The Reformatory

 By: Tananarive Due

Location: FIC DUE

Genre: Horror

The Reformatory is a dark, emotional, scary, powerful and thrilling read.

Heartbreaking, devastating, and horrifying - yet also, somehow, hopeful.

A gloriously creepy Deep South horror story based on the infamous Dozier School for boys, perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians and Nothing But Blackened Teeth.

Jim Crow Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robert Stephens Jr., who for a trivial scuffle with a white boy is sent to The Gracetown School for Boys. But the segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In order to survive the school governor and his Funhouse, Robert must enlist the help of the school's ghosts – only they have their own motivations...

This was a great book. It’s a historical fiction about a 12 year old boy, Robbie, living in Florida in 1950 when he is sent to a reformatory school for a crime that is not actually a crime… but Robbie is poor and black and that’s why he’s sentenced. It’s a very eye opening experience to read about the horrific conditions in which black people were (and are) treated and especially how these reformatory schools were run. The other aspect of this book which was pretty interesting is that there’s a paranormal theme of the boys who were killed at the reformatory and still haunt their halls. But the horror of the ghosts is no where close to the horror of the men who run the school.

Very good book!  it’s an important read and I’m so glad I read it!  Review by Scott