I love Tananarive Due's writing! Her stories are scary and full of unforgettable characters. She should be a household name. I was thrilled to receive an early copy of this in exchange for my honest review, and I completely forgot to review it until now. For readers who like Attica Locke and Grady Hendrix.

The Between by Tananarive Due is genre-bending psychological horror at perfection! I'm going to be as vague as possible while talking about this one because I feel like it can easily be spoiled. Milton has started having intense dreams and he thinks it's related to his grandmother saving him from drowning when he was little and she ending up dying. I was deeply invested in Milton as a character and it felt like I was standing next to him while he was attempting to figure out these strange events- being vague again haha. I was also glued to these pages and loved the mounting dread as Milton became more unwound. The ending is so satisfyingly mind-blowing! I highly recommend if you like more mind-bending horror!

Tananarive Due is a Master of Horror and Suspense and THE BETWEEN just underlines that. Hilton's struggle with external and internal demons, his slow descent into a blurred reality... everything about it was chillingly written. It is one of those books where the dread keeps building but you can't look away because you have to know what happens. Due does not disappoint. I can't wait until her next book.

When Hilton was just a child, his grandmother sacrificed herself to save his life, but was he meant to survive? 30 years later, his wife starts receiving racist death threats directed at their whole family, including their two children. Dealing with that and terrifying nightmares, can Hilton hold on to his sanity? And is he really supposed to be alive?
Tananarive Due is my favorite author of all time, so I was so very excited to read her debut novel! She is a phenomenal writer, so nothing she ever writes will be disappointing. However, this wasn’t my favorite novel of hers.
This novel was very slow paced. Don’t go into it expecting action. But if you expect a slow burn, more cerebral horror, this is perfect for you!
Sadly, this novel wasn’t as enjoyable as it could’ve been to me for two reasons other than the slow pace. Firstly, it was very hard for me to read all the racism in this book. There was a lot of use of racial slurs, so one of the main emotions I felt while reading was anger. It took me months to finish this book because of that. And secondly, I didn’t really care about the characters. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them, but I also didn’t root for them. Hilton was just not a great guy and his wife, DeDe wasn’t incredibly likable either.
I still gave this three stars though because it’s physically impossible for me to not enjoy Tananarive Due’s work. She is just a terrific writer and even the work that’s not her best is still better than most horror out there. It picked up a lot for me after about 60%. The story started moving along more at that point and we started getting answers to the mysterious happenings in the book. Also, something I love about Mrs. Due’s writing is that she leaves little Easter eggs all throughout her books. So something will be alluded to in one chapter and ten chapters later, she’ll write something that’ll make you tell “That’s what that meant!”.
Overall, I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys slow paced horror and anyone who is looking for a Black woman killing it in the horror genre. I’ll never get enough of Tananarive Due’s writing!

Thank you Harper Perennial and NetGalley for this arc! All opinions are my own.

TW: racism; racial and homophobic slurs; death; animal death; rape mentioned; AIDS related death; graphic sexual content; infidelity

This book is about Hilton and his family. His wife Dede is a judge who has received a death threat and Hilton starts having horrific dreams. The writing style is excellent. Every aspect of the story seems authentic. There’s this scene where they are at a party and the description of the food and music immerses you in the atmosphere. Hilton is a sympathetic character at first but once the story starts moving he becomes more irritating and this adds an element to the story where as the reader you want to learn what will happen to him.
I would recommend this book to those horror readers who like a subtle, creepy story.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I received a digital ARC of The Between by Tananarive Due from the publisher through NetGalley. I also purchased audio and print editions. The Between is a chilling and esoteric novel from Tananarive Due exploring concept of outliving one’s fate. Imagine evading death and awakening in a different reality, perhaps one where you did not die. Hilton walks between the worlds of life and death, one reality and another, and is haunted by dreams. Overall I found the concept of this novel to be really compelling. This new edition of the book begins with a fascinating introduction by Due explaining the origins and history of the novel, and then launches into the narrative. I found many sections of this book to be highly compelling, but overall the pacing felt a bit slow despite the relatively short length of this text. Overall, I didn’t like this book as well as The Good House and Ghost Summer Stories. With that said, I still think the concept of the novel is really great and it’s definitely worth checking out. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As a horror fan, I'm so happy that "The Between" was re-released. Hilton should've drowned when he was a boy, but his grandmother saved him and the waves took her instead. Now approaching 40 years old, Hilton (married with two kids) begins having something between dreams and visions, leading him to believe that he should've died that day. This is one of the best books about "glitches in the matrix" that I've ever read! Originally published in 1996, this is a new release with a new cover. The plot point regarding AIDS feels a bit dated and one major situation that could've been solved with an iPhone, but other than that, the text still feels fresh and very very scary.

The Between is definitely a creepy number! Tananarive knows how to write an amazing Horror novel hands down. I didn’t know what to expect when I read this book but I was here for it and all it’s creepiness. The Between is a story that grabs you from the very beginning and let’s you go in the end. I couldn’t stop reading it and when I stopped it lived in my brain until I picked it back up. I definitely recommend this to anyone who is on the mood for something good and creepy.

