Sour Cherry is a haunting, gothic fairytale that weaves together the raw realities of trauma and abuse. As a blight follows a young man growing up, he leaves behind a trail of bodies in his wake. His wives feel trapped in a web of complicity and isolation. This novel explores the ways mothers, partners, children, and strangers are all deeply affected by domestic abuse. It was a tragic story. There are a litany of quotes that I wish to share, but unfortunately cannot because this is an ARC. This quote was published in the Goodreads description so I am free to share: “If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.” How long can a person excuse the actions of another? How do you escape if this moment is what splits your life into Before and After? This novel is full of desire, want, jealousy, guilt, and despair. Ultimately, Sour Cherry shows that the question “Why don’t you leave” has no simple answer.

I’m a bit torn about this book. I was drawn in immediately by the premise - a dark, gothic retelling of Bluebeard is right up my alley. And in some ways, it lived up to that promise. The prose is lyrical, almost hypnotic, but it also brings a savvy modern edge to the story that I really liked (would have liked to have seen more of this part of the story, actually). On the other hand, it could also be tedious and repetitive and, while I understood the need for ambiguity in its metaphorical approach to cycles of violence, I thought it was often too abstract for its own good. This story is certainly going to stick with me for awhile, but it might be a tricky one to recommend to others. I’ll be curious to read future offerings by this author.

Remember the French folktale Bluebeard-- you know, wealthy guy who murders his wives? Think that, but modern and dreamy. A book that asks-- what makes men become monsters?

The book was surreal and often hopeless, but an interesting take on old source material. It is a slowburn full of curiosities and, at times, confusing, but this debut will hold your attention and might generate some important conversations.

I have been reading fairy tales retold since before I was old enough to want more than what was offered by the original telling. I know the cadence, the violence, and the shape of these tales as well as my own heartbeat or body, fed as I have been on them for decades, which is how I know Natalia Theodoridou is doing something new and extraordinary with “Sour Cherry.”

Comparisons to Angela Carter have and will continue to be made, but I think a likening to Daniel M. Lavery’s “The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror” or Carmen Maria Machado’s “Her Body & Other Parties” are more apt for this novel. Like the stories in these collections, Theodoridou’s “Sour Cherry” uses the bones of fairy tales as structure, but builds beyond the classic confines of gender, “once upon a time” time periods or clever postmodernism. The result: a far more fantastical beast.

I’d go so far as to say—don’t @ me—that Theodoridou makes the original Bluebeard retellings, those by Carter and Atwood and others, that electrified me with their subversion in my youth, feel almost archaic. To read this novel is to feel seen and to be haunted by it. The prose is achingly lovely in the way of fairy tales, but the tragedy at its core—the way its truth is woven through the plant lore and hearth magic and stories within the story—feels fresh and urgent and entirely now.

What makes this novel so different and effective is how Theodoridou has managed to take the cycle of domestic abuse and realize its devastation on a scale that can be understood by anyone, even those who sneer or sigh or condescend and ask that age old, awful question: “why didn’t she just leave?” Dear reader, “Sour Cherry” will tell you in the voices of the old tales and red-mouthed ghosts and birds that sing with the voices of women why she did not leave. I read this novel with my heart in my throat. I thought of my mother and my grandmother and countless other women I have loved and grieved with and I cried and felt vengeful and seen and wanted to break things with my hands. “Sour Cherry” is a triumph.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tin House for an ARC in exchange for an honest review of what’s set to be one of my favorite books of 2025.

Agnes, wet nurse turned nanny, recounts her experience overseeing a growing young lord in an old estate. He is mystical and potentially malevolent, yet, out of either loyalty, a strange fixation, or something else, she stays.

There is most definitely a lot to love in this book. The prose is so descriptive and feels deeply introspective on the part of our main character, Agnes. This might extend to a fault—there were moments where reading this felt like slicing a knife through something very dense and almost resistant. I think this book requires a certain amount of patience while consuming it. Definitely very folksy, gothic, dark!

Thank you #NetGalley and Tin House Books for an ARC.

The novel is a retelling of Bluebeard. It starts with Agnes, who is hired to be the wet nurse of the little lord after her child has died. She watches as the little lord grows up and death and decay spread around him. The story shifts and is largely told through the point of view of one of the wives, who lives surrounded by a Greek chorus of the ghosts of all of the ex-wives who have died before her.

