A review by bisexualbookshelf
Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou

challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Thank you to NetGalley and Tin House for the eARC! This book will be published in the US on April 1, 2025.

Natalia Theodoridou’s Sour Cherry is a haunting and lyrical reimagining of Bluebeard, steeped in magical realism and gothic horror. At its core, the novel is an exploration of monstrosity—what makes a man a monster, and who is left to carry the burden of his destruction? The book unfolds as a layered, intergenerational ghost story, where survivors’ voices are given prominence over the myth of the abuser. Through a hypnotic blend of folklore, decay, and psychological horror, Theodoridou crafts an unsettling meditation on power, legacy, and the insidious nature of violence.

The novel’s narrative structure is framed as a story being told by an unnamed narrator to her son, a deliberate shift in perspective that emphasizes survival and remembrance over the abuser’s own self-mythologizing. The lord, a cursed and deeply feared man, is rendered monstrous not through supernatural transformation, but through the quiet, accumulating horrors of his life—his unchecked violence, the suffocating decay that follows him from town to town, and the way he consumes those who try to love him. The question is never whether he can be saved, but whether those around him will survive his presence. The book does not concern itself with redemption, only the wreckage left in its wake.

Thematically, Sour Cherry is rich with explorations of fate, identity, and the cyclical nature of violence. Names and their absence carry particular weight—what does it mean to be named, to be claimed, to be erased? The narrator, like many before her, is drawn into the gravitational pull of the lord’s decay, yet her voice remains. She listens to the ghosts that haunt her, bears witness to the stories of those before her, and in doing so, resists the silence that so often swallows survivors whole.

A deeply unsettling, beautifully wrought novel, Sour Cherry does not offer easy answers—only the ghosts of those who came before, whispering their truths. In choosing to center survivors over monsters, Theodoridou crafts a narrative that is both devastating and quietly triumphant.

📖 Read this if you love: haunting, folkloric storytelling; pro-survivor narratives that center resilience over redemption; and lyrical, psychologically rich prose.

🔑 Key Themes: Monstrosity and Power, Legacy and Inescapable Cycles, Survival and Testimony.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings