This was a really stellar, intense book. I usually really am into great, long novels. This one liked a lot but did not love. There were some parts I felt like were unnecessary to the story. But overall, fantastic novel.

I was very intimidated to start Tananarive Due’s recent release, The Reformatory. I won a copy from @sagapress, and its size intimidated me. Also its premise, a young boy is unjustly sentenced to six months in a reformatory school, scared me. I was afraid it would be too scary and too sad. I only knew it was about a reform school and there were ghosts.

I’m happy to report, I loved it. It wasn’t too scary and it was a compelling easy read. I’ve read The Good House, by Due, so I knew she was worth the investment. I was surprised by how quickly I read this book once I committed to it.

The Reformatory has people to root for and plenty of people to root against. It is set in 1950’s Jim Crow Florida and based on Due’s great uncle who died in Dozier House. The real life reform school operated from 1900 - 2011. Due said horror was the only way to approach the story, “in order to make it more gentle, I had to turn it into a horror novel.” She based the main character after her great uncle, giving him his name Robert Stephens, but making him younger. Due says the novel is a coming-of-age story for both Robert, as he learns how fragile life and humanity is, and Gloria, his older sister who must confront the reality of the world as she tries to get her brother released. It is a beautiful story.

“I’m hoping if I write enough novels I will have the courage to face [the things I fear].” Due said at the LA times festival of books, where I was able to hear her speak on the new novel.

This was a sobering and haunting story. I had previously read Colson Whitheads's Nickel Boys, which was great, but wanted to see Due's story. It exceeded my expectations and lingered with me long after reading.

This book was more scary than I thought! Was not expecting that. Ms Due is now an auto buy author for me. I bought a physical copy of this book to add to my personal library. Perfect for spooky October.

It is June 1950 in Gracetown, Florida. Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys. Robbie kicked the son of a white landowner while defending his older sister Gloria. But the nightmares are just beginning when Robbie is sent to the school called The Reformatory. Robbie can see ghosts or haints. But this talent is exposing the real horrors and crimes that has happened to the former students who have gone missing. Gloria is still trying to come up with a plan to get Robbie away from The Reformatory before it’s too late.

Tananarive Due brings a classic horror novel with a good mix of the horrendous history of the real Dozier School for Boys with The Reformatory. This story makes you want to delve into more of the background of the school. Robbie is a character that you will root for throughout the story. There’s also Robbie’s friends that help him along way while in The Reformatory. Due paints such a vivid picture with this story that you feel like you are in Florida in 1950. The Reformatory is a moving,historical haunting tale by Tananarive Due that will delight old and new fans of horror.

Tananarive Due's The Reformatory launches readers into Jim Crow-era Florida of the 1950s for a powerful shock of historical horror. Due is entirely unflinching in her portrayal of American racism, and it's a potent reminder of both how far we've come and how little we've traveled forward since then. The South's Jim Crow laws and the legal discrimination it set forth, along with our disenfranchisement of Indigenous Peoples and Filipinos, were studied in the 1930s by Nazi Germany and helped to inspire and lay the groundwork for the Holocaust. America's always been Number One at being a racist nation, which is why so many of our lawmakers and school boards scramble to ban the teaching of actual American history, even as our laws changed in the years since the civil rights movement.

We may no longer have separate drinking fountains or Whites Only movie theaters, but we've maintained serious imbalances in judicial sentencings and given police carte blanche to murder Black Americans for such heinous crimes as sleeping in their own apartment at 2AM, or talking on their cell phone in their backyard, or for reporting a burglary of their home, or reading a book in their car, or changing the tire of their car on the side of the street, or for simply "appearing" threatening or for talking back to an officer. When Nazi-lover Donald Trump, who has encouraged Black protestors to be beaten at his rallies, promises to Make America Great Again, it is to these ideals of racist American history that he and his Cro-MAGAnon followers yearn for.

And if you've been reading this review and whining to yourself that I'm "being too political" or that I'm just "woke," well, brother, you ain't gonna make it very far with Due's book at all. The Reformatory, you see, isn't just political -- it's honest. Due grounds this ghost story firmly in its historical roots and doesn't shy away from the discomfort that era should provoke in her readers. 1950s Florida is a racist and rotten swamp, and at the center of it is 15-year-old Robert Stephens and his sister Gloria. Robbie has been sentenced to serve six months at the Gracetown School for Boys for the heinous and life-threatening crime of having kicked a white boy in the shin while defending his sister's honor. That white boy's Klan-connected father also pulls a few strings to make sure that Robbie is viciously flogged while in detainment by the reformatory's overseer, Haddock. Haddock, back in the 1920s, set fire to a building on the School as punishment for those boys living inside, killing dozens and keeping his involvement secret. His victims, though, have continued to haunt the reformatory and only a few of the boys, like Robbie, can see them. Eventually, his ability to spot these haints draws Haddock's attention, and that's when Robbie's troubles truly begin.

Lest one wager that while the world outside the Gracetown School for Boys may be unfair, there must be some common ground amongst the boys sentenced there, right? Yeah, no. The school, like everything else, is segregated, and while the Black boys are driven like slaves and beaten regularly, the white side has swimming pools and train rides. Like everything else in America, there exists two worlds, one for Blacks and one for whites, and Gracetown is a microcosm of American society at large. A white boy kicking another white boy would just be boys being boys, but a Black 15-year-old kicking a white boy puts a target on his back and his family's back, as well, summoning forth the ire of the Ku Klux Klan and their torches and pitchforks, and disobeying the schoolmaster could mean being mauled to death by dogs.

For Due, this isn't just American history. It's family history. The fictional Gracetown and its reformatory is based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys, and her Robbie Stephens is a stand-in for the real-life Robert Stephens, her uncle that she never knew and who her family kept secret, who died in 1937 as a victim of the Dozier School, one of nearly a hundred boys killed and buried in an unmarked grave there. Dozier became notorious for its century-long campaign of abuse, rape, and cruelty inflicted upon the boys sent there, and Due has woven these real-life atrocities into Gracetown's background.

Lest one worry that The Reformatory is all doom and gloom, rest assured that Due does not wallow in the unsavory. It can be a challenging and heartbreaking read, but not one that is so heavily mired in the graphic depiction of human evil that it becomes a truly miserable experience to endure like, say, Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door. In fact, Due mostly shies away from the truly awful and heinous, approaching Haddock's depravities in roundabout ways, offering up hints without delving into the deeper, darker aspects of it all. We know what Haddock does to those boys in the shed with a broomstick, for instance, without having to be led inside ourselves and forced to experience the hurt and humiliation up close and personal. She focuses, instead, on the more mundane aspects of American racism circa the 1950s -- the way courts and police behave toward a person of color, the scrutiny of white eyes on Black bodies, commentary on the NAACP and Black unionization efforts, and the like -- and lets the mere existence of so many of Gracetown's ghosts do the heavy lifting through implication. We know from all the restless dead that violence has been done, and continues to be done under the horrors of Jim Crow and the KKK. So, so, so much violence.

Jim Crow-era history is American history, and its legacy continues to live on even if its laws no longer do. We see the aftereffects of it damn near every night on the TV news, in stories of officer-involved shootings, in Trump's rallies and his demonization of People of Color and immigrants, in the cheering and jeering of his moronic, red-hatted faithful, and the zealous, full-throated embrace of Christian conservatives for authoritarian white privilege. In two weeks, Americans will be voting to determine if we should continue attempting to make small strides forward, or throw it all away and turn the clock back to a more calamitous and rascist time and make the central issues of The Reformatory the enduring landmark of America's legacy. It's a frightening time, but Due's work couldn't be more timely. Or more necessary.

I had a really hard time rating this book, because I had a really hard time reading it. Don’t get me wrong- it was well written and like many stories of a similar vein, had content that needs to be shared. But at what point is it important to keep sharing stories of trauma and when does it become trauma porn?

This book is immensely sad. It’s one of overt racism in the 1950s and is loosely based on experiences faced by a family member of the author. What makes this book unique is the supernatural elements - the ghosts of the dead who are still bound to the reformatory at which it’s set.

I appreciated the dual story lines - learning Robbie’s story and watching Gloria’s never ending crusade to save her brother.

Spoiler: I liked that there was a happy ending, in as much as a story like this can be considered happy.

I also appreciated the author’s insight into what her family endured and why she wrote this book. This was a very good book, but my low rating is specifically because of the content of the book. I know these types of things really happened, and still happen, though today’s racism often tends to be more subtle. But the horrific torture of children made me absolutely sick to my stomach, and I can’t say this was a book I enjoyed, because I really just wanted it to end.

Thank you Gallery Books | S&S/Saga Press for allowing me to read and review The Reformatory on NetGalley.

Published: 10/31/23

Stars: 4

Well done fictional account based on the Dozier School for Boys. Due wrote relatable characters that I couldn't help but love. I read this over several days. The abuse is not just on the boys at the school. This is The Jim Crow Era and people of color were abused in their own homes.

