Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell is one of the strangest horror novels I have read in a while and that is a big reason why I enjoyed it so much.
This isn’t the type of horror novel that relies on a haunted house, serial killer, or terrifying supernatural entity lurking in the shadows. Instead, Wiswell puts the monster at the center of the story and asks us to see the world through her eyes.
The result is a fascinating mixture of horror, dark fantasy, romance, humor, and something that often feels like a gruesome fairy tale.
There is plenty of body horror. There are violent monster hunters, disturbing transformations, parasitic reproduction, and more than a few scenes that are intentionally uncomfortable. But there is also a surprisingly sweet story about loneliness, acceptance, love, and finding someone who doesn’t demand that you become a different person.
I enjoyed Someone You Can Build a Nest In because it didn’t feel like the usual horror book. It is weird, funny, grotesque, romantic, and occasionally touching—sometimes all within a few pages.
If you like horror books that aren’t afraid to experiment with the genre, this is one I’d recommend.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Is Someone You Can Build a Nest In Worth Reading?
Yes. I think Someone You Can Build a Nest In is worth reading, particularly if you enjoy unusual horror, dark fantasy, monster stories, or modern fairy tales.
The biggest reason to read it is how original it feels.
Instead of asking readers to fear the monster, Wiswell asks us to understand her. Instead of humans being the obvious heroes, some of them turn out to be much more frightening than the creature they are hunting.
And instead of giving us a traditional romance, the book gives us a monster whose biological idea of starting a family involves laying eggs inside her partner.
So yes, things get weird.
But underneath all that weirdness is a surprisingly sincere story about two lonely characters trying to figure out what a healthy relationship looks like.
That combination is what made the book work for me.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In Summary
Shesheshen is a shapeshifting monster living peacefully inside an isolated manor.
Peacefully might be a relative term.
She doesn’t have a normal human body. Instead, Shesheshen can assemble herself using whatever happens to be available. Bones can become limbs. Metal can provide structural support. Objects and the remains of creatures she has eaten can become parts of her constantly changing form.
Then monster hunters arrive.
They believe Shesheshen is a dangerous creature connected to a mysterious curse affecting a local family, and they intend to kill her.
After a violent confrontation, Shesheshen is seriously injured and eventually rescued by a human woman named Homily.
There is only one problem.
Homily doesn’t know that the injured stranger she has rescued is actually the monster everyone is hunting.
As Shesheshen recovers, the two begin spending time together. Shesheshen becomes fascinated by Homily and eventually realizes that she is developing feelings for her.
Unfortunately, romance works a little differently for Shesheshen.
Her natural reproductive instincts involve placing eggs inside a host so her offspring can consume that host from within. Homily seems like the perfect candidate.
Until Shesheshen realizes she doesn’t actually want the woman she loves to die.
That creates one of the strangest romantic conflicts you’re ever likely to encounter in a novel.
And it is only the beginning.
This Is Horror Told From the Monster’s Perspective
The smartest decision John Wiswell makes is allowing Shesheshen to tell the story. In another horror novel, she would be the creature hiding in the darkness.
We would probably follow a group of heroic monster hunters as they entered an abandoned manor, discovered mutilated bodies, and slowly learned about the shapeshifting creature hunting them.
Shesheshen would be terrifying. But this isn’t that story. We’re inside the monster’s head.
We understand why Shesheshen behaves the way she does. Things that seem horrifying to humans are completely normal to her. Constructing parts of her body out of bones isn’t grotesque from her perspective. It is simply practical.
Eating things is survival. Changing her body is maintenance.
Even her disturbing reproductive instincts are not evil to her. They are biology.
That change in perspective completely alters the traditional monster story.
Shesheshen isn’t secretly human underneath everything. Wiswell doesn’t make her sympathetic by stripping away everything that makes her monstrous.
She remains a monster and I think that’s important.
The novel isn’t arguing that Shesheshen deserves compassion because she is basically human. It asks whether she deserves compassion even though she isn’t.
That is a much more interesting question.
A Mixture of Fairy Tale and Horror
One of the things I enjoyed most about Someone You Can Build a Nest In is how much it feels like an old fairy tale filtered through modern horror.
There is a creature that everyone fears, there are hunters, a curse, and an unexpected romance.
