Review | The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

The Reformatory is a work of literary horror fiction by Tananarive Due.

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.

Gracetown, Florida
June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.

I can't do this book justice so I'm not even going to try, but I do want to jot down some thoughts about The Reformatory.

First and foremost, this book is a masterpiece. Tananarive Due is an incredible writer, and this book is remarkable. If the world would allow a horror book to win all of the literary prizes, I think The Reformatory deserves all of the literary prizes.

The second point I need to make is this is a tough read. One particular chapter had me shaking so much I couldn't even type my thoughts to the friends I was reading this with. I'm not sure that's happened in any other book that I've read. This was a powerful read.

I wish I could do a deep dive into the layers of racism, injustice, grief, hauntings, friendship, family, and so much more, but this book is important to experience the way Tananarive Due intended. The book description does a great job blurbing what the book is about.

I give The Reformatory the highest of recommendations, but I also need to state there's child death, child abuse, and child sexual assault along with violence and racism and other content warnings that you may need to seek out prior to reading.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/5 stars

Source: personal purchase (audio). This is a review of my reading experience.

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Review | Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my personal reading experience.

Camp Damascus is a horror novel by Chuck Tingle.

A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.

I was not planning to get a review out this week because life is peak hectic, but I have got to get my thoughts out about Camp Damascus.

Camp Damascus was not at all what I was expecting. Based on the synopsis and the cover and what I thought I knew about Chuck Tingle's work, I expected something entirely different. I expected the pain I felt in James Newman's Odd Man Out but amplified in this book about a gay conversion camp. I expected it to be violent and gory and it wasn't any of these things.

Camp Damascus subverted a lot of things for me, and I absolutely loved it. I loved the main character. I loved the representation. I loved the way religion was handled. There was humor and it was scary and the pacing was perfect.

I hope we are gifted with more Chuck Tingle horror in the future because I will be first in line to read it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/5 stars

 

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Review | Be Sure by Seanan McGuire

Source: review copy provided by publisher. This is a review of my reading experience.

Where it all began―the first three books in Seanan McGuire's multi-Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series.

Join the students of Eleanor West, and jump through doors into worlds both dangerous and extraordinary.

Book 1: Every Heart a Doorway
Book 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Book 3: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Meet Nancy, cast out of her world by the Lord of the Dead; Jack and Jill, each adopted by a monster of the Moors; Sumi and her impossible daughter, Rini.

Three worlds, three adventures, three sets of lives destined to intersect.

Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations / No Visitors / No Quests

But quests are what these children do best...

Be Sure collects the first three books of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. The Wayward Children series is one of my absolute favorite series.

In the Wayward Children books, the characters find a door into another world but are eventually forced to go back home. These children struggle to cope and often wind up at the school for wayward children. Some books are set in another world and some are set at school.

If you haven't started reading the Wayward Children books, Be Sure is such a great way to start! Here are some of my non-spoiler thoughts on the books included in Be Sure:

Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway is a perfect introduction to this universe and what it's like to be a wayward kid who has gone through a portal to another world and forced to come back to the life they left behind. I love the magnitude of what Every Heart a Doorway spells out for these characters. There's an imaginative quality to Every Heart a Doorway, but it's also horror adjacent and should appeal to a wide range of genre readers.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Down Among the Sticks and Bones tells the backstory of two characters we meet in Every Heart a Doorway. Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a dark story in the dark world of the Moors, but the true beauty of Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the portrayal of gender roles. It's so heartbreakingly relatable.

Beneath the Sugar Sky

In Beneath the Sugar Sky we meet a brand-new character and head into a brand-new world, but we start our adventure at the school for Wayward Children with characters we already know and a problem we are sort of already familiar with. While there is still darkness in this volume, Beneath the Sugar Sky shows us just how different these worlds can be.

5/5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Review | Chlorine by Jade Song

Chlorine is a debut literary fiction/horror novel by Jade Song.

In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies... a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming.

Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life.

But these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Ones that called sailors to their doom. Ones that dragged them down and drowned them. Ones that feasted on their flesh. Ones of the creature that she's always longed to become: mermaid.

Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine--the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.

Wow - I have so many feelings about Chlorine! I will start with the most important since that's why we are all here - I loved this book.