The novel is a mix of Gothic horror and literary fiction. There is a palpable sense of tension and dread that builds throughout the story and the shifting points of view and shifting timelines leave the reader not entirely certain about what is happening - what is real and what is the story that we tell ourselves as we're living through terrible things.

Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou is an intriguing blend of magical realism and emotional depth. The story explores themes of identity, memory, and transformation in a way that feels both haunting and beautiful. The writing is poetic, capturing the inner lives of the characters with sensitivity and detail.

That said, the pace can be a bit slow, and the more abstract elements of the story might leave some readers feeling a little lost or disconnected. It’s the kind of book that requires patience and openness to its dreamy, almost surreal qualities.

While it wasn’t a book that fully grabbed me, I can see how it would resonate with readers who enjoy introspective, layered narratives and don’t mind a bit of ambiguity. If you’re into stories that explore the complexities of human experience with a touch of the fantastical, Sour Cherry is definitely worth checking out.

“If you stay, you die. But if you die, you stay.”

I went into this story without any knowledge of the original Bluebeard tale, so for me it didn’t read as a reimagining, but as a dreamlike, heartbreaking, and haunting tale of ghosts, toxic masculinity and the endless cycles of abuse. (Although I wish I would have known so I could have gotten myself caught up. You can read this without any previous knowledge of the tale, but I think it would really enhance the experience with some familiarity of the story.)

There were parts of this story that felt tedious and repetitive, but after finishing my read through, I’ve chosen to believe that was the ended effect as to further symbolize the true endlessness and hopelessness that situations of DV can have on everyone impacted.

Something that really stuck with me is how the story manages to both highlight the experiences of the women entrapped in this story - his mother, his wives, and his wet nurse, but at the same time have them feel like mere footnotes in their own story as well.

I’m genuinely at a loss for words. This is one of those books where all you can do when you finish is sit in silence.

So many thanks to NetGalley for the eARC!

I really enjoyed this, especially the beautiful prose and the haunting atmosphere. The writing plunged me deeply into the depths of the story, I truly felt like the wives were right alongside me as I read. I do wish some of the relationships had been fleshed out more, BUT I realize the narrator may have just been unable to provide more detailed accounts of relationships she was not apart of.

The ending did confuse me a bit, which may just be the head cold I have.

Overall, I think this was a wonderfully rich retelling that is also uniquely its own. Natalia Theodoridou is definitely a writer to keep an eye on!

3.5/5 rounded up

An entrancing fairy tale about domestic violence, toxic masculinity, and cycles of abuse. Ok, so maybe it’s not the fairy tale that you read to your children before bed at night but it’s the perfect fairy tale for adults.

This one is for lovers of retellings—a modern take on Bluebeard—and for lovers of literary horror. What made Sour Cherry so horrific to me was the dread and sense of impending doom that lurked on the pages. I always felt like something horrible could happen at any moment and yet, I kept inching my way towards it with a knot in the pit of my stomach. Theodoridou has a way with words and I enjoyed his luscious, winding prose and the way he captured the mood for this story.

A strong debut novel. Thank you Tin House Books for the early copy in exchange for an honest review. Available Apr. 01 2025

Honestly, this is a hell of a debut, and I cant wait to see what Mr. Theodoridou does next. This is a story being told by one of the nameless servants in the house and focuses on the parts of the Bluebeard myth that we don't hear much of - the dead wives, the servants who witnessed it and couldn't stop it, and essentially a choir of ghosts of the dead. I think there were some formatting issues at times on my ARC copy, but nothing that can't be fixed before the release. The narrative voices don't fully congeal for me at the end, but it's still a hell of a swing, and the way he chooses to write all this down is astounding. Definitely pick this up when it comes out in April.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Horror + Literary Fiction + Retelling

Sour Cherry falls into several different genres. It is a gothic horror and also a literary fiction. The book is also considered a combination of folklore retelling and magical realism. It is a retelling of Bluebeard, but I haven’t read the original tale, so I cannot compare the two.

The story follows Agnes, who, after losing her child at birth, is summoned to nurse one of the local lords’ infant sons in their manor. There are many creepy things about this child as he grows up. He seems to carry a plague with him wherever he goes. He brings bad luck, grim fate, and death. The worst thing is that even the women he gets involved with face a grim fate.

