). I am significantly less qualified to judge the book as a romance, save that it didn’t really work for e. Which is fairly unsurprising – there are definitely stories whose romances are as or more prominent and fundamental to the story than this one which I loved, but none of them were really genre romances like this one was. So like yeah, if you go in expecting The Locked Tomb (or even This Is How You Lose The Time War) this is a 0/10. But also why would you do that.

Though even for a romance where genre constraints preordained a happy ending for the main couple, there really was a tragic lack of real interest or conflict in that driving relationship. The actual drama and tension of the story was more or less exclusively between Shesheshen and Homily against their families and the world – internal to the relationship, there is a lot of Shesheshen angsting about how to admit the whole ‘shapeshifting man-eating monster who has ostensibly cursed and is hunting her family’ thing that all leads up to getting resolved by love and acceptance like 3 pages after it finally comes out.

Which is a shame, because if you squint a bit at the basic conceit – lifelong scavenger and predator who has never received selfless care before in her life realizes to her horror that she fell in love less with the woman and more with her unhealthy coping mechanisms and martyr complex – is in fact an incredibly meaty and interesting character dynamic. But doing anything with it would require Shesheshen to actually show some edge and be less than sympathetic to people you’re supposed to care about (also, for Homily to be even slightly interesting at some point).

It is tempting for me to say that the book’s fundamental issue is that the author spent too much of the 2010s on twitter, but I really have no way to know that. Still, for a basically unsocialized shapeshifting, human-eating magical predator whose narration takes pains to establish that she never talks to people for longer than strictly necessary to acquire a meal, has no idea how to make a first impression, and generally finds human contact hateful and viscerally uncomfortable, Sesheshen’s internal monologue is truly inexplicably emotionally intelligent, attuned to and outraged by the subtleties of exploitative or abusive relationships, and prone to making profound and all-encompassing statements on the nature of human psychology and trauma that line up very well with the progressive conventional wisdom of that milieu. As there was a great deal of buzz about what a compellingly alien and inhuman protagonist she was – and as that was the aspect of the book I really was legitimately looking forward to as I opened it – the incoherence of her character that results is a profound disappointment.

Recommend if you’re a genre romance fan looking for some interestingly-written descriptions of a flesh-eating shapeshifter finding love, I guess.

[Elle (ellexamines on TT & Substack) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone to Build a Nest In is a quirky and often-delightful romance between Shesheshen, a shapeshifting monster able to consume people for their parts, and Homily, a warm-hearted human whose difficult family happens to be hunting the monster. A match made in heaven, except for the even bigger complexity: Shesheshen desperately wants to lay her eggs in Homily, but those eggs would eat her inside out.

I was expecting this to be a fairly dark gothic romance – it's absolutely not. Really, the best comparison is probably T. Kingfisher's also-excellent Nettle & Bone. It's essentially a humorous cozy fantasy / fairy tale romance with an eye towards finding new forms of futurity outside a typical reproductive cycle, either a typical human or a typical monster's. I couldn't help but think about José Muñoz's seminal Cruising Utopia on finding queer futurities; the focus towards finding a different method of future, outside of reproduction, is extremely strong.

There's a lot to love here. If you enjoy body horror and weirdness, you'll enjoy this quite a bit; the imagery is extremely strong and very visceral. Shesheshen is a really strong character – her complete inability to understand why social cues mean the things they mean creates a great combination between 'believably monstrous' and 'believably undercover'. She's both doing a good job pretending, and doesn't quite get these people! Additionally, the arc of Homily as an abuse survivor is extremely strong; you genuinely believe in her as someone who would fall for a 'monster', and are rooting for her to receive the type of love and care Shesheshen offers. Their romantic arc is heavily defined by Shesheshen's defensiveness of and loyalty towards Homily, and seeing her begin to experience anger and ferocity as an aspect of care – rather than the beginning of violence as she's experienced with her family – is gorgeous.

On a more negative note, though, I really struggled with the pacing. The middle section of the novel is genuinely repetitive to a point of nearing boredom. I almost felt that this could have cut a hundred pages and turned out better. (Nothing wrong with a fairy-tale novella!) Also, as Arie astutely points out, Someone to Build a Nest In occasionally pulls out therapy speak. We are in a medieval fairy tale, and the audience for the f/f cannibalism romance can already identity that the parent figure is toxic without being told so!

I landed on a three for this, but I still enjoyed myself quite a bit, and I'm sure I'll read more by this author if he's still on these themes. Recommended if the blurb sounds like catnip to you (as it was to me); otherwise, fine to skip.

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[quillnqueer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you don't have your own body parts, using your enemy's is a fine alternative. The best thing you can do when recommending this book to anyone is to tell them absolutely nothing about it and make them go in blind because it truly is WILD.

That being said, this is a cosy, found family story of sapphic love, asexuality and parenting, and it's also a gruesome dark story of parental abuse and body horror. The two ideas blend so seamlessly together it's pretty incredible, and I was so satisfied when I closed the final page.

[Booksblabbering || Cait❣️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the cleverest, weirdest, driest, funniest books I have had the strange pleasure of reading.

At its basics, a human-eating shapeshifter falls in love with the daughter of a powerful monster hunting family. However, I would hesitate to call this a romance or a horror.

There was no easy way to ask if Homily wanted her to eat her mother.

If you told me I would fall in love with a being that incorporates pieces of the environment or her past victims to lend structure to her gelatinous body, I would have raised my eyebrows. If you told me Shesheshen falls in love with the soft-spoken, kind-hearted woman called Homily who saved her, I’d be sending heart-eyes.

Genre-blending, emotional, healing.
Plus, my favourite declaration of love ever:

Homily professed her love by digging a second crossbow bolt of Shersheshin's body. It was so much clearer a declaration of affection than any of those speeches spun by poets or playwrights. And stuffed into the mouths of actors who pretended to be enamored. One could only pretend to love in language. True love was a woman sinking up to her elbows in her viscera.

What really stood out to me was Shesheshen noting the abuses of the people around her and trying to slowly heal brokenness by confronting compartmentalising and harming thought patterns. She supports and challenges Homily with a pure gentleness, encouraging her to stand up to her family, recognise her own worth, and to prioritise her own desires. 

This is just such a smartly written book with nearly-missed puns, underlying wry wit, and startling observations.

Finally, I have to applaud the unconventional narrative arc. The climax is not the end. There is a lot of time spent afterwards to heal and go through the hard parts. Yes, it is cheesy, but boy did it work for me this time around.

I would recommend the audiobook format because the dry humour is really brought to the forefront and the accents are executed marvellously.

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