Reviews with content warning for Grief - The Reformatory

This book was absolutely a 10 out of 10! It was 100 out of 10! I want to read everything Tananarive Due has ever written! I was admittedly very intimated by The Reformatory at first because of the size but I chose it for the author spotlight because I have a fascination with true crime and I have heard all about Dozier School for Boys. Then I found out just how deeply Tananarive Due's ties with that school went. This book is dripping with emotion, soaked with grief and rage and fear. I cried so hard I couldn't see the pages. The horror not only of the ghosts and the dead but of what the living can do to each other was so absolutely bone chilling that I think I need to read Legends and Lattes now to cleanse my palette. I love this book and I hate that the world made it possible for it to be written. I hope that Robert Stephens family found some sort of peace in even a small part of his story being told. I hope that he knows he isn't forgotten.

Content Warnings

janatropper's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

If you're looking for a scary story, you've come to the right place.

This is a scary story, yes, but it's also a story of familial love, a historical fiction haunted with real horrors of the "good old days," and somehow, a map for finding a spring of hope in a desert. This is a slow burn read with dread woven into the very fabric of its premise, and sharp twists of the knife throughout.

Tananarive Due has done her due (sorry) diligence in research: the book is sprinkled with cameos of and references to real people from the time period, both her own family members and public figures such as Ruby McCollum and NAACP president Harry Moore. Grounding this story in a shared past makes the genre elements all the closer to home. This is no alternate universe - it's very much ours.

The influence of Stephen King is clear here - even a near quote from Pet Sematary (you'll know it when you see it) - but this is no imitation. Where Stephen is king, Tananarive is the empress: yes, like King, she has memorable characters, efficient world-building, and a well-paced plot, but along with all this, she lets the narrative breathe. She lets her characters explore every avenue of escaping their fates and builds tension with every page by methodically shutting them down one at a time - in the dead of night among the spirits of half-burned corpses, in the broad daylight of a public road, in the chambers of a racist judge whose exploitation of loopholes and shield of privilege allows for state-sanctioned kidnapping, assault, and murder.

There are rare moments to catch one's breath. And in those moments of hope and occasionally even joy, a reader can almost forget the looming danger over nearly every character. Almost.

The theme that resonated with me on my first read was the exploration of power dynamics across identities: color, gender, ability, age, and even living status. Who creates the systems, who enforces the systems to benefit from the aura of privilege, who has inherits power, who earns it, and who could have it if only they knew the strength of their numbers.

This book may be one you read once, its words rooted deeply into your soul. It may be one you reread again in different seasons of your life to see which ghosts still haunt you. There is only one way to find out.

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grimdark_dad's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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