Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou | Horror Fiction Review

This started out amazing but lost me along the way. 

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Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou

Released April 2025

Source: Purchased from local indie bookstore

Get it at your local library or see more @ Goodreads

Sour Cherry is a retelling of the murderous Bluebeard, he of the penchant for collecting and murdering wives.

He's no different here. The story starts out when he's just a "little lord". He's an odd child, whose nails grow at a frightening pace, and he can't seem to fit in with the other children. His wetnurse cares for him when no one else can quite bring themselves to. Is he an evil seed, is he truly cursed or is it the lack of nurturing? We shall never know but as the story goes along any sympathy I was able to dredge up for him was soon lost.

The book has some beautiful language, but the story is oddly composed. It takes its time getting started. We get to know Bluebeard as that strange child I mentioned above. This section is a good 98 pages of the 293-page book, and I enjoyed it the most. Then it moves into another section entitled "Tristan" that only proves to show that Bluebeard is indeed the monster we all assumed. It's a very long chapter and I admit my attention began to wane. Eventually the book focuses VERY briefly on a few of the ill-fated wives, but it's all written so very vaguely and briefly that it's hard to feel any terror or emotion for these women which is a shame and, as this fable had to go, it got very repetitive. Then things finish up with Cherry's section. I won't tell you who she is because I think if you're interested in reading this book you should discover its few secrets without knowing too much because you probably know a lot going in already.

This book took me a month read and if I weren't reading it for the Horror Discord chat, I may have put it down and never picked it up again. It's under 300 pages and the chapters are short but it seemed to take me an eternity to get through it because I was often left with too many questions and was left frustrated by the vagueness of most of the events. I've seen it described as dreamlike and ethereal, but I wouldn't describe it that way now that I'm finished. It felt intentionally unclear and ultimately just frustrating as there were far too many read between the lines moments. Almost an entire of book of them. Someone in the chat said this book felt based on "vibes" and I have to agree. It wasn't bad but it wasn't what I was expecting in a Bluebeard retelling. I wanted more meat to balance out the vibes, I guess, or at least more answers. The material: domestic abuse, gaslighting, placating, an inability to leave, is horrendous and though atrocities are continually occurring I managed to feel nothing at all.

But then there were a few honest moments like this that kept me going:

“Sometimes he thought he wanted to eat her, to suck on her flesh and drink the marrow from her bones.”

"She likes the way he looks at her. More than just a not-yet ghost peeling herself from the wallpaper, doing her little damage, waiting for her turn.”

This left me feeling blah. Wealthy, maladjusted, insecure men seem to get away with everything with very little in the way of consequences and I guess I wasn't in the mood to read about yet another one in this type of format. I don't know how to rate this one but it feels like a 2.5.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐1/2

Publisher Plot Synopsis 

A stunning reimagining of Bluebeard—one of the most mythologized serial killers—twisted into a modern tale of toxic masculinity, a feminist sermon, and a folktale for the twenty-first century.

The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy—until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her. The ghosts can all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin: If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.

Natalia Theodoridou’s haunting and unforgettable debut novel, Sour Cherry, confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.