Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell

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About The Book 📚

Title: Someone You Can Build A Nest In

Author: John Wiswell

Publication Date: April 2024

Publisher: DAW

Genre: Fantasy, Horror, LGBTQ+, Romance

Pages: 310

Click Here for Content Warnings (may contain spoilers)

Three Words That Describe This Book: Emotional, Dark, funny

About The Author

“John Wiswell is a Nebula-winning and Locus-winning author who lives in the middle of the woods. His debut novel, SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN, was released from DAW Books in the U.S. and Arcadia Books in the U.K. in April 2024. John’s work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Tor.com, LeVar Burton Reads, Nature Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, the No Sleep podcast, Nightmare Magazine, Cast of Wonders, Podcastle, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and other fine venues. He has been a finalist for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards. His fiction has been translated into ten languages.

He graduated Bennington College in 2005, and attended the Viable Paradise 17 workshop in 2013. He has multiple disabilities including a neuromuscular syndrome, and thinks healthy people’s capacity to complain is very funny. He finds a lot of things very funny and would like to keep it that way.

He is frequently available for interview and for talks at conferences. He has done panels at places such as Worldcon, the Nebula Awards Conference, and the World Fantasy Convention.

He posted fiction daily on this blog for six straight years, and has left every embarrassing and inspiring word of it up to read for free. If you’d like to see a writer develop style, it’s all there. You can point and laugh. He probably can’t hear you.”

John is represented by his agent, Hannah Bowman. You can contact her at: hbowman@lizadawson.com

John can be contacted at:
-E-mail: johncwiswell AT gmail DOT com
-Twitter: http://twitter.com/Wiswell
-Instagram: John_Wiswell

Other Books by This Author

Wearing the Lion (2025)

My Review

› I did not realize that Someone You Can Build A Nest In is John Wiswell’s debut novel. Mind blown. The character development, story construction, intrigue, and writing style are all incredible. I’ve been putting off writing a review because I don’t think I can do this book justice. This is a must-read. I’ll start with that.

I love the cover, but that’s not what got me to pick up this book. It was because I’ve been watching many reviewers talk about how much they loved this book, so I had to check it out for myself. This is a horror novel; however, it’s not scary, and it also has so much heart, a beautifully weird romance, and it made me laugh out loud.

Dedication: “Dedicated to everyone who has been made to feel monstrous.”

› First Line: “Each year when Shesheshen hibernated, she dreamed of her childhood nest.”

› Shesheshen is a shapeshifter with a metal chain for a backbone. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is written through a disabled lens, and this means Shesheshen does not think of herself as gross; she thinks it’s humans who are weird. To her, it’s normal to eat people and use their teeth as her own. It’s normal to use other people’s hair as a disguise for herself. She’s lived alone for a long time with one friend, who is a huge bear named Blueberry. One day, she is woken from hibernation by monster hunters who’ve come to the abandoned estate that is her home. They manage to poison her, and she runs for her life. Homily finds Shesheshen in terrible shape and nurses her back to health. Shesheshen is in disguise, and Homily thinks she’s a fellow person. Shesheshen is building up the nerve to confess to Homily that she’s not a human when Homily says she’s hunting a monster that cursed her family and killed her brother. Ummm…ya…Homily is hunting Shesheshen. She wants to prove to her mother, the Baroness, that she is capable. Shesheshen decides she likes how she feels when she’s with Homily, so she will “help” her hunt this monster.

Quotes That Stuck With Me

“Romance was awful. She couldn’t even do something as simple as murdering rude people anymore.”

“No young woman of means has gone through her entire life without at least once surveying her opportunities and wishing for a dragon instead.”

“All Shesheshen could do for Homily was be patient with her, and make space for her, and eventually, one day behind her back, eat her mother.”

› How did Wiswell think these characters up? This monster…I’ve never read anything like Shesheshen. All of the characters are interesting and well-developed. I loved the diversity, atmosphere, and writing style. I was not expecting the plot twists at all. I didn’t want to put it down.

APPEAL FACTORS
Storyline: character-driven, plot-driven, unconventional
Pace: fast
Tone: emotional, heartwrenching, inspiring, sweet, thought-provoking, whimsical, adventurous, dark, mysterious, disturbing, violent
Humour: amusing, offbeat
Writing Style: conversational, compelling, descriptive, engaging
Character: authentic, awkward, brooding, complex, flawed, likeable, relatable, strong female, unlikeable, well-developed, diverse
Disability representation: physically disabled
LGBTQIA+ Representation: asexual, nonbinary, queer

Read Alikes:
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher
Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
The Robin on the Oak Throne by K. A. Linde
The Book of Blood and Roses by Annie Summerlee

› In the past, I have given a rating out of ten and converted that to a star rating, but I’m no longer giving a star rating here on my blog. I will continue to do that on Goodreads and The Story Graph.

› Final Thoughts
• Someone You Can Build A Nest In is a unique, imaginative, and unforgettable story about monsters, trauma, and love. The beginning will put you right in the thick of it, and it will feel strange and maybe off-putting. But if you stick with it, you’ll find this is a page-turner that is horrific, and funny, and romantic. If you want to read something different, read this.