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Odessa
In a powerfully imagined Russia at the height of the pogroms, a grief-stricken family turn to ancient magic to bring their daughter back from the grave.
“A triumph.”―Nat Cassidy, author of Mary and When the Wolf Comes Home
"Spellbinding. . . A tender and gutting showstopper."―Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Yetta is a bright, quick teenage girl with a wild, searching spirit. Stifled by her mother's anxiety, her father’s rules, and the path that’s been laid out for her, she craves freedom, the edges of which she doesn't know. But her family has reason to be cautious and restrictive. Fear has wrapped itself around their shtetl. Jews are mysteriously disappearing, and there are whispers of an impending attack. When violence comes to their door, Yetta is killed.
Her father, in his grief, fumbles through his nascent knowledge of ancient texts and old magic to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned—but although she looks the same, she is not the girl she once was. Yetta senses there is a secret her family is keeping from her. The answer resides, in part, in the creature lurking in the woods beyond the shtetl―something that may be of her father’s making, and a being that has plans of its own.
"Breathtaking."― Monika Kim, author of The Eyes are the Best Part
"Wonderfully strange, marvelously frightening, and authentically moving."― Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie
“A triumph.”―Nat Cassidy, author of Mary and When the Wolf Comes Home
"Spellbinding. . . A tender and gutting showstopper."―Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Yetta is a bright, quick teenage girl with a wild, searching spirit. Stifled by her mother's anxiety, her father’s rules, and the path that’s been laid out for her, she craves freedom, the edges of which she doesn't know. But her family has reason to be cautious and restrictive. Fear has wrapped itself around their shtetl. Jews are mysteriously disappearing, and there are whispers of an impending attack. When violence comes to their door, Yetta is killed.
Her father, in his grief, fumbles through his nascent knowledge of ancient texts and old magic to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned—but although she looks the same, she is not the girl she once was. Yetta senses there is a secret her family is keeping from her. The answer resides, in part, in the creature lurking in the woods beyond the shtetl―something that may be of her father’s making, and a being that has plans of its own.
"Breathtaking."― Monika Kim, author of The Eyes are the Best Part
"Wonderfully strange, marvelously frightening, and authentically moving."― Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie
280 pages, Hardcover
First published April 21, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 899 reviews
August 30, 2026
Soooooooo devastating 😭 made me cry.
November 2, 2025
I'm honestly kind of speechless after finishing this. Odessa is a harrowing and intense read, as you can imagine from the premise. Even right from the first few pages, it felt like the book locked me in its grasp and never let go. It's deeply sad, but there's strength, hope, endurance, and love bubbling beneath the surface. Plus, it features one of my absolute favorite folkloric beings and has an absolutely stunning cover. Seriously, I'd love a poster version of the cover to put on my wall.
Highly, highly recommend!
Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the review copy!
Highly, highly recommend!
Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the review copy!
April 24, 2026
My great grandma (who was practically the only grandparent I had growing up) was born in Odessa in 1910 so I was initially drawn to this book because of this setting. Then I saw there was a Golem and my intrigued peaked more. All I really knew about them was from the book 'The Golem and the Jinni' which is one of my go to comfort books. So I was thrilled to have a horror book with them.
This book was truly phenomenal for a debut. What a fresh idea. The atmosphere was incredible, the author really did a great job building up the desperation felt not only by Mordechai but also Freida and while they are both desperate to protect their families they have different views on what that means. Yetta was also a great character and I loved watching her transformations throughout the book. All the rage was felt (both myself and Yetta). It was beautiful, harrowing, and tragic.
You've probably seen this blow up in the book community and there is a good reason why. Ill definitely be reading the author again.
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and Netgalley for the free arc in exchange for my honest review.
This book was truly phenomenal for a debut. What a fresh idea. The atmosphere was incredible, the author really did a great job building up the desperation felt not only by Mordechai but also Freida and while they are both desperate to protect their families they have different views on what that means. Yetta was also a great character and I loved watching her transformations throughout the book. All the rage was felt (both myself and Yetta). It was beautiful, harrowing, and tragic.
You've probably seen this blow up in the book community and there is a good reason why. Ill definitely be reading the author again.
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and Netgalley for the free arc in exchange for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
We all are driven by our internal passions. But it is the downfall of Humanity when these passions are driven by hate.
Gabrielle Sher introduces us to her debut novel with a cover depicting fear, anxiety, and profound terror in double time. Odessa will not be for everyone. Know that going in. Sher reaches back in history to the violent pogroms in 1905 in Russia when Jews were hunted down and murdered for just being Jews. Hatred still wedges into history and sits on a throne man-made.
Frida and Miriam bathe in the spring-fed waters in the early morning hours. It is a cleansing of the spirit as well as the cleansing of the body. They hurry back to their homes with heads down. Women were limited in their taking to the streets. Possibly for safety and possibly for the lowly positions that women held. But something is brewing in the chatter on those streets. Something deadly.
Frida's husband, Mordecai, works as a furniture maker by day. At night he visits with the other men and the rabbi to provide a plan for the next attack by the Cossack gentiles. And soon, what was just talk becomes reality. The Cossacks swoop down on the Jewish community leaving death and destruction behind. Broken bodies and broken spirits. The Jews barricade the entrance into the village. But it's just a matter of time.
Mordecai searches the streets for his teenage daughter, Yetta. He finds her broken body on the steps leading to gentile section. Filled with profound grief, Mordecai carries his daughter to the home of the rabbi. Together, they reach for the ancient volume that Mordecai carries in his pocket. And with these archaic words, they will bring Yetta back to life. But as in all things, be careful what you wish for.
Odessa is a very graphic depiction of the pogroms during this time period. How can it be otherwise? Gabrielle Sher reaches back and brings forward the folklore that was passed down from Jewish parent to child for generations. She speaks of the golem, a mythical being created from mud or clay as a protector for the Jewish people. It is the words of the rabbi that bring life to this being.
Yetta is at the core of Odessa. She will search for the seed of her prior self in a ruthless manner. Her newly shaped presence will bring short-lived joy and long-term sorrow. Sher unveils Man's efforts to overstep Supreme creation with that within human hands. And the results may bring doom throughout generations. And that doom drives Odessa into a breathless page turner. Odessa is an emotionally driven novel that Gabrielle Sher has crafted brilliantly. We'll visit horror after horror. And yet, there are the threads of deep familial love and the rigid breath of survival. Bravo, just bravo, Gabrielle Sher.
I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Little, Brown and Company and to the talented Gabrielle Sher for the opportunity.