Like Cinderella, there are cruel family members, secrets, transformations, violence, and questions about who the real monster might be.
On paper, some of those ingredients wouldn’t feel out of place in a traditional fairy tale.
Wiswell simply refuses to sanitize them.
That matters because many old fairy tales were strange, violent, and disturbing long before modern adaptations made them gentler. Someone You Can Build a Nest In captures some of that feeling.
The difference is that Wiswell takes the creature normally positioned as the monster and makes her the protagonist.
That makes the novel feel familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
You recognize the basic pieces of the story, but they’re arranged in ways you don’t expect.
For me, that was much more interesting than reading another conventional horror plot.
The Body Horror Is Weirdly Fascinating
Make no mistake: this book contains body horror and lot of it.
Shesheshen doesn’t experience having a body the way humans do. Her physical form can be assembled, modified, destroyed, and rebuilt. Objects that would be horrifying inside a human body can simply become useful structural materials for her.
What makes these scenes effective is perspective.
Wiswell can describe something objectively disgusting while Shesheshen treats it like the most ordinary thing imaginable.
That contrast creates some of the funniest and most disturbing moments in the book.
And I think that is where the body horror becomes more than shock value.
Shesheshen’s body is part of her identity. Humans look at her physical existence and immediately decide that she is unnatural.
But from her perspective, humans are the strange ones.
The book repeatedly plays with that disconnect.
What is normal? What is monstrous? And who gets to decide?
Those questions become even more important as Shesheshen spends additional time around Homily and her family.
Shesheshen Is the Reason the Novel Works
Shesheshen is easily my favorite part of the book.
She is one of those protagonists who feels genuinely different instead of merely being described as unusual.
Her understanding of humans is especially entertaining.
She can mimic a human body, but understanding human behavior is much more complicated.
Friendship, romance, family obligations, politeness, attraction, and social expectations frequently confuse her. She approaches many emotional situations with the same practical thinking that she uses for hunting and survival.
That creates a lot of humor. But Shesheshen is never reduced to a joke.
As the novel progresses, her relationship with Homily forces her to think about another person’s needs in ways she hasn’t before.
At first, survival is everything. Then somebody else begins to matter. That doesn’t magically make Shesheshen human. Nor should it.
Her development comes from learning that instinct doesn’t have to determine every choice she makes.
I thought that was one of the strongest ideas in the book.
Shesheshen and Homily’s Relationship Gives the Story Its Heart
I didn’t expect the romance to be one of the most important parts of the novel when I started reading it.
But it is and it makes the novel that much better because of it.
Homily is almost the opposite of Shesheshen.
Where Shesheshen has mostly lived apart from humans, Homily has spent her life surrounded by family.
Yet both characters are deeply lonely.
Homily’s family has spent years damaging her confidence and making her question her own worth. Shesheshen, meanwhile, has spent much of her existence simply trying to survive.
Their connection develops because each provides something the other has rarely experienced: acceptance.
That’s where the novel becomes surprisingly sweet.
Of course, this is still Someone You Can Build a Nest In, so even the romance comes with disturbing monster biology.
Shesheshen’s natural instincts tell her that Homily would make an excellent host for her offspring.
Love tells her something else.
That’s an absurd premise, but Wiswell somehow turns it into a genuine emotional conflict.
Shesheshen eventually has to understand that loving someone means caring about what happens to them rather than simply wanting to possess them.
Suddenly, the extremely bizarre monster romance becomes a story about boundaries, autonomy, and learning how to have a healthy relationship.
I didn’t expect that going into the novel.
Sometimes the Humans Are More Horrifying Than the Monster
The book also spends a lot of time questioning what exactly makes something monstrous.
Physically, Shesheshen wins that competition easily. She eats creatures, burrows, bones, reconstructs her body, and wants to implant eggs into another living creature
It is hard to top that but then we meet Homily’s family.
Some of the most uncomfortable moments in the book aren’t caused by supernatural horror at all. They come from cruelty, manipulation, emotional abuse, and the ways people justify hurting someone they claim to love.
That contrast isn’t subtle, but I thought it worked.
A creature can look monstrous without necessarily acting maliciously.
Meanwhile, someone who looks completely normal can cause enormous damage to another person.