There were several times I had to remind myself this was historical fiction. I wasn't confident that the scenes would play out in real life as written here. Albeit, given the age of the children I could be wrong. Also I'm not sure my brain could keep up with my heart and my mind. This is a story while not grotesquely graphic, it does have language and threats consistent with the period, and I recommend for mature readers.

This is a story that needs quality quiet time to absorb respectfully.

Easily one of the best books I have ever read!

In 1950s Florida, Robert Stephens Jr. is sentenced to 6 months at the Gracetown School for Boys, better known as The Reformatory, for actions he took to protect his sister. Robert has heard to tales about the haunts at The Reformatory but he will soon learn that there are much worse things waiting for him.

This book is everything...heartbreaking, maddening, frustrating, horrifying but so so good. This is a work of historical fiction but is based on the Dozier School for Boys that operated in Marianna, Florida for 111 years. I absolutely loved how the author used the haunts to tell more of the history of the Reformatory and get some revenge. There were several times while reading that I had to take a break because of the racism, injustice and the abuse, physical, mental and sexual. I was terrified to read the last 75 pages because I was afraid of the ending.

Loved this book so much!

The reformatory was absolutely wonderful! It was genuinely terrifying and made me legitimately afraid to go to sleep at night.

This is probably one of the best historical fiction horror books I've ever read. The story follows two siblings in the aftermath of their father leaving and the impact of the racist town, systemic incarceration of young Black people, and the spirits around them. The characters are so rich and well-written that they reminded me of my own family and their story. Due's ability to build a world full of ancestors and spirits—and spookiness—is uncanny. Truly a fabulous read.

Woooow. This book genuinely freaked me out. I really have never been both so sad and so creeped out and scared for a character all in one book before. It is so well written, with alternating perspectives between a boy, Robbie Stephens, Jr., who is receiving an extremely harsh punishment for the crime of kicking a white boy, once, because he was hitting on his sister, and his older sister, Gloria, who has been tasked with taking care of him since their mother died and father fled town after falsely being accursed of a crime (and trying to unionize among black workers).
Robbie’s punishment is to go to the reformatory, a segregated school/work camp/juvenile detention center home to white boys, black boys, and a whole lot of ghosts. It becomes clear immediately that the school is run by a sadistic pedophile, and that the white people in town (and the Klan) are hoping Robbie’s punishment will lure his father out of hiding. Back in town, Gloria is also dealing with the consequences of having a brave father and trying to figure out how to save Robbie.
Of course, the saddest and scariest part is that this is based on a true story both in American history and in the author’s own family, and not that long ago. I think in addition to being a very successful ghost story, the book really succeeds in examining the ways in which both black and white people existed within Jim Crow South (and still in our racist world today).

How did I forget to review this? Get it for horror or historical fiction or horror and historical fiction.

This book was amazing. I loved the message it gave and the story line. It was such a moving story and I recommend everyone read this book. I gave it 5 stars.

This book is going to stick with me for a while and is currently in the running to be the best book I've read in 2024.

I read The Nickel Boys by Colsen Whitehead, which is also a historical fiction novel about the Dozier School for Boys in Florida. That book was a hard read, mentally. This book though, this book was better and worse than that one. Since reading Whitehead's book, I did some research into the school and I was shocked, disgusted, and appalled at what occured. It was a nightmare school and I often equated it to the assimilation schools in Canada for Native American children. The Reformatory is a hard read for many reasons, but it is an infinitely critical read.

I feel this book holds as much weight in communicating real events and feelings as many non-fiction sociolgy books. This book was powerful. It was disgraceful, stomach curdling, raw, and harrowing in ways I find hard to tell people about. But if I had to use one word to describe it, I would say it is real. Obviously, it is a work of fiction, so it is not really real. However, everything that is in this book is realistic, young boys actually enduring these horrors, black people actually experienced these trials and terrors, and this school existed with these things happening there. Real people, died real deaths, becuase of real problems that are shown in this book. The fears the characters in this book experience are so raw I can honestly say I had to frequently pause because my eyes were wet with tears knowing just how REAL so much of what is in this book is.

I will say this to potential readers, this is a hard book to take in. It has racism, abuse (especially child abuse), sexual assault, death, murder, injustice, and a whole lot of heavy. Even if you are familiar with the Dozier School history. There is so much hate, and fear, and criminality in this book that I struggled to stomach it. I know these things happened, and I have seen racism, classism, and unjustice nearly 100 years later. But for me, looking back on these things still shocks me, disgusts me, and draws me in. Because even knowing these people are fictional, knowing that the events that occured in the book mirror those that occured to real people hurts my heart and soul and I find myself wanting to protect these fictional characters, stop these fictional atocities.