Gabrielle Sher introduces us to her debut novel with a cover depicting fear, anxiety, and profound terror in double time. Odessa will not be for everyone. Know that going in. Sher reaches back in history to the violent pogroms in 1905 in Russia when Jews were hunted down and murdered for just being Jews. Hatred still wedges into history and sits on a throne man-made.
Frida and Miriam bathe in the spring-fed waters in the early morning hours. It is a cleansing of the spirit as well as the cleansing of the body. They hurry back to their homes with heads down. Women were limited in their taking to the streets. Possibly for safety and possibly for the lowly positions that women held. But something is brewing in the chatter on those streets. Something deadly.
Frida's husband, Mordecai, works as a furniture maker by day. At night he visits with the other men and the rabbi to provide a plan for the next attack by the Cossack gentiles. And soon, what was just talk becomes reality. The Cossacks swoop down on the Jewish community leaving death and destruction behind. Broken bodies and broken spirits. The Jews barricade the entrance into the village. But it's just a matter of time.
Mordecai searches the streets for his teenage daughter, Yetta. He finds her broken body on the steps leading to gentile section. Filled with profound grief, Mordecai carries his daughter to the home of the rabbi. Together, they reach for the ancient volume that Mordecai carries in his pocket. And with these archaic words, they will bring Yetta back to life. But as in all things, be careful what you wish for.
Odessa is a very graphic depiction of the pogroms during this time period. How can it be otherwise? Gabrielle Sher reaches back and brings forward the folklore that was passed down from Jewish parent to child for generations. She speaks of the golem, a mythical being created from mud or clay as a protector for the Jewish people. It is the words of the rabbi that bring life to this being.
Yetta is at the core of Odessa. She will search for the seed of her prior self in a ruthless manner. Her newly shaped presence will bring short-lived joy and long-term sorrow. Sher unveils Man's efforts to overstep Supreme creation with that within human hands. And the results may bring doom throughout generations. And that doom drives Odessa into a breathless page turner. Odessa is an emotionally driven novel that Gabrielle Sher has crafted brilliantly. We'll visit horror after horror. And yet, there are the threads of deep familial love and the rigid breath of survival. Bravo, just bravo, Gabrielle Sher.
I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Little, Brown and Company and to the talented Gabrielle Sher for the opportunity.
October 25, 2025
The novel is set in a version of Tsarist Russia in the early 20th century amid an organized massacre of the Jews. Yetta is violently killed but her father uses his knowledge of ancient Jewish texts and old magic to bring her back to life. But these things never goes as planned. Instead of his daughter returning he gets a golem, a mythological creature from Jewish folklore.
This story deals with some heavy themes such as antisemitism, persecution, violence and grief so it will evoke strong emotions in the reader. The author gives the reader a vivid historical setting with a looming threat of violence and an atmosphere of overall dread. This reads like a historical fiction with elements of magical realism that aides in the horror or gothic tone and feel.
Because the supernatural and horror elements are layered into a deep historical Jewish experience and folklore some who are not familiar with Jewish folklore or customs may need to look some things up. Concepts related to Jewish holidays, life-cycle events, weekly observances as well the mystical aspects of Judaism are regularly referenced. As a Jew myself, I enjoyed the folklore aspects of the story immensely.
Overall Odessa is a darkly poetic, historically magical debut that blends Jewish folklore, grief, and gothic horror. A story that transforms from historical horror to a psychological haunting that evokes emotion.
This story deals with some heavy themes such as antisemitism, persecution, violence and grief so it will evoke strong emotions in the reader. The author gives the reader a vivid historical setting with a looming threat of violence and an atmosphere of overall dread. This reads like a historical fiction with elements of magical realism that aides in the horror or gothic tone and feel.
Because the supernatural and horror elements are layered into a deep historical Jewish experience and folklore some who are not familiar with Jewish folklore or customs may need to look some things up. Concepts related to Jewish holidays, life-cycle events, weekly observances as well the mystical aspects of Judaism are regularly referenced. As a Jew myself, I enjoyed the folklore aspects of the story immensely.
Overall Odessa is a darkly poetic, historically magical debut that blends Jewish folklore, grief, and gothic horror. A story that transforms from historical horror to a psychological haunting that evokes emotion.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 8, 2026
i had a lot of problems with this one unfortunately. the book is called odessa, the name of an iconic and majorly important jewish city, but it's not at all rooted in the place it's named after—in fact, it doesn't even see to be set in odessa at all. no black sea, no ports, no trade, no industry, no urban feel whatsoever. it seemed that the book was set in a random town. the author mistakes her languages a bunch of times, the worst offender being that yetta refers to her parents as ima and abba, which are hebrew, a language she wouldn't speak for a two major reasons: 1. because she is a woman at a time where women were explicitly shut out from learning hebrew and 2. because hebrew was not spoken colloquially at this point in time except insularly within zionist political organizations, which no one in this book is a part of. in fact, her community would most likely view colloquial use of hebrew as heresy. additionally, it felt like the book could have been set in any town in the world with racial tensions, nothing felt unique to the conflict between jews and ukrainians or the setting of the russian empire. so on a historical level, i did not like.
on a story level, it just felt like nothing happened. i liked the beginning a lot, but the opening scene was by far the best scene in the entire book. all of the family stuff fell flat for me and while yetta, alive, was interesting, she ceased to be after she died, even when there were . man this book was boring. amazing cover though.
i wish the author did more research, and i wish that her themes had a better through-line. there was some interesting stuff brought up about patriarchy but there was no follow-through. i also wish the characters were better written; ephraim was nothing but a plot device, and in general i didn't really care about anyone.
positives? great body horror. the writing was nice. the first scene ruled.
on a story level, it just felt like nothing happened. i liked the beginning a lot, but the opening scene was by far the best scene in the entire book. all of the family stuff fell flat for me and while yetta, alive, was interesting, she ceased to be after she died, even when there were . man this book was boring. amazing cover though.
i wish the author did more research, and i wish that her themes had a better through-line. there was some interesting stuff brought up about patriarchy but there was no follow-through. i also wish the characters were better written; ephraim was nothing but a plot device, and in general i didn't really care about anyone.
positives? great body horror. the writing was nice. the first scene ruled.
March 14, 2026
Thank you Little, Brown and Co. for my free ARC of Odessa by Gabrielle Sher — available Apr 21! This was one of my most anticipated reads for the year, and it fully surpassed my expectations.