The book’s monster-hunting story ultimately becomes much more complicated once those lines begin to blur.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In Isn’t Traditional Horror
This is probably the most important thing potential readers should know.
If you’re expecting a terrifying horror novel that will keep you awake at night, this probably isn’t that book.
There are horrific ideas, gore, body horror, and disturbing scenes.
But I wouldn’t describe the overall reading experience as particularly scary.
The novel is too funny, romantic, fantastical, and strange to create the relentless dread found in more traditional horror.
Personally, I liked that and it made me continue reading late into the night.
I’ve read plenty of horror novels that follow familiar patterns. Someone You Can Build a Nest In gave me something different.
It feels closer to a dark fairy tale mixed with horror and monster romance.
That genre blending may frustrate readers who want the book to fit neatly into one category, but I think it is one of its biggest strengths.
The Pacing Isn’t Perfect
As much as I enjoyed the novel, it isn’t flawless.
The pacing is probably my biggest complaint.
The opening immediately grabbed my attention because Shesheshen is such an unusual narrator. But parts of the middle slow down as the relationship between Shesheshen and Homily develops and the mystery involving the family curse becomes more complicated.
The novel is also trying to do a lot.
It’s trying to be too many genres and they make it longer than it needed to be.
There are moments when the tone can change quickly from grotesque violence to comedy or romance.
That didn’t ruin the novel for me, although I can see the tonal shifts bothering some readers.
The curse storyline also wasn’t what interested me most.
I cared much more about Shesheshen, Homily, and their relationship than I did about solving the larger mystery.
Fortunately, those characters are strong enough to carry the novel.
Who Should Read Someone You Can Build a Nest In?
I’d especially recommend Someone You Can Build a Nest In to readers who enjoy:
- Unconventional horror novels
- Dark fantasy
- Fairy-tale-inspired stories
- Body horror
- Monster protagonists
- Horror-comedy
- Monster romance
- Stories that mix genres
- Sympathetic monsters
- Books about outsiders and identity
Readers who only want frightening horror may be disappointed by how much romance and humor is included.
Likewise, readers looking for a cozy fantasy romance should know that this book can become gruesome quickly.
That contrast is the whole point.
The ideal reader is someone willing to embrace a novel that can be sweet, disgusting, funny, disturbing, and heartfelt at the same time.
An Award-Winning Horror-Fantasy That Stands Out
Someone You Can Build a Nest In was originally published by DAW in April 2024, and the book has gained significant recognition since its release.
It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel for works published in 2024, an impressive achievement for Wiswell’s debut novel. It has also received recognition across the science fiction and fantasy community.
The awards aren’t why I’d recommend the book, though.
What matters more to me is that I still remember Shesheshen.
There are thousands of books featuring monsters. Far fewer actually make the monster’s way of experiencing the world feel fundamentally different from our own.
Wiswell manages to do that.
And once you start seeing humans through Shesheshen’s perspective, many of the assumptions that normally power monster stories stop looking quite so simple.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In Review: Final Thoughts
I enjoyed Someone You Can Build a Nest In because it wasn’t the horror novel I expected it to be.
In fact, calling it simply a horror novel doesn’t really do it justice.
It is part horror story, part dark fantasy, part monster romance, and part gruesome fairy tale.
Shesheshen is easily the highlight. She is funny, frightening, sympathetic, practical, strange, and completely comfortable viewing the human body in ways that will make most readers uncomfortable.
Her relationship with Homily gives the story an emotional center that I wasn’t expecting.
There are some pacing problems, and I don’t think every part of the mystery works as well as the characters do. But those issues didn’t outweigh how creative and memorable I found the novel.
What stayed with me most was the book’s reversal of the traditional monster story.
The creature that looks horrifying isn’t necessarily the cruelest person in the room.
And becoming worthy of love doesn’t require Shesheshen to stop being what she is.
That’s what makes the book feel almost like a modern fairy tale, just one filled with body horror, monster hunters, parasitic reproduction, and a truly bizarre definition of romance.
It is strange.
It is gruesome.
It is unexpectedly sweet.
And most importantly, it feels different from the usual horror novel.
That’s exactly why I enjoyed it and why I’d recommend giving it a read.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
Posts
Discover more from Books of Brilliance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.