Someone You Can Build A Nest In

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What to expect

**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

Critics Review

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
Veronica Roth, bestselling author of When Among Crows
This unusual queer romance is a heartfelt fable about disability and the possibility of reconciling conflicting needs through love and understanding
The Guardian
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
Financial Times
Deeply funny and weird . . . a surprisingly sweet - and very gory - love story
SFX
Nothing [can] prepare you for the gentle silliness of Wiswell's wonderful science fiction debut (one draped in the aesthetics of fantasy)
Charlie Jane Anders, The Washington Post
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
Liz Bourke, Locus Magazine
Inventive enough to push the boundaries of romance and dark fantasy . . . A wonderfully weird horror romance
Kirkus Reviews
Wriggly, heartfelt, and carnivorous
Max Gladstone, co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War
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
Alix E. Harrow, New York Times-bestselling author of Starling House
A beautiful monster story with a heart, Wiswell treats his outcasts as heroes. He is an author the world desperately needs
J.R. Dawson, author of The First Bright Thing
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
A.C. Wise, author of Hooked
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
Jenn Lyons, author of The Ruin of Kings
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
C.L. Polk, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Witchmark and Midnight Bargain
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
Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire
Quirky, heartfelt, funny, and absolutely brimming with gore, just my sort of book!
Marianne Gordon, author of The Gilded Crown
This novel is for anyone who has ever felt like an outcast - or been bewildered by society's absurdities. I fell in love with Shesheshen's wry voice and dark sense of humor
Ray Nayler, Locus Award-winning author of The Mountain in the Sea
Horror blends with heart and whimsy in Wiswell's trope-twisting debut. It's monstrously fun!
Beth Cato, author of A Thousand Recipes For Revenge
The coziest, most unexpectedly wholesome love story about a monster who devours humans and wears their bones that I've ever read!
Naomi Kritzer, Hugo Award-winning author of Catfishing on CatNet
Oozing with - among other things - Wiswell's inimitable charm and tenderness, this is a monstrous love story like nothing I've ever read before
Premee Mohamed, author of Beneath the Rising
Someone You Can Build A Nest In is the future of fantasy: a fairy tale with boundaries, an imaginative world created in the shape of collective values rather than the boring old id, a portal to a place you've really never seen before instead of just a princess in a different outfit. This novel is going to change the entire genre
Meg Elison, Hugo and Locus award-winning author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
This book is pure Wiswell. A monstrous protagonist, lovingly and thoughtfully rendered. Sly, fun and darkly humorous with a bloody, beating heart. And always keenly aware of what is truly monstrous in all of us
Wole Talabi, Hugo-nominated author of Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon
John Wiswell's remarkable ability to turn expectations upside down and present new, delightful, gruesome, thoughtful viewpoints on narrative is on full display in this debut. Someone You Can Build a Nest in is the best kind of horrifying, beautiful, by turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, and entirely unforgettable: a story about what makes a monster, what makes a person, the scars of trauma, and the transformative (and sometimes traumatic) act of falling in love
Vivian Shaw, author of Strange Practice
A good book is a predator and this one had no problem dragging me off, kicking and hooting, into the tall grasses to make a meal amidst my ribs before finally taking my heart for its own
Jordan Shiveley, author of Hot Singles in Your Area
The wonderful thing about Wiswell's monster, Shesheshen, is her sensible vulnerability . . . I can guarantee you won't ever forget Shesheshen and Homily, and will be warmed inside forever
Julie E. Czerneda, Aurora Award-winning author of the Night’s Edge series
Clever, funny, and oddly gentle for a book about a man-eating monster, John Wiswell's debut delivers a surprising blend of fantasy, romance, and horror. Make sure this is on your TBR if you want those squishy-warm feelings of falling in love . . . and those squishy-in-general feelings of viscera, gore, and other things humans prefer to keep on the inside
Jodi Meadows, co-author of My Lady Jane
Someone You Can Build a Nest in is the most original monster story I've read in years. The star of this novel, Shesheshen, is a truly terrifying and other-worldly shapeshifter who absorbs human bones and organs to craft her own body-and has now fallen in love with a woman pledged to kill her. John Wiswell expertly blends horror, humor, romance, and bloody disembowelments in a story about a monster who will not only swallow your heart, but make it her own
Jason Sanford, author of Plague Birds, finalist for the Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards
A delightful debut. It is weird in all the best ways, combining poetic writing with unexpected characters . . . The writing is gorgeous, with many passages that inspire the reader to consider the deeper truths they tell
Track of Words
This is a charming story with plenty of snort-worthy lines and a gripping plot
The Fantasy Hive
Wiswell raises the bar on the outcast as protagonist . . . the ultimate monster slayer story, if the monster is just a misunderstood creature searching for love
Library Journal (starred review)
A romp that's both bloody and sweet
Bookpage (starred review)

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