» READ IF YOU «
🪆 can't resist folklore horror
👊 want to hate men (extra) for a bit
🩸 have ever wanted to rip someone's throat out
» SYNOPSIS «
In early 20th-century Russia, a family will do anything to hold on to the daughter they've lost to violence. But back from the dead, Yetta is no longer the same girl she was. Is it the magic that's changed her, or is it the pain she's endured at the hands of the men who are now relying on her help?
» REVIEW «
Do you...want to feel...pure feminine rage? Well then babe, buckle the f*ck up. I am still, personally, reeling over how fantastic this book is. And it's a debut?! Gabrielle Sher has me as a reader for life. AND THAT COVER?! Alright, back to business.
This is a spectacular tale of a young woman and her quest for just a single frickin' SPECK of agency. The men in her life, unsurprisingly, refuse to allow her any. Set in pogrom-era Russia, there is a constant sense of tension and dread that gets into your bones as you read this, and you can almost feel what Yetta is enduring.
I am, unabashedly, a sucker for Slavic horror, and the Jewish folklore elements and characters in here were just perfection for me. Sher's writing is ultra-immersive, and the narrator for my audio copy did an incredible job with accents, tones, and specific voices for each character. The story itself is violent and gruesome, sure, but what will really stick with me is the struggle of a young girl to have just the slightest notion of autonomy, even in death.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
» READ IF YOU «
🪆 can't resist folklore horror
👊 want to hate men (extra) for a bit
🩸 have ever wanted to rip someone's throat out
» SYNOPSIS «
In early 20th-century Russia, a family will do anything to hold on to the daughter they've lost to violence. But back from the dead, Yetta is no longer the same girl she was. Is it the magic that's changed her, or is it the pain she's endured at the hands of the men who are now relying on her help?
» REVIEW «
Do you...want to feel...pure feminine rage? Well then babe, buckle the f*ck up. I am still, personally, reeling over how fantastic this book is. And it's a debut?! Gabrielle Sher has me as a reader for life. AND THAT COVER?! Alright, back to business.
This is a spectacular tale of a young woman and her quest for just a single frickin' SPECK of agency. The men in her life, unsurprisingly, refuse to allow her any. Set in pogrom-era Russia, there is a constant sense of tension and dread that gets into your bones as you read this, and you can almost feel what Yetta is enduring.
I am, unabashedly, a sucker for Slavic horror, and the Jewish folklore elements and characters in here were just perfection for me. Sher's writing is ultra-immersive, and the narrator for my audio copy did an incredible job with accents, tones, and specific voices for each character. The story itself is violent and gruesome, sure, but what will really stick with me is the struggle of a young girl to have just the slightest notion of autonomy, even in death.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
May 29, 2026
"This is what demons do, they spread fear and make monsters out of everyone."
If a black metal band could be a book, it would be this one! Yetta is one brutal badass and we need more people like her.
The cover is highly appealing and I won't lie, I didn't need to know anything else about this book after I spotted the cover. You all can call me an ass for judging but I'm sure someone else is just as guilty.
The story captured me from the first page. My heart broke but Yetta glued it back together by the end. I'm impressed with how much I enjoyed this. Really at a loss for words with this one. ♥
If a black metal band could be a book, it would be this one! Yetta is one brutal badass and we need more people like her.
The cover is highly appealing and I won't lie, I didn't need to know anything else about this book after I spotted the cover. You all can call me an ass for judging but I'm sure someone else is just as guilty.
The story captured me from the first page. My heart broke but Yetta glued it back together by the end. I'm impressed with how much I enjoyed this. Really at a loss for words with this one. ♥
April 17, 2026
The cover is absolutely stunning and the premise showed a lot of promise. Unfortunately, the story itself didn’t quite deliver for me; something felt missing, and it left me wanting more.
May 25, 2026
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I feel maternal towards Yetta
I feel maternal towards Yetta
May 5, 2026
TW/CW: Language, violence, blood, Antisemitism, death of pregnant woman, sexual assault, death of child
*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:
Yetta is a bright, quick teenage girl with a wild, searching spirit. Stifled by her mother's anxiety, her father’s rules, and the path that’s been laid out for her, she craves the kind of freedom she doesn’t know the edges of. But her family has reason to be cautious and restrictive. Fear has wrapped itself around their shtetl. Jews are mysteriously disappearing, and there are whispers of an impending Gentile attack. When violence comes to their door, Yetta is killed.Her father, in his grief, fumbles through his nascent knowledge of ancient texts and old magic to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned—but although she looks the same, Yetta is not the girl she once was. She knows there is a secret her family is keeping from her. The answer resides, in part, in the monstruous being stalking the villagers and their enemies, lurking in the woods beyond the shtetl, something that may be of her father’s making, and a being which has plans of its own.
Release Date: April 21st, 2026
Genre: Horror
Pages: 288
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
What I Liked:
1. Love the writing style
2. Yetta is a well rounded character
What I Didn't Like:
1. The rush into bringing her back (I don't know jewish beliefs so maybe it has to happen soon but it's not explained that I read)
2. Pretty slow and boring
Overall Thoughts:
{{Disclaimer: I write my review as I read}}
I can't believe they murdered Yetta like that. She really thought he was going to give her grace because they flirted and he just assaulted her and strangled her. Disgusting.
I guess I'm wishing there was a second they took for us to understand that effect of Yetta being murdered before jumping into her being brought back. It just feels so fast. I know it's a short book but I need to feel the gravity of her loss. It's giving animal put down and at the animal shelter by 4pm to get new pet vibes.
Final Thoughts:
I dnfed this 100 pages into the story. I didn't know it was about a golem but I honestly found myself bored with the story. Everything is sooooo slow and moves at a snails pace. It's more about emotions and the losses one suffers vs an actual horror novel. I wish it had more creepy factors and maybe more came later but I didn't really care to find out.
IG | Blog
Thanks to Netgalley and Hachette Audio for this advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:
Yetta is a bright, quick teenage girl with a wild, searching spirit. Stifled by her mother's anxiety, her father’s rules, and the path that’s been laid out for her, she craves the kind of freedom she doesn’t know the edges of. But her family has reason to be cautious and restrictive. Fear has wrapped itself around their shtetl. Jews are mysteriously disappearing, and there are whispers of an impending Gentile attack. When violence comes to their door, Yetta is killed.Her father, in his grief, fumbles through his nascent knowledge of ancient texts and old magic to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned—but although she looks the same, Yetta is not the girl she once was. She knows there is a secret her family is keeping from her. The answer resides, in part, in the monstruous being stalking the villagers and their enemies, lurking in the woods beyond the shtetl, something that may be of her father’s making, and a being which has plans of its own.
Release Date: April 21st, 2026
Genre: Horror
Pages: 288
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
What I Liked:
1. Love the writing style
2. Yetta is a well rounded character
What I Didn't Like:
1. The rush into bringing her back (I don't know jewish beliefs so maybe it has to happen soon but it's not explained that I read)
2. Pretty slow and boring
Overall Thoughts:
{{Disclaimer: I write my review as I read}}
I can't believe they murdered Yetta like that. She really thought he was going to give her grace because they flirted and he just assaulted her and strangled her. Disgusting.
I guess I'm wishing there was a second they took for us to understand that effect of Yetta being murdered before jumping into her being brought back. It just feels so fast. I know it's a short book but I need to feel the gravity of her loss. It's giving animal put down and at the animal shelter by 4pm to get new pet vibes.
Final Thoughts:
I dnfed this 100 pages into the story. I didn't know it was about a golem but I honestly found myself bored with the story. Everything is sooooo slow and moves at a snails pace. It's more about emotions and the losses one suffers vs an actual horror novel. I wish it had more creepy factors and maybe more came later but I didn't really care to find out.
IG | Blog
Thanks to Netgalley and Hachette Audio for this advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
March 8, 2026
4.5 Stars
I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover but *violently points fingers* LOOK AT IT!!
This read like a dark fairytale that blended horrific history and Jewish folklore really well. It was brutal, bloody, angry and bone achingly sad. A reflection on how far one will go for love. I personally liked the pace of this and how introspective it could be at times. I do wish maybe it had been a little longer to explore certain themes and aspects of the story, but overall it was an amazing and compelling read.
It's such a STUNNING debut!! Like, wow. Gabrielle Sher doesn't waste any ink, and I can't wait to see what's next her.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the arc!
I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover but *violently points fingers* LOOK AT IT!!
This read like a dark fairytale that blended horrific history and Jewish folklore really well. It was brutal, bloody, angry and bone achingly sad. A reflection on how far one will go for love. I personally liked the pace of this and how introspective it could be at times. I do wish maybe it had been a little longer to explore certain themes and aspects of the story, but overall it was an amazing and compelling read.
It's such a STUNNING debut!! Like, wow. Gabrielle Sher doesn't waste any ink, and I can't wait to see what's next her.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the arc!
August 8, 2026
I really loved this from page one until the end.
But what the fuck was with the Krav Maga reference in the acknowledgments...?
But what the fuck was with the Krav Maga reference in the acknowledgments...?
April 19, 2026
(Two important disclaimers at the end.)
Wow! What a debut. The book starts with pogroms in 1900s Odessa, which lead to the death of a young Jewish woman and her resurrection through ancient magic by her desperate father. However, something not quite human comes back, and there is also a monster with its own plot stalking the woods around the shtetl...
The writing, especially through the audiobook, shines! It is so atmospheric, visual, and evocative; the claustrophobia in all its forms and the characters' terror and dread are so palpable - it grabbed me immediately and I flew through the book. There is a great mixture of historical fiction, folklore and supernatural / horror. Some truly emotional and brutal scenes. Definitely check the TWs. Gothic-esque for sure.
The story is told through 3 POVs of the core family that the story revolves around, which makes for a really interesting reading experience, as you can build a full picture of everything happening, as well as how each character feels, what they plan for, and their secrets, while those remain a mystery to the other characters.
The overarching themes are persecution, survival, love, grief, trauma. rage and loss (what they mean not only for the core group of characters but also for the community they're a part of at large), but also women's autonomy and agency in a male-centric world, and posing the question of what makes a monster. I also found the duality of the FMC, metaphorically captured through the use of folklore, to be a really fascinating exploration of human nature.
And what an incredible cover!!! And excellent audiobook, probably one of the best I’ve listened to in a while.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author, Hachette Audio and Little Brown for giving me access to the audiobook early in exchange for my honest opinion.
4.5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
———
Disclaimers:
Firstly, this is very much a Jewish history inspired piece of fiction that relies on Jewish folklore, which in itself isn't a point of contention at all and I really enjoyed learning more about Jewish folklore and was fascinated by it.
BUT it was difficult to read this and the horrendous events of persecution and violence towards the Jewish people that act as a catalyst for the plot without constantly thinking of the horrors and atrocities that the people of Palestine have had to endure and continue having to endure.
And another reminder on the side due to the setting of the story: this is a Jewish story from another time, but let's not forget that modern day Odesa is in Ukraine, where the Ukrainian people have also been fighting to survive a completely unfounded and unwavering war from Russia for the past years, (with a long history behind it as well) which barely gets any attention from the mainstream nowadays.
Wow! What a debut. The book starts with pogroms in 1900s Odessa, which lead to the death of a young Jewish woman and her resurrection through ancient magic by her desperate father. However, something not quite human comes back, and there is also a monster with its own plot stalking the woods around the shtetl...
The writing, especially through the audiobook, shines! It is so atmospheric, visual, and evocative; the claustrophobia in all its forms and the characters' terror and dread are so palpable - it grabbed me immediately and I flew through the book. There is a great mixture of historical fiction, folklore and supernatural / horror. Some truly emotional and brutal scenes. Definitely check the TWs. Gothic-esque for sure.
The story is told through 3 POVs of the core family that the story revolves around, which makes for a really interesting reading experience, as you can build a full picture of everything happening, as well as how each character feels, what they plan for, and their secrets, while those remain a mystery to the other characters.
The overarching themes are persecution, survival, love, grief, trauma. rage and loss (what they mean not only for the core group of characters but also for the community they're a part of at large), but also women's autonomy and agency in a male-centric world, and posing the question of what makes a monster. I also found the duality of the FMC, metaphorically captured through the use of folklore, to be a really fascinating exploration of human nature.
And what an incredible cover!!! And excellent audiobook, probably one of the best I’ve listened to in a while.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author, Hachette Audio and Little Brown for giving me access to the audiobook early in exchange for my honest opinion.
4.5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
———
Disclaimers:
Firstly, this is very much a Jewish history inspired piece of fiction that relies on Jewish folklore, which in itself isn't a point of contention at all and I really enjoyed learning more about Jewish folklore and was fascinated by it.
BUT it was difficult to read this and the horrendous events of persecution and violence towards the Jewish people that act as a catalyst for the plot without constantly thinking of the horrors and atrocities that the people of Palestine have had to endure and continue having to endure.
