The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
Winner of the 2024 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and Winner of the 2024 Shirley Jackson Award for Novel.
A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
By Else
Sometimes you talk to someone in a bookstore, and you instantly just vibe and hit it off. And then your to-be-read pile grows by a couple of books. This is what happened to me with a customer the other day. We found out we had similar book tastes, so I made her TBR grow by a couple of books, and she told me I HAD to read The Reformatory by Tananarive Due.
So I did. And let me tell you, it was worth it! This book is my first 5-star read of the new year (happy new year me!) and it sent chills down my spine. Tananarive Due writes beautiful prose that puts you in a chokehold and drives a stake right through your heart.
This book is set in 1950s Florida during Jim Crow laws, and focuses on a black family during segregation. Robbie and Gloria have to take care of themselves after their mother died and their father had to flee the state for trying to start a union and false rape allegations. When Robbie tries to defend his sister against a white boy, he gets sent to the Reformatory, haunted by haints and ghosts and a terrible superintendent. Gloria is left behind trying to figure out how to get Robbie out of there.
While this book features ghosts and haints, the true horror lies in what people did to one another and are still doing to each other. 1950s Jim Crow Florida is a horror in and of itself, but add a sadistic Reformatory Warden and some haints, and you’ve got yourself a cocktail of horror that is beautiful and haunting.
