Para's Proper Reviews: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

Thanks to the publisher (DAW) for the ARC of this book.

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.

Enjoyment: 4/5
Execution: 3/5

Recommended to: anyone intrigued by the concept of asexual monster romance (by an asexual author), those looking for some fun squishy body horror
Not recommended to: anyone sensitive to abusive families, if you find a main character hiding a huge important secret for the whole book too stressful, those looking for decent worldbuilding (it’s barely there)

Bingo squares: Romantasy (HM), Published 2024 (HM), Judge a Book by Its Cover, Set In a Small Town, Bookclub, arguably Eldritch Creatures (HM), Prologues and Epilogues if you want to be funny

Content warnings: abuse, animal cruelty, gore/body horror

More reviews on my blog, To Other Worlds.