Sour Cherry: A fiercely haunting gothic horror novel examining gender and power, reimagining the fairytale Bluebeard

WINNER OF THE 2026 LOCUS AWARD – BEST FIRST NOVEL
NOMINATED FOR 2025 NEBULA AWARD – BEST NOVEL

‘Slow, haunting and strangely beautiful’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
‘Read it and be changed’ B. PLADEK
‘Beautifully told in rhythmic, singing prose’ RORY POWER
‘Masterfully crafted … Theodoridou has an amazing talent for storytelling’ ASSOCIATED PRESS

Something terrible has happened.

In a mysterious apartment filled with ghosts, our unnamed narrator attempts to explain this to her child – how do I talk about this? she wonders.

The truth must become something beautiful. We must begin with a fairy tale.

And so she begins to construct a beautiful fairy tale for her child – one that begins with a strange baby boy whose nails grow too fast and whose skin smells of soil. As he grows from a boy into a man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Tragedy strikes in cycles – and wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. These ghosts call out desperately to our narrator as she tries to explain, in the very real world, exactly what has happened to her.

And they 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.

A debut novel as emotionally poignant as it is fiercely smart, Sour Cherry is an arresting debut examining toxic masculinity through its chorus of women – deconstructing the idea of what makes someone a monster.