Someone You Can Build a Nest In
#6283.86 in the official ranking · full ranking
Books 1 book Status Complete 2024 Reading commitment Low John Wiswell Last reviewed 2026-08-14
Overview
Someone You Can Build a Nest In (2024) is a standalone debut novel by John Wiswell, published by DAW Books. It follows Shesheshen, an amorphous shapeshifting monster who assembles herself a body from bones and found materials and lives quietly in the caves beneath a small town, until she falls for Homily, a warm-hearted human woman who is, unbeknownst to Shesheshen at first, the sister of the very monster-hunters hired to kill her. Blending horror imagery with a dryly funny fantasy romance, the novel foregrounds disability, neurodivergence, asexual and queer romance, and found family, using its central monster's literal shapelessness as a metaphor for hiding one's real self from someone you love. It won the 2024 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 2025 Locus Award for Best First Novel, and was a finalist for the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Novel, making it one of the more decorated single debut works of its year.
Dark fantasy, Romantasy · For Adult
Core Canon: Reading Order (1 work) counts toward ranking
Someone You Can Build a Nest In John Wiswell
| Work | Year | Canon | Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Someone You Can Build a Nest In | 2024 | core | 3.86 (25,728 ratings) |
Standalone; no sequel found (Wiswell's next two announced/published novels, Wearing the Lion (2025) and The Dragon Has Some Complaints (2026), are unrelated standalone stories, not sequels to this world). Registered as its own standalone universe, following this project's established convention for a genuinely one-off novel (as with Nettle & Bone and Ink Blood Sister Scribe).
Quick answers
- How many books are in Someone You Can Build a Nest In? Someone You Can Build a Nest In's Core Canon is 1 book.
- Is Someone You Can Build a Nest In finished? Complete (2024).
- How much reading does Someone You Can Build a Nest In take? Low reading commitment (estimated from 1 Core Canon book · ~310 pages).
- How is Someone You Can Build a Nest In ranked? #628 in this site's official ranking, based on 25,728 reader ratings across 1 Core Canon book. See the full ranking for how this is calculated.
Why is it ranked #628?
Ranked #628 in the official ranking.
- Average reader rating of 3.86 across 1 core book.
- A smaller readership (25,728 ratings), so the score carries less weight of numbers.
- Less than 0.01 behind #627, Guin Saga (a finer tie-break level decides the order).
- Below the top-10 average of 4.45.
- A single standalone novel: ranked on that one book alone.
Why explore this universe?
Rated · 1 book · Complete · 26k ratings · Ranks #628 overall
Good choice if you want a quick, low-commitment dark fantasy universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.
Reading order
A single Core Canon work: no sequencing question to resolve.
Awards (verified)
- Nebula Award (Best Novel), 2024: won: Someone You Can Build a Nest In; Confirmed directly via nebulas.sfwa.org's own nominated-work page: "Winner, Best Novel in 2024."
- Locus Award (Best First Novel), 2025: won: Someone You Can Build a Nest In; the Locus Index to SF Awards' own official successor site was unreachable in this research environment; cross-verified instead via Wikipedia's own dedicated Locus Award for Best First Novel article and an independent dedicated award-tracking compilation (livingcanon.com), both agreeing on the 2025 win. Worth a direct sfadb re-check once that domain is reachable again.
- Hugo Award (Best Novel), 2025: finalist: Someone You Can Build a Nest In; Confirmed directly via thehugoawards.org's own 2025 Hugo Awards page; did not win (Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky in that category's actual outcome was not itself verified, out of scope for this admission).
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Official resources
Research details
Ranking metrics: weighted average 3.86 across 25,728 ratings on 1 Core Canon book. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.
How do we know this?
Admission: Someone You Can Build a Nest In admitted as a single-work universe accepted 2026-08-14
Sources: (see source tier definitions)
- Wikipedia: Someone You Can Build a Nest In Tier 2
- Wikipedia: John Wiswell Tier 2
- Nebula Awards: Someone You Can Build a Nest In (nominated-work page) Tier 1
- The Hugo Awards: 2025 Hugo Awards Tier 1
- Wikipedia: Locus Award for Best First Novel Tier 2
- Living Canon: Locus Award Best First Novel winners list Tier 3
Last reviewed: 2026-08-14
Rule: Single-work universe: one standalone 2024 novel, registered per this canon's LOTR-analogy convention. No sequel found as of this pass; Wiswell's two other novels (Wearing the Lion, 2025; The Dragon Has Some Complaints, 2026) are separate, unrelated standalone stories, not sequels to this world.