This book is so captivating with such an interesting premise. In the beginning, I was under the impression that this would be comparable to "The Omen," but the similarities were only slight. The story is heavier on gender issues and toxic masculinity, making it a truly thought-provoking book.

For a debut book, this beautifully written novel is a great start for the author. They mastered creating the right atmosphere and setting for the story. At times, readers might feel the story is a bit slow, but the emotional depth it offers completely compensates for any shortcomings. I liked it a lot.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC of this book.

This book is a slooow burn, but captivating enough to have kept my attention. Loosely based on the story of Bluebeard, his final lover tells the tales of all who came before her, their ghosts whispering their stories over her shoulder. I was left with some unanswered questions (is there a child left behind? Is she truly the final “wife”? Was Cook actually Agnes?) but that seemed to come together in completing the fairytale, which is told as such -the narrator says- to put distance between her and her painful memories.
I did not previously read Bluebeard so I wasn’t left to compare this to the original, and I think that’s best, to see them both as wholly separate tales.
Gorgeous prose and illusive violence, I recommend this to anyone fond of fairy tales because after all aren’t the original ones dark and twisty, the way they were meant to be?
Thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for my review e-book.

interesting approach to a Bluebearded fairytale... First half was great while the rest got to be repetitive and not much food for thought..with that being the focus (cycles of abuse, rinsing and repeating) it fell flat and didn’t have a crash bang of a climax! Loved the narrative and thought it was interesting in that regard!

A reimagining of Bluebeard. Though I’ve admittedly never read the story of Bluebeard, I’m not new to the cycle of abuse carefully presented in this book. This is a very dark and brutal, yet poetically staged book. Theodoridou is masterful in their prose.

Thank you NetGalley & Tin House Books for the ARC!

A dark folktale re-telling that had me gripped the entire time. I haven’t been hooked by a story like this in a long while, and although we all know how stories like this one end, I found myself searching and pleading for it to end differently. A story of abuse, of power, of ancestral trauma. Sour Cherry feels like a mix between “In the Dream House” & “Lapvona”. This novel is one that I’m going to be thinking about for a while.

A loose retelling of Bluebeard's wives, this book starts off with a letter from the author, who, as he goes on his journey to transitioning, asks himself - what turns men into monsters?
This sets the stage for a deeply personal story that tackles domestic violence, cycles of abuse, and the idea of nature vs nurture. The writing has a haunting quality that delivers these themes in a dark and lyrical manner. I was initially drawn in by the premise and the narrator, who sees all these victims as ghosts and tells their stories to her audience - the reader being part of it. We are told each of the wives’ stories as something that happened in a distant time, in a distant place almost like a fairytale, but the narrator herself is in our present time. I liked the way the author played with the concept of time and storytelling to present these real world themes. Where it fell flat for me was the middle, which I feel stretched on too long. By the time we got to the other wives, the writing took on a self indulgent quality - almost too lyrical, too meandering. Each wife’s story felt like a repetition at that point and by the time we get to the narrator, you kind of knew where the story was going. Maybe that was the point - maybe the repetition was meant to drive home the cycle of abuse and the feeling of being trapped but not wanting or being able to leave. While I appreciate the themes and discussion around those themes this book brought up, it failed to hold my interest into the latter half.

If you are looking for something dark, disturbing and not uplifting at all this is the book for you. The abuse and generational trauma in this tale are intense. Still, worth the read. 3.75

4.25/5

Written like a gothic fairytale, this was a beautiful story of horror, destruction, and despair. We are hearing the story told to "us", (us being the reader and also a child). We slowly learn throughout the telling who the narrator is and where the story is coming from. It was intriguing and well written.

Thank you NetGalley and Tin House Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Thank you NetGalley and Tin House for the ARC!
2.5⭐️ rounded up. Unfortunately, this didn’t work super well for me. I loved the premise and folklore retelling, but overall this felt very disjointed and didn’t really hold my attention. I enjoyed the first half but after that, it kind of lost me. I also feel the e-book ARC was not entirely ready for review. The formatting was odd and felt like a very very rough draft. But trying not to fault for that so rounding up. I think this could work in its final form, but sadly was a bit of a letdown for me.