Set in 1950 Jim Crow Florida, where the brutal realities of systemic racism have literally contaminated the soil, The Reformatory is both haunting and compelling. This is historical horror at its most effective, where the history—and its legacy—is more terrifying, more disturbing than the horror, and every choice, every action, every decision is fraught.

If you've wondered if this book lives up to the hype—and I know there's been quite a bit of hype—then stop wondering and start reading. This is the kind of fiction that leaves its readers changed.

The Reformatory gives you a different kind of horror. Not only does the failed systematic social justice haunt you at this time but the pure unsettling atmosphere of the institution that knows no honor soaks your skin and bone with pure rage. Highly recommend for anyone who is willing to dig deeper than a surface level of horror!

Sixteen year old Gloria and twelve year old Robbie Stephens, Jr. are living on their own in 1950 Gracetown, Florida after their widower father flees for Chicago after being falsely accused of raping a white woman. When Robbie is sentenced to 6 months at the Reformatory school for kicking a white boy while defending his sister's honor, Gloria springs into action to get her brother released ASAP.

This book is an emotional gut punch. We've all learned about the rampant racism thar went on in the Jim Crow era, but to see it play out in this book, despite it being fiction, takes it yo a whole new level. This book will suck you in and make you want to keep turning the pages all while making you really think about the things these characters and real people went through in this time. It will make you angry and pull on your emotions. Which is how you know this is an extremely well written book. Be warned though, just because this book has hints in it, doesn't mean it's a horror novel, buy it is a novel of horrors, both psychological and physical in the way young Robbie is treated, as well as the other Black characters in the book.

The characters aren't necessarily fully fleshed out, but you get enough to get behind them and hope the best for them as they try to survive each day and set things right for Robbie. The pacing is also a little slow at times, but it wasn't enough that I didn't want to put it down. I'm sure I'll be thinking about this one for quite a while.

My thanks to Gallery Books, author Tananarive Due,and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

A haunting young adult book well worth your time. It marries so many large themes about racism, the way both trauma and the past haunt us, with a supernatural thread that doesn’t seem the least bit out of place; it serves to only reiterate the themes of racialized trauma and abuse.

Although this book is billed as a ghost story, it is much more in the historical fiction genre with some ghosts along the way. It’s a good story overall, but the pacing is uneven and some key characters are under-developed.

THE REFORMATORY, by Tananarive Due, takes place in 1950, Florida, in the midst of the extreme racism and Jim Crow laws governing the South. I knew going into this that it would be a tremendous read, but even I hadn't been prepared for the horrors on the page. Learning about the abuse, torture, and practices that POC faced in our land is entirely different than immersing yourself in a novel--where you feel the characters and what they go through.

Robbie is twelve year old boy, unfairly sent to a boys' Reformatory for instinctively protecting his older sister, Gloria. Knowing that this "school" is more likely a death sentence, or at least, place of torture and pain for any child--let alone one who's father is wanted for crimes he ran off from--Gloria rallies everyone she can to try and free her brother. Of course, in this prejudiced time, there is nothing people can do.

There are spirits of those that died (and SO MANY did) under vicious circumstances at the Reformatory, and Robbie has always been able to see ghosts. Is this any kind of help to a young man against the tyranny of those in charge, and even the other boys sentenced there?

This novel was so emotionally charged that I doubt anyone could tear themselves away once they started it. Many of the scenes were so horrific that it was difficult to believe it was only a book . . . because things like those depicted DID actually occur. The subject material here is heavy, and more so when you realize the reality of the situation it was based on.

Recommended.

The Reformatory is based on the Dozier School for Boys and set in 1950 during the Jim Crow times in, Florida

Robbie Stephens Jr. is only 12 and is sent to the reformatory after defending his sister from a predatory wealthy boy. Because he has the ability to see spirits he is able to see the truth behind the reformatory. He know that there are many boys who are just...missing.

His sister is working against the clock to free him while Robbie does the best he can to stay alive.
This is a haunting truth based story that you are not soon to forget!.#gallery #TheReformatory #Tananarivedue

The Reformatory is a book that is a horror inside a horror inside another horror. It is a book rooted in the Jim Crow era of the American South. It is historical fiction while also being both a social and paranormal horror novel. It is emotional, triggering, maddening, and hopeful. From the immediate beginning it sets a tone of somberness and hopefulness that doesn’t let you go until the very end of the book.

