Review: 'Someone You Can Build a Nest In' by John Wiswell

Being a monster is hard. Everyone runs away screaming when they see you or, even worse, keeps trying to murder you when all you're doing is minding your business and looking for someone to start a family with. But what happens when you fall in love with one of those people interested in killing the monster? Meet Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell, a delightful Fantasy Romance which will answer those questions. It also has  a stunning cover! Thanks to DAW and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 04/02/2024
Publisher: DAW

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 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.

Monsters; we love to be scared of them. I recently taught a university module on monstrosity and Otherness in medieval literature and one of the theoretical frameworks I discussed with my students were the seven theses of monstrosity, as proposed by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. He suggested that we can explore societies and cultures through the monsters they create, because our monsters reveal a lot! His first thesis, for example, speaks of the monster's body and how it is a cultural body, across which social issues are explored. Think of the body of Medusa, from Greek mythology, for example, and how her monstrous body is a consequence of a sexual assault. Another thesis speaks of how the monster always returns, which we can see through the figure of the vampire, which returns again and again to popular culture to explore concerns about immigration (in Bram Stoker's Dracula), homosexuality (Ann Rice's novels) and teen romance from a Mormon perspective (see Twilight, which also responds to another thesis of Cohen's, about how we desire the monster as much as we are afraid of it). I really like Cohen's approach to monstrosity and while reading Someone You Can Build a Nest In I kept thinking of how interestingly Shesheshen fits to some of these theses and how she, as a monster, reveals cultural anxieties. From her shapeshifting abilities, her desire for home and belonging, and her dangerous sexuality (in the sense that her offspring devours her partner), I think Wiswell explores some very interesting things through Shesheshen. Most importantly, however, to me at least, is also how Wiswell asks us to identify with the monster, to question who truly is wrong, and whether those who are different couldn't just happily live alongside us, if some people would just stop screaming 'Monster!'.

Shesheshen is rudely awoken one morning by intruders in her lair. She had been enjoying her hibernation but now she has to get up, arrange her limbs, and deal with a threat. Recovering from her injuries, she has the delightful misfortune of meeting Homily, a human who is much warmer and kinder than Shesheshen has come to expect from the species. Kindness turns to love and now Shesheshen finds herself in front of a difficult choice: assist Homily in hunting herself down or walking away from the one person she could consider starting a family with. I fully enjoyed Someone You Can Build a Nest In from page 1. Shesheshen is a great main character, in part because she is utterly confused about human interaction. I loved the bluntness of some of her statements, how she would just say what she did or did not want and how this led to some very honest communicating. Homily is also a great character, both gentle and sharp, both wounded and determined. The world in which the story takes place is also built up quite nicely, with enough info to make it distinct but not so explicit that it overwhelms the story. In a way, Someone You Can Build a Nest In is a very simple novel, in the sense that its basic storyline is not complex. Yet what Wiswell does with it is excellent, leading to this book being both delightfully but innovatively romantic and a solid Fantasy romp with villains you can hate and heroic monsters you can adore.

This is my first book by John Wiswell, but I'm definitely down for reading more by him! When I began Someone You Can Build a Nest In, I had expected something a bit harsher and more horror-focused, but the tone of the novel is that of a delightful fairy tale. There definitely is body horror and violence in this book and Wiswell also very explicitly deals with abuse and trauma. However, the focus there isn't on shock but rather on tenderly exploring something painful with someone you trust. In that sense, I found the way Wiswell approached the romance in this book enlightening. Shesheshen and Homily are consistently discussing their boundaries, consent, their desires, etc. without it feeling forced or unnatural. While the Romance genre has definitely learned that consent is sexy, it is always good to see authors exploring different ways of presenting it, especially in LGBTQIA+ contexts as well. The same is true for the trauma discussions, which are handled with care. And on top of all of that, this book is funny! I highlighted plenty of phrases that made me laugh and I can see myself rereading this when Halloween and the dark time of the year comes around. 

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

I really enjoyed reading Someone You Can Build a Nest In! It is fun and sweet, while also bringing in a solid dose of body horror and conflict. The way Wiswell addresses trauma, family and belonging throughout the narrative elevated it to a 4 for me.