And another reminder on the side due to the setting of the story: this is a Jewish story from another time, but let's not forget that modern day Odesa is in Ukraine, where the Ukrainian people have also been fighting to survive a completely unfounded and unwavering war from Russia for the past years, (with a long history behind it as well) which barely gets any attention from the mainstream nowadays.
March 22, 2026
If what grabbed you about this book was the cover, pile me in the boat because WOW what a cover. 10/10 for cover vibes.
Or if what grabbed you about this book was the plot, yes, absolutely, systematic revenge on murderous men by a female golem?? 10/10 on plot.
The writing itself, I have to say, read a little YA & predictable and I wish this wasn’t the case because I wanted to love this book. But if you’re looking for a dark revenge horror, this isn’t the place for you. I feel like this book is more appropriate for fans of YA historical fiction with a dash of the supernatural?? Maybe just a marketing problem tbh, but the characters all had a sense of sameness and when the language veered into the metaphorical, it felt really overused (reading a face like a map, for ex). I was never surprised by the plot, the language, or the characters.
The narrator of the audiobook did a stellar job with this one & gave a dynamic, well-paced reading.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for the audio alc!
Or if what grabbed you about this book was the plot, yes, absolutely, systematic revenge on murderous men by a female golem?? 10/10 on plot.
The writing itself, I have to say, read a little YA & predictable and I wish this wasn’t the case because I wanted to love this book. But if you’re looking for a dark revenge horror, this isn’t the place for you. I feel like this book is more appropriate for fans of YA historical fiction with a dash of the supernatural?? Maybe just a marketing problem tbh, but the characters all had a sense of sameness and when the language veered into the metaphorical, it felt really overused (reading a face like a map, for ex). I was never surprised by the plot, the language, or the characters.
The narrator of the audiobook did a stellar job with this one & gave a dynamic, well-paced reading.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for the audio alc!
Read
October 9, 2026Hate makes monsters.
March 27, 2026
Deeply profound and utterly heartbreaking, Odessa by Gabrielle Sher is a stellar debut novel, one that is rich with nuance and poignance. Set in Russia during the pogroms, we follow one family's plight for survival amidst a sea of violence, resulting in the death of their young-adult daughter, Yetta. Reeling with grief and desperation, Mordechai, Yetta's father, looks to otherworldly means to bring Yetta back and to keep his family, his people, safe. Yet, Yetta's return is not what is expected as one can imagine, and the fallout from such a bargain results in unfathomable consequences. Punctuated with harrowing grief, Odessa reads with an exceptional originality that outlines every facet of humanity from various perspectives, culminating in a emotionally laden confrontation regarding what constitutes a life, decay, and exodus.
Unpacking a novel like Odessa is a complex matter given the new territory Sher traverses with such grace and elegance. Yes, we may all know the "dead is better," or "came back wrong," narrative; but, Gabrielle Sher does something entirely of her own with Yetta's story that is best left discovered by the reader. What I can say is that this choice of originality is one born of brilliance that highlights so many rivaling ideas of self in light of trauma, hurt, and violence. Odessa is a deeply emotionally-informed story as seen with every character from Yetta to Mordechai to Yetta's mother, Freida.
Sher leaves no stone unturned with her debut. Odessa is a gut-punch on the page for all the right reasons, transcending what we know of female-rage, Gothic themes, and grief-influenced horror. One of the most thought-provoking reads of the year while simultaneously tearing my heart to shreds, Odessa by Gabriella Sher is the kind of book that demands to be read.
Unpacking a novel like Odessa is a complex matter given the new territory Sher traverses with such grace and elegance. Yes, we may all know the "dead is better," or "came back wrong," narrative; but, Gabrielle Sher does something entirely of her own with Yetta's story that is best left discovered by the reader. What I can say is that this choice of originality is one born of brilliance that highlights so many rivaling ideas of self in light of trauma, hurt, and violence. Odessa is a deeply emotionally-informed story as seen with every character from Yetta to Mordechai to Yetta's mother, Freida.
Sher leaves no stone unturned with her debut. Odessa is a gut-punch on the page for all the right reasons, transcending what we know of female-rage, Gothic themes, and grief-influenced horror. One of the most thought-provoking reads of the year while simultaneously tearing my heart to shreds, Odessa by Gabriella Sher is the kind of book that demands to be read.
November 23, 2025
A refreshing melding of historical fiction, gothic horror and Jewish folklore, Odessa weaves the tale of a father who attempts to bring his daughter back to life when she's brutally murdered in the Russian pogroms of the 1800s. Using ancient knowledge and a book of magic to create a golem, he soon finds that he cannot control his creation. Ultimately Odessa is a tale of grief and the real life horrors of history.
I received an advanced reading copy from Hachette in exchange for a review.
I received an advanced reading copy from Hachette in exchange for a review.
December 5, 2025
the best book I’ve read this year! i still can’t believe this is a debut!!! i’ve never read anything quite like it. it’s so creatively written, and i never knew what to expect next. I cried at the end
Did Not Finish
July 21, 2026dnf 23%. i might come back to it but it's taken 20% to even get to the part described in the synopsis where yetta dies. extremely slow moving and just kind of boring. i don't even remember what happened.
the narration was very good though
the narration was very good though
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A beautifully written, captivating, horrifying, dark fairy tale.
This book reminded me that Horror is not to be contained to one room of thought. Odessa breathed life into some truly disturbing and heartbreaking visuals that are still floating around in my head. Underlining that humans, proven through the ages, possess the power to be the thing of nightmares. Gabrielle Sher's brand of horror, shined a light on those monsters behind human masks. And she caught me by surprise with her realistic brutality.
Odessa disturbed and unraveled me. The horrific scenes, poetic writing style, and messages of faith/belief moved me in ways I still have yet to examine fully.
Thank you to NetGalley, Little, Brown and Company, and the Author.
March 15, 2026:
I loved this story so much that I applied for the ALC as well! Bravo to Gilli Messer, she brought an outstanding performance to Odessa. Hearing this, narrated so beautifully by Gilli, gripped me by the heart and made me ache. Listening to this tale, delivered with phenomenal accents and a performance resembling a full cast, I strongly encourage all to discover Odessa through the audiobook to feel this story in your bones. And to purchase the physical book to admire tangibly on your shelves. This story is powerful and heartbreaking; because of that it deserves to be read and acknowledged by readers far and wide in my humble opinion.
This book reminded me that Horror is not to be contained to one room of thought. Odessa breathed life into some truly disturbing and heartbreaking visuals that are still floating around in my head. Underlining that humans, proven through the ages, possess the power to be the thing of nightmares. Gabrielle Sher's brand of horror, shined a light on those monsters behind human masks. And she caught me by surprise with her realistic brutality.
