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.

Sour Cherry to me, at least in its ARC state, suffers from wanting to accomplish far too much. Between the abrupt and incongruous changes in perspective, the under-developed lore and over-reliance on inference, and the seemingly tokenized out of context inserts of specific lines as shallow attempts to connect the story to the purported plot shown in the blurb; I was left feeling as if I had read 3 books amalgamated into one, and felt it needed much more precise editing and story delineation, idea culling and a more concise execution. The Bluebeard plot felt shoddily inserted near the conclusion, a conclusion which felt incredibly dragged out and superfluous in itself. Overall, this was an extremely messy novel that I do not think is ready for publication at the point it is at in the E-ARC I read.

Sour Cherry is a beautifully written novel that takes on the arduous task of trying to understand why bad men are the way they are. I enjoyed the focus of the story but it started feel a little drawn out at certain points. I think this story has a lot to say and could be endlessly dissected and discussed. It would be an interesting pick for a feminist book club. I was very drawn to this book because of the cover, the title, and the plot description. Will definitely give Natalia Theodoridou another shot.

Was notified today that I'm being gifted a finished copy of Sour Cherry closer to pub day!! In the meantime I'm submitting this, as idt my FB ratio should be impacted while I wait to review the real deal (which I think it's fair to assume is objectively better).

I can't thank Tin House Books enough for this additional opportunity to read early! And a thank you to NetGalley, as always <3

Thank you to NetGalley and Tin House Books for the advanced copy and the opportunity to provide an honest review.

This book just wasn't for me. The author has some serious writing chops, and the prose is gorgeous, but I couldn't connect with the characters or the story. The moment it entered into the nameless child territory, I knew it wasn't going to resonate. The sudden shift from the story being about the boy to something entirely else was confusing and jarring because it took me about that long to finally understand what the heck was going on. Then the rug was pulled out from under me. I can understand how people would appreciate the ethereal, dreamlike quality of this fair tale retelling,, but I don't think I'm smart enough to understand what was happening throughout most of this book.

I CANNOT say enough about how much I adored this book. The layered storytelling with the most vivid imagery (either the most beautiful, or disgusting images) takes you through all of these stories. I feel like I could smell the scenes I was reading through, it was so immersive. The subject of cycles of abuse, generational trauma, can't always be done in a way that is so subtle, yet you can feel the tension in your neck knowing that you can never really outrun where you came from. Sour Cherry will DEFINITELY be in my top books of 2025, and it's only January. Ready to sign on as a lifetime Theodoridou fan if this is what a debut novel looks like for them.

The highlight here was definitely the prose, the images are so gorgeous and lasting. The pacing is a little uneven and I didn’t find the frame story format compelling, but it really is beautiful.

This dark gothic, morbid(all in the right ways), literary exquisite book had me absolutely hooked. This was so beautifully written. If you like dark historical fiction, this is one is for you. There were a few times towards the end I felt a little lost but overall I truly enjoyed this and the author’s way of writing. I wasn’t aware this was a retelling of an old folklore. After some research, it actually helped me understand it more.

Thank you to the author, publishers & NetGalley for this eARC.

3.5/5 stars
The book takes a bold approach, with its shifting and vague perspective adding to the creepy, stifling atmosphere. However, it feels a bit too long, and the subplot about "all the previous wives" and the incident with Tristan ( Bluebeard's son) felt more like a fleeting moment without much impact on the overall story.

I had not heard of this title or author previous to seeing it on Netgalley. The title and the cover art called to me and the synopsis suggested that this book would be completely up my alley (I love a good fairytale retelling). Unfortunately, after trying again and again, I have only made it to page 50. I thought the writing wasn't very strong, sometimes bordering into bad/corny territory. I also was not convinced by the vilification of the child. I think the way it was going about it was uninteresting, boring, lazy and confusing. I kept picking up the book in hopes that it would pick up, change course, or become more interesting, but no dice. This is unfortunate because I'm curious about how the story will unfold, but not curious enough to keep trying to read it. Thank you for the ARC, but I think this book is simply not for me.

Okay, I did love this, but it had some challenges. This book inserts you into a world that both feels unrealistic and is the exact reality of so many women around the world. This book feels like a gut check, when you know something is wrong long before anything even happens. HOWEVER, it's too long. I felt like there were so many places it dragged on or had pacing issues, even though I enjoyed the writing style. My biggest reflection is that this book slowly becomes horror in the way so many abusive relationships do.

2.5 stars rounded up.

The first half of this book has a focused plot, though heavy-handed on the foreshadowing, leading the rest to fall short in its over-dramatization. The second half lost me. I understand the metaphor of cycles of abuse but the plot of the latter half felt muddled and confused. A good premise, but the prose is not for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Tin House Books for the ARC.

awesomely well done tale that retold bluebeartd not a story that i'm typically a huge fan of, and turned it into this amazing thing. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

What a beautiful and haunting retelling of Bluebeard! The story poignantly explored toxic masculinity and the stain that cycles of abuse leave behind. I really appreciated how disjointed the storytelling was, however, I began to lose interest towards the end and would have loved to get some more character development. Otherwise I really enjoyed this and hope to read more by this author! Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Sour Cherry spins a Bluebeard story as a mother turns tragedy into fairy tale for her child. The writing is lush and hypnotic, weaving a darkly atmospheric tale of a soil-scented lord whose touch turns wives to ghosts, creating the dreamy unease of a gothic fairy tale. The story's heart lies in Tristan, the lord's gentle son, whose chapters offer a haunting counterpoint to his father's violence

This is exactly what I want from fairytale retellings. It engages with the shifting narratives, the threat and safety inherent in the stories we tell. It was romantic in the older definition of the term, intense and atmospheric, the characters wrestling with threats both human and much larger than themselves. It was gorgeous and strange and timeless, lush in a way that steps in like with Kelly Link and Angela Carter. I want to shove it into the hands of everyone I know, and I want to clutch it to my chest and cherish it like a forbidden secret.