This was a fantastically creepy novel with brilliantly written characters and imagery. It's a story that will stick with me for a long time, and I cannot wait to check out more books by Due.

This book hurt my heart!

I didn't think it was going to but it did. There was so much pain involved and everyone was just doing their best. I asked myself why it took me so long to read this and I actually have no idea. The book is so beautifully written and the characters are so real. It's one of those books you just have to sit with because it will pull heavy on your heart.

I definitely need to read the rest of her work because her writing is absolutely captivating.

A very tense, emotional, supernatural thriller. I really enjoyed the unreliability of the narration, which keeps you guessing until the end. The writing is so good and I flew through this one! Just as relevant a read now as it was when it was written in the 90's.

This book is creepy.
🤓 I think the scariest dynamics in horror content for me are those between family members.

I love a good demon child trope. Until now I did not know that this extended to other family members including creepy Grama’s.

This book has the creepiest Grama. Dying not once but twice (one of the best written lines) and she is now haunting my waking hours.

If you haven’t heard of Tananarive Due that’s ok. You can start now.

This is my first book by her but it won’t be my last. In fact I’ve got an order out for THE GOOD HOUSE. If it’s anywhere near as good as this one I’ll be in for a treat.

This one, THE BETWEEN is very similar to Get Out, in that a character is introduced, their grip on reality starts to loosen, and we’re exploring it through inconsistent behavior of other characters in the book.

Kind of a …. I’m not crazy you’re crazy! Am I crazy? Did I do that? Was I awake? Was I asleep?

I really enjoyed this one! If you’re still in the creepy reading zone…check this one out!


Thanks to Harper Perrenial and Paperbacks and @netgalley for this advanced

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

An underappreciated gem. An emotional marathon. So gorgeously written that it hurts to put down. I'm going to go read every word Tananarive Due has ever written.

"The Between" is a story about a man on the verge of a breakdown. Is this breakdown caused by supernatural forces or is it all in his mind? A blend of the supernatural and the real world all with unreliable characters spiraling into madness at the helm.

Tananarive Due's The Between is a masterpiece perfect for our current world climate. A story of fear, trauma, and above all, love. The Between will remind you the meaning of being human

I liked this book by Tananarive Due. I got this pretty late via NetGalley though so I didn't get it read and done before it was published, and I am sad to say it would have been perfect for Halloween Bingo. Sigh. This story really focuses on an unreliable narrator that it appears to be going slowly mad. At times I thought of it as a longer form of "The Raven" when you start off with someone that seems quite reasonable and you go okay....there's something wrong here. The main reason why I gave this 4 stars though is that I thought some of the dream sequences dragged a bit. This reissue though has a great foreword by Due and I loved the focus of a well to do African American couple and how even though they are doing much better than others in the country at that time, white supremacy still comes knocking and makes them feel scared. You would think that this book could have been written today with everything going on in the United States. I also thought she did a great job tackling marriage, death, grief, mental health, and death.

"The Between" takes place in Florida and follows a well to do African American couple, Hilton and Dede. Hilton is happily married with children and runs a drug treatment center. His wife is a judge. However when his wife starts to get racist death threats and he starts to have nightmares where is he is left wondering what is real and not real.

So Hilton is intriguing. You start to realize that Hilton thinks that due to an incident early in his life, that he cheated death, and perhaps death is finally coming to take him forever. You don't know what is real or not real and you start to wonder if there is something going on with him mentally. And I love that Due focuses things on how the African American community as a whole is loathe to seek psychiatric help. I have said before back in the Booklikes days, I finally went forward to seeing a therapist and then a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with severe depression. I felt ashamed and like I had did something wrong. It took several months before I believed them when they said I should not feel this way, and I had lot that happened to me that would have hit anyone hard. I of course am glad I sought help, but it's still a big taboo subject I noticed among my Black friends and family.

I do like that this is African American speculative fiction. One of the reasons why I enjoyed Octavia E. Butler so much was that she wrote science fiction but with speculative fiction and science fiction themes.

I think this is the second book of Due's I read where things take place in Miami, Florida. I am curious why she sets her books in Florida, since to me it does not seem like a typical African American state, but I went reading and realized that there is a huge African American history component to Florida.

Things come together though in the last few pages which some may think takes too long to bring everything together.

"We're always closest to death when we're asleep."

As a horror aficionado, I’ve become a big fan of Tannarive Due and her horror criticism on Twitter, including her groundbreaking work on Black horror movies. So I was especially excited to read her own contribution to the genre.

Being more familiar with Due’s criticism and academic writing, it was a pleasant and delicious surprise to experience the beauty of her fiction. Her characters are richly drawn, and her descriptive prose is lovely.