I am unsure if it was intentional, but I feel like the ghosts in this book are a powerful tool. The ghosts communicate the echos of what occured in the reformatory. The feelings real boys experienced in the school probably felt like ghostly echos of what occured, and ghostly reminders of boys who died. In real life, I have no doubt boys communicated to each other in whispers. Telling stories of what happened to other boys that were there, those that tried to run, those that were punished and abused. In this, the ghosts tell those stories. The ghosts are echos of the past. I have no doubt boys were punished for sharing stories, after all, many boys that were sent there were sent there becuase of stories told in court that depicted them as criminals, deliquents, or offenders. But in The Reformator the inability to even tell stories creates this intensity, this fear that the reader picks up on. And the ghosts, they add to the fear and the intensity, they tell the stories that couldn't be told. They also lend a haunting feeling to the story. Becuase in real life, the boys at the Dozier School were haunted by those that came before them. There were reminders and echos everywhere, just like ghosts.

The writing style - excellent. The characters - excellent. The plot - excellent. The pace - excellent. The uniqueness that makes me unable to forget this book - excellent. For that, this book deserves five stars and I highly recommend it to those that feel they can handle the content.

<I>FINALIST FOR THE 2024 LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL!</I>

This is one long story. Long in words, long in facts, long! What it isn't is a dragging mess to read. Ghosts, abused boys, wretched families, the oppressive miasma of Florida's hideous climate...any one of these could've sent me on my way. Instead they all work as a gestalt of Horror, suffering, and terror that left me drained but made me as happy to know this story as an old white man who has never had to fear this kind of abuse and calculated cruelty can be at knowing, from the inside out, what the system I and mine have benefited from did while we were looking anywhere but there.

The single most awful part is that it's fictionalized, not fiction.

I just do not know why anyone would, based on skin color or other cosmetic or cultural factors, engineer a life designed to end quickly and prematurely for innocent victims. Othering, a long-standing weapon of mass destruction, is the cruelest and excuses the cruelest means of hurting those unloved. Why we keep burying our knowledge of its occurrence is perfectly clear after reading this story: Admitting that we tolerated this, knowing on some level that it was happening because these people vanished, but not how, not what horrifying acts occurred in our names, is acutely painful.

So is torture. So is the murder of your loved ones.

Suddenly the pain of reading about it isn't quite so bad, is it.

I hope this book wins the Best Horror Locus Award on the twenty-second of June. Pity it won't be Juneteenth.

Nothing hits like Tananarive Due.

Scary as fuck, realistic, terrifying but in the way that makes you read it twice to really catch the feels and fears.

This book has been receiving a lot of hype and positive reviews and whenever that is the case for a book, I try to take it in stride – however, this novel is worthy of all the hype and then some! I was so thoroughly captivated by Robbie’s dilemma and trying to find out if his sister Gloria could truly help him get out of the Reformatory that I read it in two days (and this isn’t a short novel!). Despite learning about Jim Crow in my history classes, this book made the reality of that time period very real and honestly, this should be read in literature classes at school so that students get a better idea of what Jim Crow South truly entailed and meant.

Now, the horror aspect of this book was fascinating (who doesn’t like a good ghost story?). I found it very fascinating and although I guessed the plot twist before it actually happened it didn’t lessen my enjoyment of this book. This book is brutal, and will get you in the feels in a way not many books will be able to. It’s a haunting story of survival and coming of age, weaved into a historical setting that aims to shed some light on what actually occurred in these schools for young boys and how many didn’t live to ever make it back out.

This was my first read from Tananarive Due and I can certainly assure you that it won’t be my last – I actually look forward to checking out all of her previously published books.

If you’re going to read only one book this year, make sure it’s this one, it’s an incredible, haunting read that you won’t forget very easily after reading it. The hype is real and I truly hope this book wins all the awards it’s been nominated for.

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Saga Press for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

The best book I've read in years. A little bit horror, a little bit mystery, this book will tear your heart out. Loosely based on the true story of the Dozier School for Boys, and would interest fans of Colston Whitehead. It deserves all the praise and awards it has received. One that stays with you for a long time!

This book was raw, heartbreaking, horrific, and I'm so glad I read it. The plot is well constructed, the characters are so real, and the paranormal element creepy. I'm so glad I read this book and I will think about this book so much in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.