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Cherry: A Novel
Not yet published
Expected 3 Nov 26It starts as a love song. It ends with murder.
1999
Gifty is a woman adrift in the wake of her wife's death. She's living in stasis, unable to bring herself to enter the bedroom where Helen died after a long illness. Her therapist tells her to confront her grief, but instead she wanders the streets looking for someone from her past.
Fallen nineties pop star Isobel has done everything she can to reinvent herself. Gone is the girlish make-up and provocative manner. When she lands a job working for a middle-class family, she decides to embody the perfect nanny.
Ally has always prided herself on running a successful business and being a good parent to her two children. But when her husband announces that he is leaving them to work in Indonesia for six months, and hires Isobel without consulting her, she is left angry and struggling with her chronic illness.
The women soon become tangled in a dangerous web of obsession and infatuation. Someone is going to die, the question who?
1999
Gifty is a woman adrift in the wake of her wife's death. She's living in stasis, unable to bring herself to enter the bedroom where Helen died after a long illness. Her therapist tells her to confront her grief, but instead she wanders the streets looking for someone from her past.
Fallen nineties pop star Isobel has done everything she can to reinvent herself. Gone is the girlish make-up and provocative manner. When she lands a job working for a middle-class family, she decides to embody the perfect nanny.
Ally has always prided herself on running a successful business and being a good parent to her two children. But when her husband announces that he is leaving them to work in Indonesia for six months, and hires Isobel without consulting her, she is left angry and struggling with her chronic illness.
The women soon become tangled in a dangerous web of obsession and infatuation. Someone is going to die, the question who?
352 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication November 3, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 24, 2026
It's 1997, and we follow Gifty, who has lost her wife Helen, Isobel, a former 90's popstar burned by fame, and Ally, a married mom of two. This is 100% a story of obsession, a la Fatal Attraction Sharon Stone bunny boiling type stuff. I genuinely LOVED our town setting, and the time period it took place in. The POV's are straight forward enough- the pace of this one is so fast, the chapters were short, and the genuine WTF moments never let up. Visceral is a great description for this one, as the way it is written and the content it covers will absolutely make you feel watched, sick, queasy etc. There is on page animal violence a few times, I have to put out as a warning. I wish this one had had a bit more than "mystery and thriller" labeled on it because it's hard to review this book under that umbrella, personally, with how gruesome it gets. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC. All opinions are entirely my own.
June 25, 2026
4/5
Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and the author Rise Wilding for gifting me with this ARC to review!
Liked:
-oh this chick is actually crazy. I’m not even joking when I’m telling you that Cherry/Isobel’s obsessions and delusions are next level, I’m not joking. The way she justifies her actions and swings wildly from seemingly being a “normal” loving person to psychologically deranged one is crazy. She constantly needs to be the center of attention to whoever she’s fixated on and if she feels like she not then the cuckoo starts slipping out.
-I liked the multiple POVs. I could’ve maybe done without Gifty’s (they weren’t bad but they just felt a bit unnecessary in the being) but I enjoyed watching the story and lies unraveling through the 3 women. Gifty has a lot of guilt she hasn’t really addressed surrounding both her partner (rip Helen) and Cherry. Ally is a chronically ill mom whose husband is a piece of garbage and has an au pair that can do anything. Isobel is a woman obsessed and will do anything to make sure she gets who she wants.
Disliked:
-The wrap up and ending felt a bit rushed to me. I thought the pacing was pretty good up until the last couple of chapters. It just felt rushed and that we were going from one scene to the next and scrimping on more detailed scenes.
-Ally you kind of suck as a pharmacist lol. I feel like you should be able to recognize certain symptoms happening after you take your medication. I refuse to believe you are going to blame everything on your illness and magically forget why you think something might be off with your meds. You’re smarter than that, I would hope.
Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and the author Rise Wilding for gifting me with this ARC to review!
Liked:
-oh this chick is actually crazy. I’m not even joking when I’m telling you that Cherry/Isobel’s obsessions and delusions are next level, I’m not joking. The way she justifies her actions and swings wildly from seemingly being a “normal” loving person to psychologically deranged one is crazy. She constantly needs to be the center of attention to whoever she’s fixated on and if she feels like she not then the cuckoo starts slipping out.
-I liked the multiple POVs. I could’ve maybe done without Gifty’s (they weren’t bad but they just felt a bit unnecessary in the being) but I enjoyed watching the story and lies unraveling through the 3 women. Gifty has a lot of guilt she hasn’t really addressed surrounding both her partner (rip Helen) and Cherry. Ally is a chronically ill mom whose husband is a piece of garbage and has an au pair that can do anything. Isobel is a woman obsessed and will do anything to make sure she gets who she wants.
Disliked:
-The wrap up and ending felt a bit rushed to me. I thought the pacing was pretty good up until the last couple of chapters. It just felt rushed and that we were going from one scene to the next and scrimping on more detailed scenes.
-Ally you kind of suck as a pharmacist lol. I feel like you should be able to recognize certain symptoms happening after you take your medication. I refuse to believe you are going to blame everything on your illness and magically forget why you think something might be off with your meds. You’re smarter than that, I would hope.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
There are very few novels that come my way that make me want to throw up. Oddly, two of them arrived in the last month. The first I gave up after about 30 pages of incessant gore. Cherry is in another category entirely. It is, in fact, well written and psychologically well thought out. It is, in essence, an indelible description of one character's horrifying descent into delusional insanity. The novel is relentless in this regard. It affected me greatly in a visceral way. It's not an easy read, though it starts out as such. In fact, the setup at the beginning is eerily reminiscent of The Housemaid, but believe me when I tell you that's where the similarity ends. Oddly, some of the characters are depicted at a remove, so you never really get under their skin. One in particular grieves constantly throughout the book; it gets to be too much and her singular feature. This is one where you'll have to make up your own mind. Just remember: you have been warned. Rated 3 1/2 stars.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews