Book review of Someone You Can Build a Nest In

When shape-shifting monster Shesheshen is woken from her hibernation by monster hunters, she does what she should: She kills and eats one of them. In retaliation, the close by townsfolk, scared and determined handy over a “wyrm” coronary heart to Baroness Wulfyre, poison Shesheshen with rosemary and hunt her till she toddles over a cliff . . . into the care of a variety human girl.

The candy and tender Homily thinks Shesheshen is human, and laughs on the issues Shesheshen says. She could be the proper companion if she weren’t a Wulfyre, off to kill the beast who ate her brother. The extra Shesheshen learns about Homily, the extra she realizes how poorly Homily’s been handled by her household—and the way desperately she needs Homily’s love. She’ll want to elucidate to Homily that the Wulfyres are the true monsters, and he or she’ll have to do it earlier than they destroy all she holds expensive.

Come for the physique horror, keep for the romance: There’s a little one thing for everyone in Nebula Award-winner John Wiswell’s genre-blending debut novel, Someone You Can Build A Nest In. Told from the sudden perspective of our sentient, hungry blob of a protagonist, this revolutionary gem doesn’t draw back from the candy or the unsavory. Her penchant for absorbing issues into her physique to make bones—or to cover bear traps in her chest as future weapons—is ingenious and grotesque, the proper steadiness of horrific and enjoyable. Wiswell pulls from fairy tales of yore to construct an intriguing world, together with the distinctive panorama of the isthmus the place the motion takes place, natural science and an lovable huge blue bear. 

Wiswell is greatest identified for his award-winning quick tales, expertise which is obvious in bite-sized chapters that readers will swiftly devour. But it’s the emotional core, Shesheshen and Homily’s asexual and sapphic bond of solace, that may finally hook their hearts. A romp that’s each bloody and candy, Someone You Can Build a Nest In will delight readers who cherished Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth and Alix E. Harrow’s A Spindle Splintered.