**Nebula Award Nominee** **Hugo Award Nominee** *Featuring all-new exclusive material for the trade paperback: an author's note, reading group guide, and teaser for Wearing the Lion!* “This unusual queer romance is a heartfelt fable about disability and the possibility of reconciling conflicting needs through love and understanding.” — The Guardian "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 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 impolite monster hunters, 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. Badly hurt by the hunters, Shesheshen’s nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human. Homily is kind and would make a great co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young can devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, Shesheshen realizes that eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Just as Shesheshen’s about to confess her identity, Homily reveals something else: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere? Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, so now she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As Shesheshen’s hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, the bigger challenge remains: learning how to build a life with , rather than in , the woman she loves. An NPR, Washington Post , Book Riot, Library Journal and Audible Best Book of 2024! One of the Best Books of the Year So Far from: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Polygon, Reactor, and Bookpage! A British Science Fiction Association Nominee for Best Novel • A Baltimore Science Fiction Society Nominee for Best First Novel • A Locus Recommended Best First Novel An Audie Award and Compton Crook Award Finalist " Someone You Can Build a Nest In made me a John Wiswell fan for life. " —Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Book of Love “People fall in love with monsters all the time, but few monsters are as lovable as Shesheshen ...” — The Washington Post “This unusual queer romance is a heartfelt fable about disability and the possibility of reconciling conflicting needs through love and understanding.” —The Guardian " 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) “ 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, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of When Among Crows “Been in the mood for a love story and whoooo boy Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell did not disappoint.” —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother , via Twitter " 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 “ 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 “ 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 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 “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 “ Wriggly, heartfelt, and carnivorous .” —Max Gladstone, New York Times -bestselling co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War "Inventive enough t