Book review: "Someone You Can Build a Nest In" by John Wiswell

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Title: Someone You Can Build a Nest In
Author: John Wiswell
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, romance

A+ Library is my bit where I review books with asexual and aromantic characters.

Went on a weekend trip with the squad this weekend and we had to stop at the local Barnes and Noble (It's been a while since I was in one that big! Ours in my town is now in the mall, so it's quite small.) where I spent too much and picked up some things on my TBR plus my own copy of Our Wives Under the Sea. We had some downtime on the trip and I managed to finish the first of the new books while we were there. This was Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell.

I wanted so much to like this book, and not just because I was charmed by the purple-themed Barnes and Noble-exclusive cover and edging. It landed on my TBR for being an asexual romance (sapphic, if you take Shesheshen for female, which you don't have to do), and I enjoyed the plot concept. Unfortunately, I did not like the book. If I had not paid for it I probably would not have finished it. The following review is not to say it's a bad book—it has an average rating of 4.05 stars on StoryGraph based on over 6,000 reviews, so obviously people like it—but to say that it specifically had a number of things that made it a big thumbs down for me.

The character: Shesheshen, asexual; Homily, asexual

Final verdict: Thumbs down

Previous read: To Be Taught, if Fortunate

 

The Asexual Rep 
Our protagonist, Shesheshen, is a shapeshifting monster who reproduces by laying her eggs in a partner (the young inevitably kill that partner when they emerge, nourishing themselves on the body). By nature she does not experience sexual desire as she has no need for it (though she does feel the urge to lay her eggs), and when she has the chance to get physical with her love interest, she does not enjoy it. She likes being close to Homily, but doesn't want anything resembling a sexual relationship.

Homily, the love interest, is fully human, and also lacks sexual interest. She is relieved when Shesheshen reveals she is not interested in sex, and comments that she's felt the need to "perform" such interest for other partners in the past, and is glad to not have to do that now. 

Both characters seem to land on the sex-repulsed side of the spectrum; even kissing is unappealing to them. They hug, and cuddle in bed, and that's all they need. It's always a joy and a relief to see asexual characters as they are so uncommon, and particularly rare, I think, to see those who genuinely do not want any kind of sexual interaction. Homily has some minor angst, as noted in the performance remark above, but the issue is put to bed quickly and never arises again, and Shesheshen has no similar anxiety.

The Rest 
I want to start with what the book did well, so this review doesn't become simply a litany of my complaints. I thought the way Shesheshen's shapeshifting was handled was fun. She appears to be a generally amorphous blob; she can absorb things into herself and use them to create various structures. Her shapeshifting stays relatively consistent throughout the story, so it doesn't fall prey to simply being a story hook that the author forgets once the plot gets rolling, and she does come off physically as truly strange and monstrous.

I appreciated that Shesheshen and Homily's relationship is not a magic fix for their other problems, particularly Homily's emotional struggles. It is acknowledged that more time for healing is necessary, but that Shesheshen is there to provide critical support and encouragement that help Homily on her journey. The epilogue in particular shows this.

The book's best moments, to me, are when Shesheshen is contentedly ruminating about her plans for her initial vision of this future relationship, which are cozy and loving to her, and horrifying to the reader. The comedy of disconnect between her idea of a romantic relationship and the reader's can be quite funny. If the book had gone either full bore comedy or much darker, I think it could have worked better. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the book was too annoying for me to enjoy these things much. It carries a sanctimonious tone throughout the story that grates. Shesheshen's "woe is me all humans are evil/selfish/greedy/violent/stupid/illogical/smelly unlike me" internal monologue is dull by chapter 4, though reinforced by the fact that no one else in the entire novel outside of Shesheshen and Homily is a halfway decent person. Everyone they meet is comically awful (and remarkably incompetent), which serves I guess to show how saintly and special Shesheshen and Homily are.

Shesheshen comes off hypocritical in a way that is never addressed by the narrative, hating humans for hunting her while never acknowledging that they're hunting her because she eats them. Instead, she casts it as a moral failing of theirs that they're trying to kill her. The narrative neither gives her a confrontation with this hypocrisy nor really sinks into her monstrosity. It wants her to be hated by everyone around her without doing anything with more than a twinge of immorality about it (naturally, she primarily targets humans she feels are "bad" or we might have half a moment of questioning whether we should root for her).

The book summary suggests that Shesheshen's moral struggles are the heart of the plot, but they really aren't, and by the time the novel posits some interesting moral quandaries, over two-thirds of the way in, I was out of generosity for it. It also refuses to really dig into them at all—such as in Shesheshen's interactions with the Baroness, which could have been so much juicier—and resolves them pretty quickly. Similarly, the supposed great conflict between Shesheshen's desire to lay her eggs in Homily vs. her desire for Homily to continue living is resolved largely off-page, with Shesheshen professing one view early in the book, and then many chapters later the opposite view, with little in between to explain the choice. A particularly jarring state of affairs in a book that generally feels the need to hold the reader's hand with everything else that happens.

Even the "big reveal" is really just sort of a bump in the relationship that passes in a single scene. Other potential conflicts which could have been mined for moral drama or struggles for Shesheshen, such as her concept of and relationship with both her parents, are not, and her reaction to some of the plot events is shockingly and disappointingly flat, as is Homily's. On the whole, Shesheshen remains almost entirely static throughout the book, with her view on Homily the only thing that really changes.

The language of the book is arrestingly modern at times, particularly around relationships and mental health. It yanked me out of the story more than once. The word "consent" is used no fewer than half a dozen times in Shesheshen's narration—Shesheshen, a creature who has up until now lived in almost complete isolation from both her own kind and humanity, with no reason to even grasp the concept of consent let alone why it's important. It also seemed very odd to me how this concept continued to linger so explicitly between Shesheshen and Homily even after they were officially a couple. The constant evaluation of consent is not something that feels natural between people that close—unclear why Shesheshen can't simply trust Homily to say "not now" if she doesn't feel like being touched.

Shesheshen has a shockingly nuanced and vocab-appropriate view of human emotions and mental health for a creature that has never significantly interacted with them prior to the events of the story. In one scene she's doesn't understand laughter; in the next she's explaining Homily's abusive family dynamics to her.

Worldbuilding was nonexistent, with random French words thrown in as a substitute for flavor, such that the big kingdom next door is literally "The Good State" and one character introduces himself as being from "North Raspberry." Not that every fantasy book needs to construct a whole new world from the ground up, but f Wiswell was going to use French names and terms, he could have at least picked ones that made sense.

There were some deus ex machinas, where characters seemed to whip out tools they were never described as having, or where conflicts are solved off-page, but these were relatively minor annoyances compared to the rest.

The representation is there: gay women, asexual characters, fat love interest, (metaphors for) neurodiversity...but the writing is not. 

This one will be going straight into the neighborhood free book box, hopefully to land with someone who will enjoy it more. If anyone has monster fiction titles they'd like to drop here, I'm all ears.

Crossposted to books and fffriday