Odessa disturbed and unraveled me. The horrific scenes, poetic writing style, and messages of faith/belief moved me in ways I still have yet to examine fully.
Thank you to NetGalley, Little, Brown and Company, and the Author.
March 15, 2026:
I loved this story so much that I applied for the ALC as well! Bravo to Gilli Messer, she brought an outstanding performance to Odessa. Hearing this, narrated so beautifully by Gilli, gripped me by the heart and made me ache. Listening to this tale, delivered with phenomenal accents and a performance resembling a full cast, I strongly encourage all to discover Odessa through the audiobook to feel this story in your bones. And to purchase the physical book to admire tangibly on your shelves. This story is powerful and heartbreaking; because of that it deserves to be read and acknowledged by readers far and wide in my humble opinion.
May 6, 2026
I want to say that for the most part, this really just wasn't for me because there's nothing inherently wrong with it. The basis for the story is interesting. Any kind of cultural folklore always is. And there's a very clear, progressive plot as well as fully defined characters.
I think where this mostly failed for me was in its pacing and actual story telling. It was so slow from the midpoint to the end. A lot of repeating moments between characters that made the whole thing drag.
I'll also say that though this is billed as horror and made to look as such (sick cover), it reads much more like historical fiction with a hint of magical realism. Not a bad thing, just not what I was expecting. So much of this just exists in the characters thoughts and feelings. But as a horror book I expected a lot more atmosphere and a more defined backdrop for these characters to exist in. I was told it was Russia in 1905, but I wasn't really shown it.
It is dark, it is a well-written. It mixes magic and history and folklore. It is a decent debut that has a lot of promise. But there were enough shortcomings in it for me not to rate this any higher.
Thanks to Netgalley and Hachette Audio for a copy of the book.
I think where this mostly failed for me was in its pacing and actual story telling. It was so slow from the midpoint to the end. A lot of repeating moments between characters that made the whole thing drag.
I'll also say that though this is billed as horror and made to look as such (sick cover), it reads much more like historical fiction with a hint of magical realism. Not a bad thing, just not what I was expecting. So much of this just exists in the characters thoughts and feelings. But as a horror book I expected a lot more atmosphere and a more defined backdrop for these characters to exist in. I was told it was Russia in 1905, but I wasn't really shown it.
It is dark, it is a well-written. It mixes magic and history and folklore. It is a decent debut that has a lot of promise. But there were enough shortcomings in it for me not to rate this any higher.
Thanks to Netgalley and Hachette Audio for a copy of the book.
August 27, 2026
i wasn’t quite sure how i wanted to rate this, because i really really enjoyed the beginning and absolute horror that played out. but as the story went on i just felt a little detached from it all. enjoyable yes, but not a fav
March 16, 2026
* Listened to through NetGalley*
This book has so many layers that are all so beautifully addressed and a lot of the content is still relevant to today's world even tho it is a historical horror fantasy.
The historical aspects touched on are a Jewish Russian family in the early 1900s who are attacked by gentile Russians in their town and the turmoil and fear that their community has to go through solely based on their religion. You get to see the extent to which, mainly the men, will go to keep their community where they are even if that means sacrificing their own.
Then you get a look into how the women are reacting. They are still being told to be quiet and take care of the home even though their homes are being destroyed just as much as the men's are. A scene that really touched me was when Yetta was screaming and her mother made a comment about how she couldn't remember the last time she could be that loud. Seeing the parallels of how the two genders are told to behave adds such an interesting dynamic and another whole level of commentary to the story.
Now let's get into the folklore! I'm not very knowledgeable about Jewish or Eastern European folklore but this story was still so easy to understand and appreciate. The way Yetta as a golem is described is really eerie and the way she interacts with the "other" adds that extra level of horror.
This book is such a great combination of historical events, religion, folklore, gender roles, and grief all wrapped up in a horrifically sad but beautiful story.
The narrator also does an amazing job of adding so much emotion to each character and really helps build the world more!
This book has so many layers that are all so beautifully addressed and a lot of the content is still relevant to today's world even tho it is a historical horror fantasy.
The historical aspects touched on are a Jewish Russian family in the early 1900s who are attacked by gentile Russians in their town and the turmoil and fear that their community has to go through solely based on their religion. You get to see the extent to which, mainly the men, will go to keep their community where they are even if that means sacrificing their own.
Then you get a look into how the women are reacting. They are still being told to be quiet and take care of the home even though their homes are being destroyed just as much as the men's are. A scene that really touched me was when Yetta was screaming and her mother made a comment about how she couldn't remember the last time she could be that loud. Seeing the parallels of how the two genders are told to behave adds such an interesting dynamic and another whole level of commentary to the story.
Now let's get into the folklore! I'm not very knowledgeable about Jewish or Eastern European folklore but this story was still so easy to understand and appreciate. The way Yetta as a golem is described is really eerie and the way she interacts with the "other" adds that extra level of horror.
This book is such a great combination of historical events, religion, folklore, gender roles, and grief all wrapped up in a horrifically sad but beautiful story.
The narrator also does an amazing job of adding so much emotion to each character and really helps build the world more!
April 21, 2026
3.0/5
The cover design is absolutely stunning. 😍Unfortunately I was a touch disappointed by the writing. A lot of potential here but it missed the mark for me.
The cover design is absolutely stunning. 😍Unfortunately I was a touch disappointed by the writing. A lot of potential here but it missed the mark for me.
May 4, 2026
one thing happened in this book and then it was the only thing that happened
April 21, 2026
2.5 rounded up
Loved how steeped in Jewish lore this was! Golems are one of the only creatures from Jewish folklore I'm familiar with and I really appreciated getting to see the process in how this one was made. I think this was great with paralleling the actual struggles they endured. Unfortunately, the writing and pacing were not for me. I didn't really care for the story overall and this didn't feel like a story that needed as many POVs as it had.
Loved how steeped in Jewish lore this was! Golems are one of the only creatures from Jewish folklore I'm familiar with and I really appreciated getting to see the process in how this one was made. I think this was great with paralleling the actual struggles they endured. Unfortunately, the writing and pacing were not for me. I didn't really care for the story overall and this didn't feel like a story that needed as many POVs as it had.
April 24, 2026
Clay Does Not Forget
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score 8/10
TL;DR: Gabrielle Sher’s Odessa is a debut of startling precision: Jewish gothic rendered with the patience of a folk tale and the nerve of a trap. Sher builds a world on exact small details, lets the horror rise out of them without announcement, and trusts her images to carry what words cannot say. The mushrooms are going to stay with you.
