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Holley Perry

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Holley Perry is currently reading

The Reformatory

by Tananarive Due (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in October 2023

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Holley Perry said: " In The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, the main setting is the Gracetown School for Boys. For a place with so many tragic events tied to it, the name is very plain and unassuming. You would think it’s just a regular, terrible reform school. Oh no, rea In The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, the main setting is the Gracetown School for Boys. For a place with so many tragic events tied to it, the name is very plain and unassuming. You would think it’s just a regular, terrible reform school. Oh no, reader. It is so much more nightmarish than a person can imagine.

Robbie Stephens, Jr. kicks a white, wealthy teenager, Lyle McCormack. Lyle was being too forward with Robbie’s sister, Gloria. So Robbie kicked him to make him leave her alone. Unfortunately, defending his sister against Lyle got him sent to The Reformatory.

Robbie and Gloria’s father had left them in Florida. Their mother had passed away not too long before the father’s departure. Life was not going well for the siblings but it was about to get much worse.

Gloria tried so hard to get him out of the place but was met with difficulty at every turn. Robbie was trying to adjust to this awful place. He saw ghosts on a regular basis – some friendly and others not.

The worst human in the book is definitely Warden Fenton J. Haddock. He had the power in this situation so people did what he wanted. No one had the courage to stand up to him. Haddock is a slippery slimeball, which is more kindness than he deserves.

Due is one of the best writers during the last two decades period. Her focus has been Black speculative fiction. I cannot recommend her books enough. When you start one, you won’t be able to put it down.

I created Haddock as an amalgam of a system of violence in children’s incarceration—but the truth is that no one person can explain away the reported events at the Dozier School, or the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, or the Indigenous “schools” in Canada where so many children were buried. No one person can be blamed for our nation’s current nightmare of mass incarceration. The Reformatory has a central villain, but the actual villain is a system of dehumanization.”
― Tananarive Due, The Reformatory

If you are ready for a great horror novel that is also historical fiction, then you are ready for The Reformatory. Whoever sees themself identifying with the villain, might not be prepared for the ending. ...more "

Mar 03, 2024 08:01AM · see review

Holley Perry is currently reading

The Weaver Bride (The Weaver Bride #1)

by Lydia Gregovic (Goodreads Author)

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Jan 29, 2026 07:02AM

Holley Perry is currently reading

Cleopatra and Frankenstein

by Coco Mellors (Goodreads Author)

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— Oct 15, 2025 12:37PM

Oct 13, 2025 03:56PM

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Holley’s Quotes

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
― Pablo Neruda, Love: Ten Poems

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“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.”
― Norman Vincent Peale

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