In Gracetown, Florida (a real town by the way), a twelve year-old boy named Robert Stephens Jr lives with his sister Gloria in their 90 year-old shack that was built by their grandfather. It has been about a year since their mother died of cancer and almost as much time since their father escaped to Chicago. You see Robert Stephens Sr is something of a troublemaker. He’s a Black man in the south who believes he’s actually a human being with rights in the Jim Crow era of the American South. That is enough to get not only a man killed but the Black side of town burned to the ground. (If you have never heard of it, I suggest researching the Tulsa Massacre for example of a real life assault.) So, Gloria and Robbie, as he likes to be called by his family, are basically on their own. They have Mizz Lottie, an octogenarian acting as her father’s adoptive aunt/mother. But, as she stated many times in the book, Robbie is Gloria’s responsibility even though Gloria is only sixteen. If you ask me, they are both their father’s responsibility. However, I find it hard to blame a man on the run for his life from people who kill him but hesitate to injure a dog. So, Robbie and Gloria are alone with the heavy burden of their family troubles when one more unnecessary circumstance gets thrown their way when Robbie has a run in with his family’s former slave owner/master. This leads Robbie to a stint in the Reformatory, a state school for both white and ‘colored’ boys who break the law. Although Robbie’s sentence is brief, the history and gossip surrounding the Reformatory makes it clear that any amount of time spent inside its grounds is too much time.

This book explores many different themes. It includes social horror and paranormal horror while also serving as historical fiction. The social horror and historical fiction aspects of this book are explained and explored through the Jim Crow south time period the novel is set in. Absolutely zero punches are pulled as far as the environment. When the book starts, you know you are in the Jim Crow south and are never allowed to forget it. You see the world through Robbie and Gloria’s eyes as they navigate their land mind of an existence. You can also feel how they are treated as less than people by the white citizens of Gracetown. However, you can also feel the love and unity that surrounds them by the black citizens in Gracetown. The author does a great job of setting up that divide and showing that it doesn’t just exist as a line separated physically by railroad tracks.

This book also explores the concept of decades long atrocities and how they poison a whole entire community from the soil up. Gracetown is a town of anything but Grace. In the book it is described as a place where haints/ghosts roam the land because so many people were killed unjustly or just flat out murdered.

Bubbling anger from mistreatment, dismissal, and flat out racist dogma is also explored throughout this book. Both Gloria and Robbie experience anger at various parts. They are angry at their father for leaving. They are angry at the racist community they live in for keeping them in a constant state of fear and anxiety. They are also angry because of the many unjust and unfair things that occur to them after Robbie is arrested and sent to the Reformatory, things they can do nothing about because the law was not written to help them. Even if it was, who would enforce it in a town covered in black blood?

This book was both a joy to read and an emotional anchor. It is satisfying to read a book that pulls no punches when it comes to atrocities in America in the Jim Crow era, but also disheartening because I can feel both the anger and defeat at knowing nothing could be done about it.

The horror in this book is palpable, and it will sit with you long after you have finished the book.

I feel compelled to mention that Mizz Lottie was my favorite character. She is a true auntie, a pillar of strength, an emotional shoulder, but also a person that takes no crap from anyone and will push you into doing the right thing no matter what you think because auntie said so.

Thank you to @netgalley and @sagapressbooks for providing me with this ARC. All opinions are my own, and I leave this review voluntarily.

"The Reformatory" is a gripping ghost story with non-stop suspense and a lot of ugly history that the State of Florida would like to prevent you from learning in school. "Haints" are the least of Robbie Stephens' problems when he's sent to a sadistic juvenile prison for a trumped-up offense against a white boy in the rural Florida of 1950. The town's white power brokers want to use him as a pawn to bring his father out of hiding; Klansmen and police alike are gunning for Robert Senior because of his work organizing millworkers and registering Black voters. Meanwhile, Robbie's teenage sister and her 80-year-old godmother are discovering that even NAACP lawyers aren't a match for the racist judicial system. Freeing Robbie will require supernatural intervention.