Chlorine is a debut coming-of-age novel that follows Ren Yu - a swimmer who grew up loving tales of mermaids and the water. I could really relate to Ren and her obsession with being in the water. In fact, the synopsis for Chlorine sounded like a perfect read for me, and it was.

The comparison to Han Kang's The Vegetarian had me curious about what kind of horror I would find in Chlorine (In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale...). I find sometimes a book that is strange or unsettling gets labeled as horror because there's not really another marketing box to put it in. I wondered if this was the case with Chlorine and for the first 150+ pages I feared I was right. Chlorine is a wonderful work of literary fiction. The character building was incredible, and I was heavily invested in the story. I was side-eyeing the claims of "horror" in Chlorine until Jade Song spelled out for the reader exactly what horror was going to take place, and I absolutely could not look away.

So be warned. This book is wonderful. I loved it, and it will be one of my favorite books of the year, but the last 100 pages are disturbing. They're amazing, but they're disturbing. I had to put the book down, take some breaths, and pick it right back up again.

I loved these characters, and I miss these characters already. Chlorine is a really great coming-of-age story, and I highly recommend it if you can handle having horror in your literary fiction. I think I'm going to buy this one for my mom for Mother's Day, and you should treat yourself, too.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Review | Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Book Lovers is a romance book by Emily Henry.

One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.

If you've been following my blog recently, you know I've been on a quest for cozy things. Cozy books, games, movies, I'm here for your recommendations. I've been looking for more cozy genre books, but I also wanted to branch out into some romance books as well.

One thing that stuck out to me in the reviews of Emily Henry's books was the maturity of the characters. I'll admit I don't read romance books hardly at all, but I do watch a lot of Hallmark and Lifetime romance movies around the holidays. The few romance books that I have tried were definitely not the right fit for me. Emily Henry's books, however, sounded exactly like the type of romance books that I would enjoy.

I think Book Lovers was a great book to kick off my cozy romance journey since the main characters were book lovers and this was a world I felt comfortable in.

“You're in books. Of course you don't have a life. None of us do. There's always something too good to read.”

Nora is an agent and Charlie is an editor, and while this is a bit of an enemies to lovers story, all of the characters are very likeable. I loved being able to root for everyone in Book Lovers.

Another thing I loved is this book wasn't just about Nora and Charlie's relationship. It was also about the relationship between Nora and her sister Libby. I adore when books give us deep, meaningful relationships outside of romance. Book Lovers gave us both!

Book Lovers wrapped up exactly how I wanted it to, and I was not expecting it to hit me in the feels the way it did. I have a copy of Beach Read that I'm hoping to get to sooner rather than later then I'm sure I'll be picking up People We Meet on Vacation as well. If you have any recommendations similar to Emily Henry - romance or otherwise - I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, take this review as a recommendation to read Book Lovers.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

Review | The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is the first book in a new fantasy series from Shannon Chakraborty (S.A. Chakraborty). 

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power… and the price might be your very soul.

Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend.

10⭐ out of 5.

The reason I most wanted to read The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is because it's a pirate book written by a woman. I had expectations going in, and it far surpassed every single one of them. It checked boxes that I didn't even realize I had.

Amina Al-Sirafi is a retired pirate in her 40s. She's a mother and she's living peacefully with her family after having left the pirating world behind her, but she gets an offer that pulls her back into that world for one last adventure (or so it would seem).

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi had everything for me from plot to adventure to imagination to characters to relationships... It was so skillfully crafted, and I loved every minute of it from the first word to the last. I hadn't savored a book that slowly in so long. I went several days without reading at all because I didn't want it to end.

I haven't read the Daevabad trilogy by Chakraborty yet. I love so much that she has shifted from S.A. Chakraborty to Shannon Chakraborty with The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi. I feel like this is a choice, and I support it so hard.

Thankfully The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is not Amina's last adventure. This was such an incredible start to a series, and I cannot wait for the rest. It's set up to be longer than a trilogy so fingers crossed we get several more books. This is now my most anticipated on-going series that will trump all other releases.

I recommend this book for everyone. You don't need to be a pirate-loving, treasure-seeking reader like me to fall for Amina, her crew, or this world. It is such a wonderful book, and I truly can't sing it's praises enough. Hit up your library, order you a copy, and please let me know once you've read it so we can wait in anticipation together for the next one!

