Someone You Can Build A Nest In

A cosy fantasy as sweet as love and as dark as night

By: John Wiswell

Narrated by: Carmen Rose

**Winner: Nebula Award for Best Novel**
**Winner: Locus Award for Best First Novel**
**Shortlisted for: Hugo Award for Best Novel**

'Stealthily funny, slyly smart, and remarkably touching' VERONICA ROTH, bestselling author of WHEN AMONG CROWS

Shesheshen has made a fatal mistake for a monster: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who usually resides as an amorphous lump in the swamp of a ruined manor, unless impolite monster hunters invade intent on murdering her. Through a chance encounter, she meets a different kind of human, warm-hearted Homily, who mistakes Shesheshen for a human in turn.

Shesheshen is loath to deceive, but just as she's about to confess her true identity, Homily reveals she's hunting the shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Shesheshen didn't curse anyone, but to give them both a chance at happiness, she must figure out why Homily's twisted family thinks she did. And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with the woman she loves.

A glorious, funny, occasionally slightly violent love story which asks us to examine - and re-examine - the meaning of legacy, family and love. Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel!

Readers love Someone You Can Build A Nest In

'I adored everything about it' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review

'Charmingly gruesome and unique' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review

'This book is going to live rent free in my head for a long time' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review

'A brilliant, monstrous tale' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review

'One of the finest novels I've read' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review©2024 John Wiswell

Critic reviews

A stealthily funny, slyly smart, and remarkably touching story. Its wisdom will creep up on you as surely as your affection for its monstrous main character

This unusual queer romance is a heartfelt fable about disability and the possibility of reconciling conflicting needs through love and understanding

Imagine Grendel and Beowulf setting aside their differences and deciding to shack up together and you'll have some idea of the flavour of this novel, which balances a sweet, sly sense of humour with some lovingly rendered scenes of gore

Deeply funny and weird . . . a surprisingly sweet - and very gory - love story

Nothing [can] prepare you for the gentle silliness of Wiswell's wonderful science fiction debut (one draped in the aesthetics of fantasy)

This is a fast-paced and gloriously weird novel, full of explosive shenanigans and touching sentiment. It also manages to be an exploration of the queerness and the surprising fragility of monstrous bodies, as well as their resilience . . . a remarkably accomplished debut

Inventive enough to push the boundaries of romance and dark fantasy . . . A wonderfully weird horror romance

Wriggly, heartfelt, and carnivorous

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is sweetly furious, darkly funny, and gruesomely wholesome. It's a love story for the unloved, a happily-ever-after with a higher-than-average body count. I just adored it

A beautiful monster story with a heart, Wiswell treats his outcasts as heroes. He is an author the world desperately needs

Someone You Can Build A Nest In is charming, horrifying, sweet, and funny - everything I could have wanted from John Wiswell's debut novel and more! With the perfect blend of humor and darkness, it's a wholly fresh take on a monster story

It is perhaps a little weird to say that a book with as much body horror as this has would also be warm, cozy, and sweet, but that's perhaps appropriate: it's a weird book. I mean that in the most positive way possible. Wiswell has crafted a story in which the monsters aren't nearly as terrible as the humans who are both their hunters and their prey, and yet Shesheshen is also unapologetically monstrous. I've never seen anyone pull that off with a fraction of the skill shown here. Besides being a masterful inversion of fantasy monster-slaying tropes, this is a fantastic examination of what it means to be family, and how that trust can be horrifically misused

I love the wonder and the darkly enchanting danger of this story. It makes me think of fairy tales, but John Wiswell understands what so many have forgotten: that true fairy tales are gruesome and magical at the same time, and he nails it here

Surprisingly sweet, unsurprisingly horrific, and entirely humane - only John Wiswell could have written this monster and her book, and I'm so very glad he did

I was expecting more

Relatively recently I read my first two short stories by Wiswell and they are among among my all time favourites ( 'Open House on a Haunted Hill' and 'For Lack of a Bed'). So I was expecting this first novel to surprise me in a good way. However in the novel I missed the magic writing I found in the short stories mentioned. I am still hopeful Wiswell will one day will write a great novel

This was so beautiful

I don’t know how a fantasy story told from the perspective of the monster everyone wants to kill managed to be so beautiful, but it was. Loved it.

interesting perspectives

something a bit different but enjoyable. good twist on the narrative despite a bit of body horror.