Frazer Lee – Greyfriars Reformatory

‘Greyfriars Reformatory’ by Frazer Lee is a spine chilling, spooky book. This atmospheric story had me from the start.

Emily has mental health issues, she suffers from Dissociative disorder and behaviour issues which helps her find herself on a bus along with a few other girls being sent to a reformatory all locked in chains. Emily maybe, as she ruminates, an unreliable narrator and as we enter this journey with her, told by her are in for one hell of a ride! As Emily arrives at Greyfriars, it seems she feels like she has been before, although she can’t remember at all. She even sees a figure up in the clock tower, or thinks she does.

This story already gave me the bad vibes even before we met the headmistress, Principal Quick, a woman who I would never want to meet on a dark night, never mind every day AND every night! a very dominating woman who I wouldn’t trust with my dogs, never mind girls.

As the story unfolds we discover backstories of the girls who came in on the bus with Emily. How they ended up at Greyfriars and this connected me to a few of them as well as Emily. As much as this is made up, these things happen in the real world too, so believable these girls.
Greyfriars itself, well, Frazer Lee has created such a world that the description of this building was enough to see it in my imagination and, boy, not a place I would ever visit! What a grey vision I had, and these girls had to survive there.

Frazer Lee has created a horror story that lingers in my head. His fantastic world-building and characters made it so believable and I really didn’t want to leave Emily and the girls there, the mother in me! Emily as a character was one who brought a smile to my face. She brought a bit of light relief at times when she was just being herself and not even realising how funny she could be. This balanced out with the horror of the story quite nicely too.

Thanks to Random Things Tours and Flame Tree Press for the book to write my review today.