It’s almost impossible to describe what this book is about. The soul of the book, as it were, is Hilton, a black man experiencing racism who begins to have a sleep disorder which makes his nightmares almost indistinguishable from reality. The horror of the book creeps in slowly, as you realize that his waking nightmares may in fact be something….more.

This is a beautifully written book with a deep and compelling message. It is a pleasure to read, even when it makes you sad and hurt. I’m so excited to read more of Tannarive Due’s work. (I’m also watching her horror series, Horror Noire, on Shudder.)

Many thanks to Harper and NetGalley for what I hope will be the first of many Tannarive Due reading experiences for me. Now, onto her backlist!

This book is about a man named Hilton, who as a little boy, experienced 2 extremely stressful situations. Most notably, he experienced a near-death experience, where his grandmother saved his life. In turn, she dies saving him, and now, Hilton believes, the universe is hellbent on making him pay for escaping death when he was a kid. In addition, his wife has received death threats from a white supremacist who is out to get the first Black appointed judge from continuing her career. Hilton then becomes obsessed with protecting his family from these racist attacks, while trying to figure out what is going on with his mental health.

There is an unbelievable amount of tension that is at work in Due’s words, that magically pulls you through this book with deftness and curiosity. Due has impeccable writing!! Flawless! You hear me?! Perfect writing! She leaves nothing out! This story gripped me from the very beginning and did not let me go until the end. I consumed this book in 2 days, and I didn’t want it to end at all. Her character development led me to believe that all her characters were real! They were so well-developed, that you can’t tell me these characters don’t exist.

Due talks about a wealth of topics here so superbly that I cannot write a review that would do this book justice. You just have to read it!

She talks about:
- Racial hostility towards Black people (police sanctioned violence towards Black boys specifically)
- White supremacy and terrorism
- Hate crimes
- Black family structure
- Mental health illness (specifically Schizophrenia and stigmas)
- Grief
- Death
- Marriage
- Importance of police living in neighborhoods they serve (Black policemen)
- Dreams and interpretations vs. superstitions

I had slept on Tananarive Due for awhile now. I’ve had her book, My Soul to Keep for such a long time that now after reading The Between, I will be reading her other book. I’m ashamed at myself for waiting this long to read her work.

This book completely dissolves the line between fantasy and reality, and Due does so in such a way that as a reader, you become lost and question what’s real and what’s not in this book as you go along. Her plot twists, and tense action/thriller scenes make for a great read. Very compelling read, and the writing keeps you guessing to the very end while keeping you on pins and needles all the way through this book.

Awesome awesome awesome!!

The Between reminds me of the film work done by Jordan Peele as it incorporates race into a horror story.

This is more of a slow burn novel, but some moments had truly scary descriptions and I HAD to know what would happen.

What a slow burn, that pulls you deeper with every page. Tananarive Due’s spectacular novel is classified as horror, and in her preface to this edition, published 26 years after the original publication, she mentions how, at the time she wrote it, the books that combined Black protagonists and the supernatural were few and far between. With that as the primer going in, accompanied by the synopsis of the book, you can’t be blamed for expecting to confront the supernatural elements of the story sooner. In truth, it isn’t until the third or fourth chapter that Due really gives us a taste, and even then it is in the form of a dream. This is because what Due is doing, here, is setting a trap. This novel is painstakingly naturalistic, in many ways, not fantastical or unbelievable at all. Slowly, the liminal space between life and death, between dream and reality, grows and grows, invading everything, until you find yourself lost in a tense supernatural horror that begs questions about trauma, racism, class, and mental illness but refuses to give any easy answers.

All of the characters feel real, not stereotypes, not fill-ins, but living people who you know. All of the main characters that stay within the protagonist’s orbit are given interesting characterizations and lives, with flaws accompanying positive character traits. There is one character who feels a little “deus-ex-machina”-y, but even that is handled well enough that it avoids the grosser sins of the horror genre and doesn’t entirely beggar belief. These characters really drive the story, which is quite deliberately plotted, building in intensity as the fractures in our sense of reality grow. The writing itself is wonderful, again a very naturalistic style, giving us enough description to really see the scenes clearly but not overdosing on sentimentality or feeling forced or rigid in any way. Due is able to expertly build suspense, and the way she weaves a supernatural story within this naturalistic form is really impressive. In some ways it is just this, the way a supernatural horror exists for one person in what everyone else perceives as naturalistic, or mundane, that is the heart of the narrative. The writing parallels this idea beautifully, and the whole story is stronger for it.

This book is a quick read, in large part because you won’t want to put it down. It does start slow, but it is never boring. It is only “slow” in the sense that it isn’t overloaded with explicit supernatural occurrences, not that there isn’t important story and character work being done, so if you’re willing to really take your time finding your way into this family, and into the heart of the patriarch doing his best to keep them safe while struggling with a family/work balance, you won’t be disappointed. As do most great books, it leaves you with a lot to think about, ending with questions instead of answers. It is a really skillful and enjoyable book, and you will be richer for the time you spend with it.

I want to thank NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers, who gave me a complimentary eARC in exchange for an honest review.