The Cherry Robbers - Sarai Walker

Author: Sarai Walker

Genre: Historical Suspense

Rating: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: Great premise, could have had better execution, disappointing ending, slow! Unlike what many reviews tell you, this isn’t a Gothic horror. More like a historical atmospheric suspense.

Story Synopsis:

New Mexico, 2017. Sylvia Wren is a well-known but reclusive artist. She stays on the outskirts with her partner Lola. But when a persistent journalist hints at digging into her family roots, Sylvia knows that she can’t hide under the assumed identity anymore.

Flashback to Connecticut, 1950s: Iris Chapel is one of the six Chapel sisters. With the Chapel name being known for their firearms fortune, Iris’s mother Belinda is convinced that their house is haunted and cursed by the spirits of those killed by Chapel guns. The six girls are fed up of living with a weird mother and an absentee father and they see marriage as their only means of escape. However, not long after the first sister is married, tragedy strikes, and keep striking with devastating consequences.

Why and when did Iris Chapel become Sylvia Wren? You need to read and find out.

The book comes in the first person perspective of Iris/Sylvia.

What genre it is: Atmospheric, historical, drama, minor traces of suspense and magical realism.

What genre it is NOT: Horror, Gothic, murder mystery, thriller, paranormal.

❌: It is a slow read. (which is not a good thing for a 430+ page book.)

✔: it still kept me hooked as the suspense made me go faster and keep flipping the pages.

❌: Lots of depressing stuff. Too many deaths.

✔: The foreshadowing helps you be prepared for the deaths.

❌: Too much of foreshadowing can also spoil the suspense.

✔: Loved the complicated relationship between the six siblings. Never goody-goody. Very realistic. All six named after flowers and have personalities almost matching their flower-names.

❌: When you like the characters, you do feel sorry for what happened to them. And what happened to them isn’t good. 😩

✔: There are some really spooky scenes. Some elements of magical realism too.

❌: All the spookiness is in the background. Nothing to make you get nightmares. The fantastical elements are underutilised.

✔: Great themes – Feminism, LGBTQ, gender discrimination, patriarchal dominance.

❌: I didn’t like the portrayal of one of the LGBTQ characters; it felt stereotypical.

✔: Great cover, representing the book perfectly. Nice title too if you understand the meaning and relevance of it. Hint: It has nothing to do with the fruit.

❌: You won’t understand the relevance of the title even after you read the author’s note, which only reveals the poem the phrase is borrowed from. I can take a stab at interpreting the title, but it will be a huge spoiler.

✔: It’s a women-dominated show all the way.

❌: Not a single good/memorable male character.

✔: Excellent start and a gripping storyline, almost till the end. Though you know what’s going to come, you still want to read it.

❌: The ending is so disappointing. No explanations provided at all. You just have to accept what happened without knowing why. Not fair!

I have a few more ✔s and ❌s but I want to keep this review spoiler-free. So this is all you get!

All in all, I enjoyed the book quite a lot. Had the ending satisfied me, this would have easily reached, maybe even crossed the 4 star mark. But the final chapters were more like an anti-climax than a climax to the story. I wanted a lot more! Still, it is a great atmospheric read, as long as you don’t mind the slow or depressing storyline and the excessive foreshadowing.

3.75 stars. (I was confused between 3.5 and 3.75, but as both ratings round up to 4 on my scale, I am going with the higher rating as I didn’t feel like keeping it aside.)

My thanks to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Cherry Robbers”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.