I protest too much that I don’t like horror, but I did absolutely adore Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory, so when this year’s spooky season rolled around, I decided to go back to the well with Mazywood. 

Mazywood takes place in a world that will be familiar to those who have read a lot of Due’s work (which I have not), with a plot-relevant appearance of the wishing pool (from “The Wishing Pool”) and a good chunk of the book set at Bear Creek Lodge (the setting of a couple other stories that I have not read—I can attest you need no prior background). This story is told across two timelines, alternating in chunks of around 70 pages each. One follows a young Black actress in Old Hollywood, with the other set two generations later when her grandson takes his family on a deadly getaway to her mountain retreat. The latter is the traditional horror narrative, but it’s the former that explains how much a promising start had turned into a monster tale. 

This almost goes without saying, but Mazywood isn’t The Reformatory. The Old Hollywood sections do a similar examination of the real-life horrors of living in a deeply racist society, but in a way that’s much less visceral, with careers at stake rather than lives. For those who find the topic of residential schools in Jim Crow Florida to be too intense to read, Mazywood may be a more approachable selection, and fans of Old Hollywood stories will doubtless enjoy the older timeline. Due is, after all, an excellent writer, and her story is compelling, even if it doesn’t take your breath away quite like her previous offering. 

The contemporary plot, on the other hand, displays every ounce of her skill in building dramatic tension. It’s not especially innovative plot-wise—it’s a monster story, with most of the expected tropes—but the exemplary storytelling makes it extremely difficult to put down and more genuinely scary than the previous stories I’d read from Due. And the more backstory is revealed, the more complicated the emotional entanglements get in the contemporary story. It’s a monster story at heart, but it’s not without its layers. 

With Mazywood, Tananarive Due once again demonstrates her terrific skill, both in writing supernatural horror and the more mundane horrors of American history. This isn’t the stunner that The Reformatory was, but it’s excellent in its own right. 

Recommended if you like: monster stories, Old Hollywood.

Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for The Afterlife and is set in a Vacation Spot. It also has a One-Word Title and is Published in 2026 by an Author of Color.

Overall rating: 17 of Tar Vol’s 20. Five stars on Goodreads.