Someone You Can Build a Nest In

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is the sweetest, most disgusting book I've ever read. John Wiswell's story of a eldritch monster stumbling into a fantasy romance is, somehow, both heartwarming and foul.

The way Wiswell weaves romance into a human-eating monster's psyche is truly remarkable, and a testament to himself as a storyteller & character builder. I loved Shesheshen immediately, relating greatly to her repulsion of social courtesies & disregard to pointless societal standards. Following her into love & danger was a journey I'm so thankful I got to experience.

While this novel spends most of the time laughing at its own absurdity, there is also a deeper, bigger, gentler message about grief, abuse, & the uniquely human terror of Being Known. This story is moving, compassionate, & made with lots of love.

Thank you to Netgalley and Quercus books for providing me with an EARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

I had such a good time with this book! Shesheshen was such an integrated g protagonist to follow, and the exploration of her humanity and Homily's family dynamics had me hooked the whole way through.

Homily in particular was such an interesting character. Her upbringing and family dynamic were incredibly toxic, but pulling yourself away from the cycle of abuse is hard, and this book handled her situation so respectfully. It wasn't a cure-all after she met Shesheshen, and it's something she still has to work on even beyond the last page on the novel.

I do feel like there could have been a little more development regarding the relationship between Homily and Shesheshen. I do think that, to some extent, the nature of the characters lent to the quickly-developed romance; one character who is a major people-pleaser vs someone who isn't quite human and likely hasn't experienced much, if any, human compassion in their lifetime, so this is something I'm being more lenient with. However, at times it did feel a little like they were saying a lot and barely anything to each other all at once.

The actual dynamic between Homily and Shesheshen was actually beautiful though; the unconditional acceptance the each of them gave each other, allowing them both to be entirely comfortable with one another and growing together was so refreshing, and the asexuality of the characters was just something they both experienced and loved about one another. It was such an unconventional and beautiful relationship.

One thing that absolutely didn't affect my rating but I wanted to point out; this was completely unreadable on a Kindle.

Netgalley does allow you to send books to your kindle, and this is my main method to reading digitally, but the numbers used in the formatting made it basically impossible unless you were willing to read a sentence per page. I'm sure this is a pre-publishing format and won't be in the final product, but it's something I wanted to point out.

Once again thank you for providing me with a free digital copy of this book!