I stayed up late reading this book even though it gave me nightmares. The author doesn't shy away from recognizing the sexual sadism component in white subjugation of Black youth (though never in graphic detail). I wanted an even bloodier and more comprehensive payback for the antagonists, but maybe that would have been ahistorical wish-fulfillment. The novel was inspired by a real-life ancestor of the author who died in the boys' prison.

I received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was looking forward to reading this book until I started reading this book. I only made it 10% of the way in and had to experience at least 5 hard-R N-words. Not unexpected I guess from a story set in the Jim Crow south but goodness. And I am a native Floridian so I am very familiar with the Dozier School for Boys (my sister-in-law worked there as a mental health professional and her husband worked there as a guard!). I've seen it on the news, I've kept up with the exhumation of bodies and the research being done by the various Florida univerisities.

When I got 10% in I realized that I just couldn't suffer through another story like this. I've read The Nickle Boys by Colson Whitehead (another Dozier inspired story) and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power (an indigenous school story) and there's just only so much suffering I can hold in my brain on these prior stories and the news alone. If I'm going to choose to read a book in my free time, I'm at the point now where this kind of book is simply not for me.

If you have never heard of the Dozier School for Boys and want to learn more about the schools we have forced children into to murder them or erase their history and culture, this book may be for you (and the other ones I mentioned). But for me, it was a swing and a miss.

I'm speechless. I truly don't know how to review this profound and moving book rooted in so much truth. This book is so terribly sad and hard to read, but it is essential that people pick this up and see the remants of these horrors still alive and well today.

_The Reformatory_ perfectly blends historical fiction with horror. Set in the Jim Crow South, it follows siblings Robbie and Gloria as they fight to keep their family together. After a minor altercation with the son of a white landowner, Robbie is sent to the Gracetown School for Boys. Here he endures abuse from staff and is haunted by the young souls who never left the reformatory grounds, while Gloria fights on the outside to free her brother. It keeps the reader enthralled and hoping that the siblings can escape to a better future together.

WOW! I couldn't put this down! A haunting ghost story unlike anything I have ever read. This book will haunt you long after you finish reading it.

Based on a real place and the life of her uncle, Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory is haunting, sometimes brutal, and will stay with you for awhile..

Robert is unjustly sent to the notorious reformatory for boys where he not only meets unspeakable cruelty, but also the horror of ghosts of the past.

Don’t be put out off by the size of this one. The story flies by and there’s not a boring moment. I did not read the synopsis and was pleasantly surprised when the supernatural aspect was introduced. I loved the meld of real history and supernatural. Of course knowing the content, be aware that it is a difficult read as there’s some graphic descriptions of child abuse. This was based on a real place, so it is also an important read.

“Florida’s soil is soaked with so much blood it’s a wonder the droplets don’t seep between your toes with every step.”

The Reformatory comes out 10/31.

I was particularly interested in this novel because I know of the Dozier School for boys and live near it. At the end of the school’s reign I remember hearing of the terror and injustices that ensued for the boys who lived there. That alone was horrific. This story represents that terror and is very well written. It is not a story that I will soon forget.
Many thanks to Gallery Books and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I liked this book. But what was lacking for me was the horror vibes. This book focused more on the historical fiction aspects than horror. So I was left a little disappointed. But I still liked the over all story.

This book is GRIPPING! I couldn't put it down. It is a nuanced look at the Jim Crow era that is not overwhelming, preaching, or bludgeoning. As a white person, this perspective is something I appreciated reading. I believe that it took Due ten years to write this book and I think that definitely shows in the expertly crafted prose, the nuanced characters, and the compelling plot.

After reading the description of this title, I was eager to jump straight into it.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due was just as I was hoping.
It was brutal and unrelenting. A captivating novel about injustice, racism and, ultimately, about hope.
A stunning historical fiction story with some supernatural elements that touches the subject of racial and social injustice.
A remarkable story. This book stuck with me long after I finished reading it.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and Gallery/Saga Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I've been a fan of the work of Tananarive Due for a long time, and this book is no exception. It tells the story of two Black, teenaged siblings in the 1950's trying to get by in a world so actually horrifying that the ghosts aren't that bad. This was a page turner, and I was never sure what would happen next. Highly recommend, for spooky season and any season.