What better to read during Pride Month than a sapphic monster romance? A man-eating shapeshifter falls in love with the daughter of a powerful monster hunting family in Someone You Can Build a Nest In, a delightful fantasy romance debut by John Wiswell that came out earlier this year.
Shesheshen is roused from hibernating in her watery cave by a band of monster hunters who have come to slay her. She uses all of her best tricks to fight them off—disguising herself as a human and incorporating pieces of the environment or her past victims to lend structure to her gelatinous body—but she is left weak and hungry by the effort. When Shesheshen goes into town to hunt, she is nearly killed by the villagers but is rescued and nursed back to health by a kind-hearted woman named Homily. Unwilling to eat someone who has done her such a good turn, Shesheshen stays by Homily’s side and soon finds herself falling head over tentacles in love. For the first time in her life, Shesheshen is feeling the biological urge to plant her eggs in someone—and Homily, always so nurturing and self-sacrificing, would make the perfect nest. But as Shesheshen learns more about her own nature and falls even deeper in love with Homily, she realizes that maybe becoming a nest for her parasitic young to eat their way out of is not the best fate for someone she cares about. Also complicating matters is the fact that Homily doesn’t even know that Shesheshen is the Wyrm of Underlook, believing her to simply be a fellow human named Siobhan. But Homily has been keeping secrets, too. It turns out that she is the eldest daughter of Baroness Wulfyre, a cruel and bloodthirsty ruler who is determined to destroy the Wyrm of Underlook at any cost. Shesheshen will have to insinuate herself into the Baroness’s hunting party and wait for the perfect opportunity to rid herself of her most dangerous enemy and free Homily from the constraints of her abusive family—oh, and try not to traumatize Homily too much in the process.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In is a particularly fun take on the monster romance genre, especially since we get to experience it from the monster’s perspective. Shesheshen is well and truly inhuman, and the foreignness of the way she experiences her body, human society, and the world around her is beautifully conveyed in Wiswell’s evocative prose. As an oozing blob that incorporates pieces of others into her body, Shesheshen is lovingly (or sometimes guiltily) aware of where each of her borrowed bones and organs comes from. Shesheshen is surprisingly vulnerable for a monster, weak and hungry after being woken from hibernation and often more scared of her hunters than they seem to be of her. But while the townsfolk whisper about her strength and fearsomeness, Shesheshen mostly survives by her wits, studying the humans and learning how to pass among them, sabotage their plans, and sow deception. The more time Shesheshen spends among the humans—or more particularly, around Homily—the more human-like her own thoughts become. And ideas that once seemed so natural, like the urge to lay eggs in someone else and her fond memories of eating her way out of her father’s body, become difficult to square with her burgeoning romance.
In addition to being a sweet romance, Someone You Can Build a Nest In also tackles darker subjects like familial abuse. Homily is terrified of her mother, who never misses an opportunity to sling hurtful words and express her disdain for her oldest daughter. Her siblings can be just as bad, tormenting her with sadistic glee. As Shesheshen eventually comes to realize that what she initially viewed in Homily as innate altruistic kindness, was often instead a desperate people-pleasing urge or a defense mechanism developed to try to minimize the abuse. Homily feels like she must always be useful in order to justify the existence her mother says she doesn’t deserve, and she’ll readily endure pain and suffering in order to help someone else. As she recognizes the actions of the others around them as abuse, Shesheshen confronts her own instrumentalizing thought patterns and lends her support to Homily, encouraging her to stand up to her family and to prioritize her own needs and desires.
A gelatinous monster might not normally be your romantic ideal, but as a reader you can’t help falling for Shesheshen as she shows more heart in this book than any of the humans who actually have one. Someone You Can Build a Nest In was a jaw-dropping debut, and I can’t wait to see what John Wiswell has in store next. You can find a copy for yourself on shelves now at your favorite local retailer, or buy a copy online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve already read it, let me know your thoughts in the comments!