From the Bookshelf of Nothing But Reading Challenges…

The Reformatory

Tananarive Due

Start date: December 1, 2025

Finish date: December 31, 2025

Discussion: Books of the Month

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 167 topics — 23,724 comments total

Books of the Month

* Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez - Nov 25 Theme BOM - South America (starts 16 Nov)
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 25 posts · 75 views

last updated 3 hours, 27 min ago

* A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett - Nov 25 Adult / Non-Fiction BOM (starts 2 Nov)
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 89 posts · 91 views

last updated 14 hours, 31 min ago

showing 10 of 15 topics view all »

Other topics mentioning this book

Team RAP
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 636 posts · 129 views

last updated Dec 21, 2023 07:08AM

Author Alphabet Challenge 2024
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 72 posts · 499 views

last updated Dec 28, 2024 06:51PM

Cleaning Out the TBR Closet 2024
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 1433 posts · 1159 views

last updated Jan 01, 2025 06:28PM

Serious Readers Challenge 2024 - Level 1
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 110 posts · 816 views

last updated Dec 31, 2024 02:26PM

New 2U Authors Challenge 2024
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 99 posts · 479 views

last updated Dec 31, 2024 06:04AM

NetGalley February 2024
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 22 posts · 225 views

last updated Mar 02, 2024 02:52PM

District 3
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 978 posts · 191 views

last updated Aug 16, 2024 04:26AM

Decades Challenge 2025 Lite
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 36 posts · 166 views

last updated Nov 02, 2025 01:50PM

This topic has been closed to new comments.

Our FIRST Million Pages for 2025: An NBRC Group Relay Reading Challenge
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 1271 posts · 350 views

last updated Jun 14, 2025 12:30AM

Team Leaning Tower of Pisa
By Moderators of… , Challenger-in-Chief · 1537 posts · 167 views

last updated Aug 19, 2025 01:31PM

What Members Thought

May 29, 2025 Bonnie added it

Shelves: historical-fiction, horror, 2023-books

This is an objectively good book and I just cannot keep reading it. It's going to put me in a reading slump - I already am finding myself avoiding reading or listening to any book (scrolling Reddit instead) and have to force myself to pick up this book.

All parts of this book are excellent - the writing is evocative and digestible, the characters feel vibrant (TOO VIBRANT, TOO REAL), the tension is so intense that it cuts, the supernatural (haints/ghosts) is incorporated perfectly into a historic This is an objectively good book and I just cannot keep reading it. It's going to put me in a reading slump - I already am finding myself avoiding reading or listening to any book (scrolling Reddit instead) and have to force myself to pick up this book.

All parts of this book are excellent - the writing is evocative and digestible, the characters feel vibrant (TOO VIBRANT, TOO REAL), the tension is so intense that it cuts, the supernatural (haints/ghosts) is incorporated perfectly into a historical setting.

The most horrific horror to me is when the monster is a human/society - when the horror is real it is what real people did to other real people. Give me an eldritch horror, a demon, a zombie, a deadly parasite any day. But humans torturing other humans (CHILDREN) not because they are possessed or infected by a cosmic horror, but because they are just being human, the absolute worst of humanity? It's worth writing about, it's worth reading about, and I can't do it. It's why I've been avoiding The Kite Runner for over a decade. I feel like this book - based on what life was actually like in 1950s America - is more similar to dystopian fiction than horror fiction. And I mostly avoid dystopian for the same reasons.

I've read so many books this year (nonfiction & fiction) that touch on the same or similar topics. I will probably read several more this year. But this is the novel that broke me. I think partly is that it is nearly SIX HUNDRED PAGES (it is 21 hours on audio), and I could probably force myself through the normal 250-350 pages (10-14 hours). But I've already made it through six hours and am only at 29%. I have nearly 15 hours left.

This book very much deserved to win the 2024 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel and 2024 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It absolutely deserved to be a New York Times Notable book. It definitely deserves its popularity and critical acclaim. I am glad people are reading this and realizing that the Good Ol' Days of the 1950s were not the Good Ol' Days for everyone - that rampant and unchecked (and unpunished!) abuse, violence, torture, and intimidation happened every day, including, again, towards children. I look forward to reading another Tananarive Due book (probably The Good House - it's a crime it hasn't been reissued with a better cover yet!). But I am DNFing this book. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review