Odessa

I’ve been looking forward to Gabrielle Sher’s debut novel, Odessa. Set in 1905 during the pogroms in Russia, it focuses on a Jewish family fighting for their safety. Yetta is a teenager, engaged and ready to embark on her future. But then her Jewish community is attacked, and she’s one of the many killed. Her father isn’t ready to let his daughter go, though, and resurrects her as a golem. Now Yetta exists in two bodies… but which is the monster, and which is the real her?

What I Liked:

Jewish history and folklore. I enjoyed learning about Jewish culture, from Hanukkah traditions to belief in golems. We also get a look at the terrible of the Russian pogroms, in which many Jewish people were expelled or massacred. This is set in 1905, the height of the pogroms, and though it was painful to see here, it’s also important to remember our fraught history.
Family relationships. From the relationships between father and daughter or between mother and daughter, or even between a young woman’s two sides, we get to see a lot of relationships here. I enjoyed seeing the focus on self and family more than on the doomed romance between Yetta and her fiancé. This family is close-knit and will do anything for each other, misguided or not.
What is a monster? What does it mean to live and die? Odessa asks bigger questions, which makes sense, given that it originated from the author’s doctoral dissertation. I loved pondering what Yetta’s role was, whether as a golem or as the “monster” left behind. Is she really alive in this new form?

What Didn’t Work for Me:

I had a hard time connecting with it. I’m not entirely sure why, but something about how Odessa was written felt somewhat detached. This is not badly written by any means, and I suspect I just wasn’t in the right mood when I read this.

Audiobook:

Gilli Messer does an excellent job of narrating Odessa. I appreciate the accents she gave the characters, which helped immerse me in Jewish Russian setting. It made the book feel more vivid and easy to imagine.

Final Thoughts

Odessa is an intriguing, thoughtful novel filled with horrors and tenderness. It tackles history, family, and monsters well, and though it felt a bit at arm’s length for me, it was still memorable.

Special thanks to Little, Brown and Company, Hachette Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy Odessa here – it’s available as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Odessa by Gabrielle Sher
Audiobook Narrator	Gilli Messer
Audience	Adult
Genre	Horror
Setting	Russia
Number of Pages	288
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	April 21, 2026
Publisher	Little, Brown and Company

Official Summary

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

About the Author

Gabrielle Sher attended Hamilton College, where she earned the Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize for her novella Bowerbird. She received her MFA and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her first novel, Odessa, originated as part of her doctoral dissertation titled “Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and The Female Jewish Gothic.” She currently lives and writes in New Jersey with her husband Jamie and their dog Bo.