Audio: Someone you can build a nest in

Author John Wiswell

Narrated by Carmen Rose

Publication date Apr 2, 2024 by Tantor Audio

Running time 10 hrs

Fantasy/to review

This was a great book. I find it hard to say what kind of fantasy it was because it was told with humour and lightness in certain ways. But then it was also bloody and gory. It was just different and a blast to listen to.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifting monster. She falls in love with a human and thinks real love is that human giving her body as a nest so the kids can eat their "mummydaddy". Mmm sweet! But then she has never met another one like her, or really talked to humans.

People are trying to kill her as they think she has put a curse on them. Silly humans. She just wants to eat and be a big blob of nothingness at times.

She meets Homily, a kind woman, that cares for her when she is hurt and the story begins. What is love? What is humanity? What does it mean to be a monster?

I did not want to stop listening. It was so different from what I usually read in fantasy.

Great narration. I have listened to this narrator before and I always enjoy her style. It felt very fitting for the book and she got some real feels in,

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.