Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell is a delightfully gory asexual monster romance, but it is also so much more than that.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter who wants nothing more than to be left alone in her abandoned manor where she can be an amorphous blob in peace. When monster hunters rudely invade her home, she is embroiled in a wider plot that threatens to end her quiet life for good. 

Shesheshen then meets Homily, an empathetic, warm-hearted human who seems to want to help – but is that only because she doesn’t know who Shesheshen really is?

This book combines the charming, comforting romance you find in books like Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, with the matter of fact, fantastical manipulation of biological components that you find in The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir. 

I adored the way that Shesheshen can mould and form her body by absorbing bones, branches, chains, or other objects to form her desired skeletal shape, or the way that she can control what organs she wants, or how many orifices she needs. Shesheshen is a deeply relatable character both despite and because of her monstrosity: she makes deeply practical decisions about her survival, she befriends the local mutant bear, and she thinks fondly of the mother she has never met and tries to guide her life in a direction that would make her proud. 

Watching the way that Shesheshen navigates her world forces the reader to think about how small, prejudiced actions can generate large, xenophobic consequences, and how difficult it is to exist in a world where you are perceived as ‘other’. However, this isn’t a story about making the monster more human: at no point does Shesheshen feel the need to adapt to human civilisation for longer than she needs to survive. She will continue to murder and eat people because it’s what she needs to do to live. She has a conscience, but at the end of the day Shesheshen is a monster and she isn’t about to apologise for that.

With Homily, we explore the trauma and learned reactions that comes with having an abusive family. Homily is a kind and caring character who is desperately seeking to find a way to end her family’s curse. Shesheshen will do whatever she can to protect Homily from her twisted family, and along this journey the story explores what love means to them both, and whether that is enough to keep them together.

This is a charming story with plenty of snort-worthy lines and a gripping plot. The villains are truly awful, the heroes are impossible not to root for, and the plot doesn’t plateau for a second. 

I devoured this book in two sittings, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy creatures, zero spice fantasy romances, or is looking for nuanced discussions of disability and abuse in a fantasy format. 

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is available now from Jo Fletcher Books. You can order your copy HERE