Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell

Source: NetGalley, thank you to DAW for the review copy!
TL;DR: Wow the abuse was rampant – while this looks cute and quirky I would not recommend it for anyone who doesn’t enjoy borderline trauma porn.

Plot: This hinges on Shesheshen’s instalove for Homily who is the victim of constant and deep abuse. It was… a bit much.
Characters: I liked Shesheshen, though I have questions on her history and how she came to see things. Homily I found very frustrating and upsetting to read about. Everyone else was completely flat.
Setting: Not a lot of attention was played to this, I got the vague idea of where we were but it was bare bones.
Magic: More questions here, the story had enough to make it work and I don’t think it was the focus but where and what is Shesheshen? We’ll never know I guess.

Thoughts:

Someone You Can Build a Nest In has such a fun idea behind it. Shesheshen is a monster that awakes from her hibernation to monster hunters in her lair. She handles them as best she can but she’s awake and cold and most get food. Ultimately she’s having a truly bad day that day and ends up hurtling off a cliff. From there a woman who mistakes her for a human patches her up. She (instantly) falls in love and drama follows.

This started out as a very cute, quirky type of novel but then quickly showed it’s colors as more of a emotional horror show. The biggest conflict in this is that Homily’s family is wildly abusive, physically and emotionally and are hunting Shesheshen while abusing Homily. Shesheshen is caught between helping Homily (eating her family) and avoiding revealing herself to Homily while doing so. If you have any problems reading emotional abuse to wild levels, avoid this. It goes well and truly over the top in some situations and Homily takes it for most of the novel quietly and reacts as you’d expect. It was very rough to read.

Besides that horror show, I also have questions. The more I sit and think on the story the more I’m confused on how things work. For example, Shesheshen is essentially a slime. She constructs forms out of objects around her (a chain for a spine, chair legs for bones). How did Homily not notice this when she sewed up Shesheshen’s wounds at the bottom of that cliff? Also, where did Shesheshen learn to not be… well monstrous in personality. Where did she come up with the idea of her parents ‘love story’?

Overall this was a fast, and… sometimes fun read. It doesn’t stand up to any kind of close examination, which is a shame. But it’s interesting enough.

3 out of 5 bloody ‘hearts’