Frieda counts her family on her fingertips. Yetta, Ephraim, Mordechai, me. One, two, three, four. Touch the thumb to each finger in turn, whisper the name, begin again. If I count to four none of them will die today. If I buy three fish at the market one of us will die. She does this while her husband is across town assembling a small secret arsenal of clubs and daggers in the back of a furniture shop, and while her fifteen-year-old daughter is slipping out of the house at night to lie in the wet grass with a boy she has not yet agreed to marry, and while her small son sleeps in the bedroom they all share and coughs in a way that reminds her of winters where children died. The counting is how she stays married to the idea that she can still protect anything at all. Gabrielle Sher does not tell us this is what the counting is. She just lets Frieda do it, again and again, until the reader is doing it along with her, and the moment Frieda skips a number the skipping is its own catastrophe.
That is the kind of novel Odessa is. The premise is big and loud. A Jewish family in the city of Odessa in 1905, the shtetl at the edge of the city where the houses lean toward each other like infected trees reaching for the sun, a cantor who remembers when his synagogue was the most famous in Europe, a new rabbi who wears his hair and beard cropped short in an effort to look less obviously Jewish, and a pogrom arriving the way a pogrom always arrives, which is not as a surprise. In its aftermath, a father who has been studying Kabbalah in secret with the rabbi and the cantor for five years will do what all of that study was for. He will try to bring his dead daughter back. The book is called Odessa but it could almost as easily be called Clay. The father and his two collaborators take the daughter’s body to a mikvah in the woods, dig clay from the floor of the spring, pack it into a wooden box the father has built, bury her in it, carve the Hebrew word for truth into the forehead of what they make. The thing they make sits up.
So much, so much big. And yet the novel’s first instinct is always to find the small specific weight. Mordechai, the father, thinks of his wrecked synagogue as having the gravity of a mountain carved by a human hand. Benyamin, the boyfriend, is only ever slightly more present than his own curls. Ephraim, the little brother, is described exactly once as a kitten in his sister’s arms, sickly and bony, and then the book simply trusts you to keep imagining him that way for four hundred pages and you do. Sher’s similes are the kind Flannery O’Connor would have read with pleasure. A secret, Frieda thinks, attaches itself to her like a tick. She can feel its tiny fangs lodged in her skin and its small body slowly ballooning with her blood. That is a sensation rendered so accurately you have to sit with it. A mikvah, one character observes, is a creature with one foot in the world and one in the forest. A hiding place in a wall, inhabited during the pogrom by a terrified mother and her son, fills up with mushrooms afterward. This is the book’s sensibility in miniature. Terror leaves a residue the shape of a garden.
The trap the novel is setting becomes clear slowly. The father has brought his daughter back, yes. He has also brought her back without the memory of what happened to her in the last minutes of her first life. He tells himself this is mercy. He tells his wife, when she asks, that their daughter’s mind is protecting her from fear. What he has actually done is construct a version of his daughter that will be easier to send into battle, and he has done it without asking her a goddamn thing. Meanwhile, unguarded, the original dead body rises and walks. She remembers everything. She wants what the living daughter has been assigned not to want, which is for what happened to her to have happened to her. The book is a horror novel about the argument between these two girls. It is also a horror novel that declines to treat that argument as an argument, because the argument is not one. The body is not wrong. The body is the witness.
Sher is at her best when she refuses to announce any of this. The assault is never named. The word is not there on any page. It is simply the shape of every page, the thing everyone in the room is arranging themselves around. Mordechai keeps calling it something else. He is a man who has decided to call it something else and will continue calling it something else until the world makes him stop. The reader gets to watch what that costs him, what it costs his wife, what it costs both of the daughters he now has. That is the cleanest, cruelest move in the book. The father’s self-deception is presented without comment. We see what he believes about himself and what he is actually doing at the same time, and the gap is where the dread lives.
Gabrielle Sher came to this book the long way around. Hamilton College, a Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize for a novella called Bowerbird, then an MFA and a PhD at the University of St Andrews, where her supervisor was the Scottish poet John Burnside before his death in May of 2024. The dissertation she wrote is called Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and the Female Jewish Gothic, and Odessa began its life inside it. This is the kind of origin story that usually produces a novel that has swallowed its own footnotes and cannot stop tasting them. Odessa does not do this. It has the argument underneath the sentences and lets the sentences keep their job, which is to be exact. The book is dedicated in effect to the author’s grandmother Lynn Sher, whose words about a woman who left everything behind sit as the epigraph. You can feel the grandmother in the book. Not in any narrated way. In the sense that the book believes a story told by a woman to another woman over a long time matters and is worth getting right.
The novel does thicken a little in its final third. The barricade at the shtetl’s edge, the rescue of a captured boy in the town square, the quieter female exodus running on a separate track, all of it arrives close together, and the metaphorical weather gets dense enough that you notice it as weather. The dybbuk-sister occasionally speaks in a register one degree more theatrical than the book she is in. Benyamin is more of an assignment than a person. These are complaints at the scale of one degree of tilt on a structure that is mostly standing dead straight. I noticed them. I did not care very much.
The horror here is Jewish in a way horror is rarely Jewish. The ritual that remakes a dead girl is not exoticized. The Hebrew sits on the page without translation that I needed. The women are not window dressing for men’s mysticism. Miriam, who at first appears as Frieda’s best friend and spends most of the book in a small wooden house that looks like a raft out in a field, turns out to have been running a second kind of exodus entirely, a quieter one with worse odds. That she has been doing it all along while the men were in the back room building daggers is the joke the book refuses to make explicit. Both of them count as trying. One of them is actually working.
I am going to be thinking about the mushrooms for a long time.
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION
BWAF Score 8/10
TL;DR: Gabrielle Sher’s Odessa is a debut of startling precision: Jewish gothic rendered with the patience of a folk tale and the nerve of a trap. Sher builds a world on exact small details, lets the horror rise out of them without announcement, and trusts her images to carry what words cannot say. The mushrooms are going to stay with you.
Frieda counts her family on her fingertips. Yetta, Ephraim, Mordechai, me. One, two, three, four. Touch the thumb to each finger in turn, whisper the name, begin again. If I count to four none of them will die today. If I buy three fish at the market one of us will die. She does this while her husband is across town assembling a small secret arsenal of clubs and daggers in the back of a furniture shop, and while her fifteen-year-old daughter is slipping out of the house at night to lie in the wet grass with a boy she has not yet agreed to marry, and while her small son sleeps in the bedroom they all share and coughs in a way that reminds her of winters where children died. The counting is how she stays married to the idea that she can still protect anything at all. Gabrielle Sher does not tell us this is what the counting is. She just lets Frieda do it, again and again, until the reader is doing it along with her, and the moment Frieda skips a number the skipping is its own catastrophe.
