Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 2, 2024 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In is the first novel by award winning SF/F short story writer John Wiswell. The story is a fantasy romance that's F/F, features ace characters, and oh yeah, one of them is a shapeshifting monster that desires to find someone it can lay eggs in for their babies to eat their way out of and through (and the other is a maybe a little neurodivergent human). Wiswell's works often deal with serious themes while also being incredibly quirky and amusing, and this novel - as you can imagine from the premise - continues that trend in excellent fashion.
As I'll further detail below the jump, I really liked Someone You Can Build a Nest In. Its third person protagonist Shesheshen is delightful in how her monstrous point of view gives her a surprisingly good view of humanity (while also giving her plenty of blindspots) and the story does an excellent job with themes of parental/familial emotional abuse through its human love interest Homily - whose family shuns her and always treats her like dirt as she tries to be good amongst its aggresive monster hunting ways. Oh and the story is somehow still light despite that, features a number of delightful quirks (like a pompous human man in the nearby village Shesheshen repeatedly threatens to try to get him to do things she needs who responds in a surprising way), and whose central romance winds up being incredibly charming and surprising in how it plays out. Without spoiling anything, I'll say this book takes its final act or two into directions I very much didn't expect, after seemingly setting itself up for some well used (if not loved by me) romance tropes. So yeah, this book is a real winner, and I'll be unsurprised if it shows up on awards lists.
Trigger Warnings: Emotional Abuse from Parents and Siblings: The romantic interest, Homily, is repeatedly berated and emotionally abused by her sister and mother, and her learning she doesn't have to simply accept this, and that suffering for the sake of her family/loves is not right or good, is a major theme.
Plot Summary:
Shesheshen is a shapeshifting monster whose default form is basically a blob...but she can incorporate things she eats like bones and metal to give herself a bone structure and appear more human. It's a necessary adaptation for when she needs to go down to the local village to eat someone for sustenance, but otherwise Shesheshen prefers to live alone in her lair with her giant blue furred bear she's trained as a companion. And she dreams of her most warm memory: the warmth of emerging from her egg in the corpse of her father and eating her way through him and her siblings...and hopes that one day she can find the perfect person to lay her own eggs in so her offspring can have the same experience.
But when monster hunters awaken Shesheshen from hibernation early, the act of defending herself goes wrong: she successfully eats the pompous noble lord leading the hunt, but the two hunters with him survive and lead the villagers against her while she's still weak, and she falls off a cliff trying to elude them. When she wakes up, she finds herself surprisingly being nursed back to health by a human woman named Homily, who has mistook her for a fellow human. Shesheshen is at first confused by Homily's kindness....and then is absolutely smitten. Here is the person she would love to lay her eggs in....but there's just one problem: How can she admit to Homily she's not a human but a monster when Homily's family is hunting a monster that they believe cursed her whole family...a monster that is Shesheshen herself?
This novel is smartly told entirely from Shesheshen's perspective - we never see from the perspective of the human characters, but only the shapeshifting human eating monster. Shesheshen grew up on her own, without a parent, and relies on her instincts and experience for knowledge about the world: which at times makes her wise but at other times makes her (understandably naïve). She doesn't understand human social dynamics to be sure, but at the same time she doesn't have the upbringing in human social ways that would condition her to ignore what is accepted by humans but is obviously horrible if you come to think about it. Most notably, Shesheshen doesn't understand the willingness of humans to accept their own suffering for the sakes of others whose actions show they don't actually value or care for them to deserve their sacrifice...most notably, one's family.
For that is the struggle faced by the story's second main character, Shesheshen's love interest Homily. Homily is a girl who's clearly asexual in a world where that isn't quite understood (at one point, Homily is shocked and relieved that Shesheshen also isn't interested in kissing) and is perhaps a bit neurodivergent and unable to truly quite react to people as would be considered "normal" and socially appropriate. She's immensely kind and caring - hence her nursing of Shesheshen back to health - but to a fault, to the point where she tries to care for and help her family even as they unfairly berate or even physically harm her...and she can't help but blame herself for her family's actions and feelings towards her. We never see Homily interact with her brother, but he's a pompous asshole, and her two sisters both feel at constant liberty to scream at and physically harm her whenever they want...and Homily blames herself for her sisters wanting to do that, as if something she did while they were growing up is responsible for that. Meanwhile, Homily's mother is a cruel person who seemingly cares about nothing more than slaying the monster she thinks is responsible for a curse on their family...no matter how many innocent lives of villagers or mercenaries she hired it costs, and sees Homily not being as violent and as aggressive as her siblings as a massive flaw and something worth yelling about. And yet Homily can't break away from that family, even as Shesheshen can see how they don't deserve her love.....which of course causes Shesheshen to plot to eat that family to save Homily. She is a monster after all.
Such is the character setup for a plot that, with a lot of very fun Wiswell quirkiness (like I mentioned before the jump, there's a human villager character who's a pompous ass at the start whose reaction to Shesheshen is very different and kind of funny), looks like it's going in directions you'd expect: where the humans are revealed as the real monsters but Shesheshen and Homily's relationship is broken apart at first by the revelation of the truth of Shesheshen's physical monstrosity. There's even a part where Shesheshen finds herself growing an organ that pumps blood for the first time, as if she's growing a heart. But here's the thing - without spoiling - that makes this book a step up from other books: it does not go in the directions you'd expect (alright the theme of Humans often being the real monsters is real, but that's about it). There are some late plot twists in the final third that shift things massively on their head, Shesheshen and Homily's relationship and the revelation interact in very different ways, and it all comes together in an immensely satisfying, if far from bloodless, conclusion.
Just a remarkably satisfying Queer/Ace Fantasy Romance (or Romantic Fantasy - but I think it counts as romance since it has a Happy Ever After of a kind). Highly recommended.
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