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Review copy provided by publisher

Review | Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House is the first book in the Alex Stern series by Leigh Bardugo.

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

Reread review! I'm so glad I reread Ninth House. It's been a few years since I read it, and with the release of Hell Bent, I wanted to remember why I was so anxious for the next book in the series. It was definitely a successful reread.

There's a lot going on in Ninth House, and it should appeal to a wide range of readers. There's horror, fantasy, dark academia, ghosts, mystery... This is a huge plus for me, but I can see why this is a negative for some people. It's a lot, and there's a lot to take in. Ninth House definitely builds up over the course of the book, but I enjoyed all of it.

Do seek out trigger warnings, though.

Ninth House is still the only book I've read by Leigh Bardugo. I have a copy of Hell Bent that I will be reading in the very near future.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can read my original review of Ninth House here! 

 

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Review | In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

In An Absent Dream is the fourth book in Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series.

This fourth entry and prequel tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should. 

When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she's found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.

Oh, my heart. Seanan McGuire continues to break my heart into pieces with each book in the Wayward children series.

In An Absent Dream is another prequel installment to the series. In An Absent Dream follows Lundy who we know works at the school for wayward children. In An Absent Dream is her back story. We get to follow Lundy through her doorway into the world of the Goblin Market where everything has a price.

I don't want to spoil anything because I feel like Lundy's story is everything. I just love this book so much.

Are you reading this series yet? These books are portal fantasies into other worlds. A doorway finds these kids when they need it the most, and it leads them to a world they would consider to be "home". I can't help but fall in love with every character and just ache for them.

In An Absent Dream deals with family and friendship and choices that are never easy. I'm pretty sure I'll reread this series again and again.

 

5/5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Review | Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi is a cross-genre novel by Susanna Clarke.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

What a strange and wonderful book.

How do I even review Piranesi? This is 100% a book that is best to go into blind. I'm so glad I chose to avoid reviews for this one so I'm going to keep my review vague and avoid talking about the details of Piranesi.

I do want to mention if you decide to try Piranesi, don't put it down. I would actually recommend reading it in as few sittings as possible, but I mean don't DNF it. For most of Piranesi I had no idea what was going on and I assumed I wouldn't care about the characters that I was struggling to get to know, but I was wrong. I wound up loving the characters and loving Piranesi. This strange little book has turned out to be one of my favorite books of the year.

I wondered throughout reading Piranesi who I would even recommend it to if I wound up loving it, but now that I've finished reading it, I would recommend it to anyone willing to take a chance on a unique story. If you love finding a reading experience unlike anything you've read before, you should definitely consider picking up Piranesi.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Review | What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

What Moves the Dead is a horror novella by T. Kingfisher.

What Moves the Dead is Kingfisher's retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher.”

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

I bought What Moves the Dead because I wanted to read more of T. Kingfisher's work. I loved The Hollow Places, and I keep hearing such good things about everything she has written. Thankfully, What Moves the Dead was voted the September readalong selection by the Horror Spotlight discord group. it gave me the perfect excuse to pull it off the shelf and read it.

What Moves the Dead is a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. It had been a while since I first read The Fall of the House of Usher so I decided to read it again before reading What Moves the Dead. I'm so glad that I did! What Moves the Dead expanded on The Fall of the House of Usher in such a wonderful way. This was one of my favorite reading experiences of the year.

Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher is very short and, in my opinion, not very memorable. But What Moves the Dead does an amazing job of keeping the tone of Edgar Allan Poe – the wonderfully creepy Gothic fungus covered tone – and expands it into a terrifying and memorable and even somehow lovable story.

I loved the characters and the writing and everything about What Moves the Dead.

T. Kingfisher does a really great job at creepy imagery in What Moves the Dead. There are several moments that are quite chilling, and I had so much fun with the suspense of it all. I think reading The Fall of the House of Usher as well really enhanced my experience with reading What Moves the Dead.

If you haven't read T. Kingfisher before, I highly recommend both The Hollow Places and What Moves the Dead. I would really love to read everything she has written. I think next up for me will be Nettle and Bone. That sounds like a perfect read for me.

 

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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