I keep calling this book cozy, but I'm told this is incorrect. To be fair, there's a mountain of gore and monsters eating terrible people, but I find that cozy. In a world where terrible people often eat others, this turn of events is refreshing, and in many ways the heart of the novel.

Shesheshen is a monster. She's minding her own business, hibernating in the bowels of a dilapidated castle when a few asshole hunters come to kill her. She's weak from hibernation and low on body parts to build a physical scaffold to mold her gluey, monstrous body into a shape recognizable to humans. Despite injury, she flees by tumbling off a cliff.

To her surprise, she's saved by Homily, a lovely, plus-size asexual woman, who is also trying to kill the dreaded monster that killed her father. Shesheshen is confused; she didn't kill anyone who didn't completely suck. While she needs to feed on flesh, she feasts on townspeople who prey on others. But a large hunting party is on the way, and it's led by Homily's awful mother.

I loved the shit out of this book. There's an adorable queer asexual love story, sweet characters juxtaposed by the worst people, and a dash of strange yet funny personalities in between. There's also a cute blue bear who is Shesheshen's companion. The ending is satisfying, and it's a one-off, which I love because I'm terrible at reading a whole series. The book is hard to fit into one genre. It's a fantasy for sure, grim-dark in some ways with gore and murder, sweet and soft in other ways with romance and caretaking. This ticks all my boxes, and I won't shut up about it.

/rae