I was looking for my next book after reading Chain-Gang All-Stars and saw a random post on Mastodon about a novel called Someone You Can Build a Nest In, which pitched itself as a horror fantasy romance novel. The rest of my to-read list looked a bit daunting so I dove in.
It was a fun short read. The protagonist is a shape-shifting monster who falls for a human, and the rest of the story surrounds the resolution of their differences (and the fact that the protagonist's new girlfriend's family are monster hunters).
-The writing of the monster was fun, though I wish more was done to explore the extent of their capabilities. This may have been counter to the story, as the protagonist spends so much effort being human, but the design of the monster's body was interesting and a very important aspect of the story -- having them utilise it in more novel or clever ways would have been satisfying.
I've also got some minor gripes with the handling of some character-building logic -- the protagonist is illiterate, but is narrated as very intelligent, well-spoken, and educated about human vices. They profess to mainly hunt corrupt officials and other "bad" people, but also that they tend to avoid humans. The character's very human personality and understanding of human culture (if not their mating mechanisms) doesn't make much logical sense. You can hand-wave magic, but they tended to avoid that in the book!
The other issue was with a specific killing that happens in the story that felt completely uncharacteristic, and is handled somewhat casually.
These weren't glaring issues, just some that knocked me out of immersion. Overall I very enjoyed the story and the character interactions. The romance was fun, and the epilogue gives more than most romance stories are willing to dole out in relationship building.
I think there may have been something here a layer deeper in terms of masking or body dysmorphia or something, but if so it skimmed over my head as I wasn't able to string together a coherent message outside of the main story delivery. Perhaps there was a good chuck of "humans are the real monster", but that's a given in a book with an sympathetic non-human protagonist.
That story delivery was good enough, however, for a quick romance romp in the fetid lair of a shape-shifting man-eating monster.