Someone You Can Build a Nest In

The Publisher Says: Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell

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. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: 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 show more a fellow human. 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. 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 area: 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 deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

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 RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I really hoped that I'd find something that recalled for me the affect and effect of Mrs Caliban in this book.

Not so much.

This being the twenty-first century, I get it; that kind of quiet exploration of repressed rage and thwarted love is not the way this louder, more boisterous time copes with Life. Also, the author's an ace man. We aren't much for writing quiet women unless they are silenced by our power and privilege over them. (Look at the mind-numbing abundance of male-authored "thrillers" centering sex crimes against women sometime.) What this book does, then, is entirely unlike what I was prepared for.

This is a large pipe organ's keyboard. The stops, those round thingies, are the way the organist chooses the kind of sound...brash blaring trumpets, quiet soft woodwinds...the instrument will send into your ears. Author Wiswell pulled the "Strange" stop on his book's keyboard all the way out and then used the loud pedal.

The idea of this being reproducing in the same unspeakably horrifying way that wasps do is nightmarish enough for me. I absolutely abominate wasps. But then to be confronted with Shesheshen, the wasplike alien's, twisted psychology...finding its parasitic fatal-for-Homily (her intended victim) reproductive strategy LOVING!...and I thought, "that's me out!"

And then...

The reason I kept going, pushing past the extreme horripilation induced at the mere notion of this, this travesty on Love was the strength of my horror. If I am this repulsed and infuriated, the author is saying something loud and clear, and however much I don't *like* hearing it I should listen. I am honestly surprised to say I am glad that I did.

Female-presenting monsters are having A Moment, it seems...Alasdair Gray's Poor Things, a book I did not like but a film that was a note-perfect adaptation of it most recently....and Author Wiswell's more SFnal take on it surpasses that deeply strange story. In imaging an alien just trying to exist, as "Bella Baxter" does, as Frankenstein's monster does, but in such a revulsion-evoking way, Author Wiswell makes his readers stop and think: "where is my horror coming from?" Survival by consuming one's host is appalling! When one is the host, yes; but really, are we any different? We are using up the planet, we are complicit in the slave labor that provides us the benefits of food to eat, as well as the devices you're reading and I'm writing this on, and that offers the laborers nothing but early graves.

Some people who reviewed the book on Goodreads had some reservations about the nature of a man writing a love story between a woman and a female-presenting alien, when the love was not sapphic but asexual. To me, this felt like a feature, not a bug (!), because the point was asexuality. That was something I found moving, once I wrapped my head around it; the lovers are genuinely in love and they cannot deny or repress their feelings, nor are these feelings physiologically expressed through sex. If this is something you are unfamiliar with, I recommend reading the excellent Ace by Angela Chen. It was that book that, for the first time, presented me with information about the experience of asexuality, by an asexual person; it is extremely illuminating for someone not asexual.

The attentive have noticed my rating lacks a star despite my laudatory comments. This is not due to its sexual challenge to the allo overculture. It is due to the frankly peculiar pacing, too slow then zooming through character-building opportunities; it's due to the amount of body horror exceeding my personal limits; it's due to my very old-fashioned purseylipped response to the amount of lying Shesheshen does to Homily, that never causes any comment or evokes any sense of betrayal, nor causes Homily to require some assurance that she *can* trust Shesheshen.

Also I kept reading her name as "Hominy" and, considering she was being assessed as a meal by Shesheshen, it made me giggle most immaturely.

None of my minor crotchets should stop you from getting this deeply affecting and very peculiar story into your eyeholes. Soonest. show less

Described as cozy fantasy, which is kind of funny because a lot of people get horrifically devoured by a shapeshifting ooze creature. Also mostly about how people go about excaping abusive relationships with family and attempting to redefine themselves beyond those dynamics. Exploring abusive relationship dynamics isn't exactly what I would call "cosy" but I'm glad that the story had more depth to it than just being cosy fantasy.

Regarding "cosy fantasy", I've often seen this genre described as friction-less which makes sense given that "cosy fantasy" seems to be without stakes of any kind, or at least tradtional plot-centric quest with major consequences riding on this type of storytelling but this story, while more character-driven show more arguably, still has very significant stakes, horrific violence, and definitely an edge to it. show less

This book was basically perfect. It might not be perfect for everybody but it was exactly what I look for in a book. It was the perfect blend of weirdness, darkness, horror, fantasy, and romance. I loved the world and the characters and the overall vibe. It's so queer in the best possible way and it's my absolute favorite kind of dark, gritty, horror-fantasy. I'll be thinking about this for the rest of my life. I really really loved it.

Most people want love, a sense of connection and community—for a lack of a better term, family. This may be the case even when those people are sort-of gelatinous, tentacled creatures who kill and eat animals and humans and then fashion themselves internal bone structures out of their remains! Part horror, part exciting action-adventure story, part romance, all heart (ironic for a main character with no circulatory system?!). I really enjoyed this by turns incredibly gross, sweet and moving, and climactic tale of a monster trying to start a family in a world run by terrifying humans.

Weird, sweet, and gory! Love a nonhuman narrator and Shesheshen's voice in this rocks. So little of the romance I've read has ace representation, so this was a nice switch-up. I do feel like some of the choices made by the main character and the love interest could have resulted in more conflict between them. The ease with which they forgave each other was more unbelievable to me than the snarky lesbian goo monster. Overall, cute read that also grapples with abuse and unhealthy family dynamics!

A (Great).

A shapeshifting monster falls in love while trying not to be slain by the local royals.

There are some story problems. As soon as the villain shows up, the protagonist stops acting. She has a number of specific and urgent goals, and the means to achieve them, but she just sort of... doesn't, for about a third of the book.

But as frustrating as that was, I was already hooked by that point. For the first fifty pages or so I was thinking this was going to be one of my favorite books. And then the long epilogue was heartbreaking enough to almost win me back.

(May 2026)

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

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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: show less