That is the kind of novel Odessa is. The premise is big and loud. A Jewish family in the city of Odessa in 1905, the shtetl at the edge of the city where the houses lean toward each other like infected trees reaching for the sun, a cantor who remembers when his synagogue was the most famous in Europe, a new rabbi who wears his hair and beard cropped short in an effort to look less obviously Jewish, and a pogrom arriving the way a pogrom always arrives, which is not as a surprise. In its aftermath, a father who has been studying Kabbalah in secret with the rabbi and the cantor for five years will do what all of that study was for. He will try to bring his dead daughter back. The book is called Odessa but it could almost as easily be called Clay. The father and his two collaborators take the daughter’s body to a mikvah in the woods, dig clay from the floor of the spring, pack it into a wooden box the father has built, bury her in it, carve the Hebrew word for truth into the forehead of what they make. The thing they make sits up.
So much, so much big. And yet the novel’s first instinct is always to find the small specific weight. Mordechai, the father, thinks of his wrecked synagogue as having the gravity of a mountain carved by a human hand. Benyamin, the boyfriend, is only ever slightly more present than his own curls. Ephraim, the little brother, is described exactly once as a kitten in his sister’s arms, sickly and bony, and then the book simply trusts you to keep imagining him that way for four hundred pages and you do. Sher’s similes are the kind Flannery O’Connor would have read with pleasure. A secret, Frieda thinks, attaches itself to her like a tick. She can feel its tiny fangs lodged in her skin and its small body slowly ballooning with her blood. That is a sensation rendered so accurately you have to sit with it. A mikvah, one character observes, is a creature with one foot in the world and one in the forest. A hiding place in a wall, inhabited during the pogrom by a terrified mother and her son, fills up with mushrooms afterward. This is the book’s sensibility in miniature. Terror leaves a residue the shape of a garden.
The trap the novel is setting becomes clear slowly. The father has brought his daughter back, yes. He has also brought her back without the memory of what happened to her in the last minutes of her first life. He tells himself this is mercy. He tells his wife, when she asks, that their daughter’s mind is protecting her from fear. What he has actually done is construct a version of his daughter that will be easier to send into battle, and he has done it without asking her a goddamn thing. Meanwhile, unguarded, the original dead body rises and walks. She remembers everything. She wants what the living daughter has been assigned not to want, which is for what happened to her to have happened to her. The book is a horror novel about the argument between these two girls. It is also a horror novel that declines to treat that argument as an argument, because the argument is not one. The body is not wrong. The body is the witness.
Sher is at her best when she refuses to announce any of this. The assault is never named. The word is not there on any page. It is simply the shape of every page, the thing everyone in the room is arranging themselves around. Mordechai keeps calling it something else. He is a man who has decided to call it something else and will continue calling it something else until the world makes him stop. The reader gets to watch what that costs him, what it costs his wife, what it costs both of the daughters he now has. That is the cleanest, cruelest move in the book. The father’s self-deception is presented without comment. We see what he believes about himself and what he is actually doing at the same time, and the gap is where the dread lives.
Gabrielle Sher came to this book the long way around. Hamilton College, a Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize for a novella called Bowerbird, then an MFA and a PhD at the University of St Andrews, where her supervisor was the Scottish poet John Burnside before his death in May of 2024. The dissertation she wrote is called Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and the Female Jewish Gothic, and Odessa began its life inside it. This is the kind of origin story that usually produces a novel that has swallowed its own footnotes and cannot stop tasting them. Odessa does not do this. It has the argument underneath the sentences and lets the sentences keep their job, which is to be exact. The book is dedicated in effect to the author’s grandmother Lynn Sher, whose words about a woman who left everything behind sit as the epigraph. You can feel the grandmother in the book. Not in any narrated way. In the sense that the book believes a story told by a woman to another woman over a long time matters and is worth getting right.
The novel does thicken a little in its final third. The barricade at the shtetl’s edge, the rescue of a captured boy in the town square, the quieter female exodus running on a separate track, all of it arrives close together, and the metaphorical weather gets dense enough that you notice it as weather. The dybbuk-sister occasionally speaks in a register one degree more theatrical than the book she is in. Benyamin is more of an assignment than a person. These are complaints at the scale of one degree of tilt on a structure that is mostly standing dead straight. I noticed them. I did not care very much.
The horror here is Jewish in a way horror is rarely Jewish. The ritual that remakes a dead girl is not exoticized. The Hebrew sits on the page without translation that I needed. The women are not window dressing for men’s mysticism. Miriam, who at first appears as Frieda’s best friend and spends most of the book in a small wooden house that looks like a raft out in a field, turns out to have been running a second kind of exodus entirely, a quieter one with worse odds. That she has been doing it all along while the men were in the back room building daggers is the joke the book refuses to make explicit. Both of them count as trying. One of them is actually working.
I am going to be thinking about the mushrooms for a long time.
July 31, 2026
Some books tell a story; Odessa leaves behind a mood. Gabrielle Sher writes with a quiet intensity that settles slowly, like dusk stretching across a familiar landscape. By the final page, I felt less as though I had finished a novel and more as though I had emerged from someone else’s memories, carrying a few of them as my own.
What moved me most was the tenderness beneath the sorrow. The novel understands that loss is rarely a single event, it lingers in places, in silences, in the things we never manage to say.
There is a melancholic beauty woven through these pages, where longing and resilience exist side by side. Every encounter feels touched by the weight of history, yet the novel never loses sight of the deeply human desire to belong, to remember, and to keep moving forward despite what cannot be changed.
Odessa ~ It reminded me that the most enduring stories are often the quietest ones, the ones that continue speaking long after the book has been closed. ❤️💔🌿
(ebook)
What moved me most was the tenderness beneath the sorrow. The novel understands that loss is rarely a single event, it lingers in places, in silences, in the things we never manage to say.
There is a melancholic beauty woven through these pages, where longing and resilience exist side by side. Every encounter feels touched by the weight of history, yet the novel never loses sight of the deeply human desire to belong, to remember, and to keep moving forward despite what cannot be changed.
Odessa ~ It reminded me that the most enduring stories are often the quietest ones, the ones that continue speaking long after the book has been closed. ❤️💔🌿
(ebook)
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