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Book: “Mazywood” by Tananarive Due
Publishing Info: S&S/Saga Press, September 2026
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: When Johnny—a filmmaker and grandson of the famous Black actress Mazelle Washington—brings his family to Mazywood, the secluded California mountain lodge left behind by his grandmother, he expects a quiet retreat. Instead, he uncovers a legacy of rage, secrets, and terror that has haunted his family for generations.
Set primarily in the present day, with haunting flashbacks to Hollywood’s Golden Age, Mazywood explores three generations while following Johnny as he pieces together the true story of his grandmother. As a young Black actress whose career spanned from the 1920s to the 1940s, Mazelle brushed shoulders with giants like Lena Horne, Clark Gable, and Hattie McDaniel. But beneath her public appearance, she carried a secret she had kept and nurtured since she was a child, when a dark wish came true and changed the course of her life forever.
Now, fifty years after Mazelle’s death, Johnny finds himself confronting the truth she buried—and the consequences she left behind. For a monster lurks outside Mazywood, hidden for generations, and Johnny brought his family to its hunting grounds.
Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing with with an eARC of this novel!
One of the first Tananarive Due stories I read was “Return to Bear Creek Lodge”, a short story that was part of a winter horror collection, and I had my curiosity piqued when I found out she wanted to expand upon that story (and the previous story “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge”). It was a weird and strange tale, and the thought of a full on novel about it was absolutely exciting. Fast forward a few years, and I find myself with her newest novel “Mazywood”. I loved “The Reformatory” so much it was a priority for me this year, and when I looked deeper into it I realized that THIS was the novel that was going to be the expanded lore of Bear Creek Lodge and the weird monster thing that lives in the woods. But not only that! It was also going to be a historical fiction novel following Mazelle Washington, the bitter grandmother from the previous stories who was also an up and coming Black starlet in the Golden Age of Hollywood, whose career was shaped, and destroyed, by racism. I was on board SO FAST.
Much like previous tales set at Bear Creek Lodge, the horror bits of “Mazywood” involve Johnny, the grandson of former movie star Mazelle Washington, who is at her mountainous and isolated estate in winter. But unlike the previous stories, Johnny is no longer a teenager, but a grown man approaching his sixties, who has become a successful filmmaker in his own right. His wife Tasha convinces him to take the family to his grandmother’s estate, long left empty, for a family weekend (but also so Tasha can research Mazelle for a book she plans to write, but ALSO to break the news to their teenage daughters that Tasha is pregnant). Johnny has bad memories of the lodge and his grandmother, but relents, thinking the OTHER memories of a monster have to be just made up from a scared kid’s mind. The horror here is the isolated cabin and the monster for sure, but Due takes us to places that I wasn’t really expecting as the snow comes down, the power goes out, and the family is suddenly in danger of potentially being eaten like others were in the past. We have some great monster moments, whether it’s the fleeting descriptions of the monster from the POVs of our characters, or hints to its presence, but we also have some great familial tension that adds to it (Tasha and Johnny feeling anxious about an unplanned pregnancy, their daughter Imani’s ADHD making itself known at not so good times, Johnny’s trauma about his grandmother bubbling over). I found the suspense top notch and the mystery about the monster well done. And I did find myself misting up at times because of COURSE things can never be so black and white and Due knows how to pluck at the heart strings when some realities are revealed, and that is all I will say about THAT, but just know I was crying a bit on and off.
The real emotional weight and meat of this story, however, is finally getting to follow Mazelle during her rise in Hollywood, and finally finding out how she transformed from wide eyed ingenue to the bitter and cruel elderly woman we knew from the previous stories… as well as her connection to the strange creature. We see how Mazelle was first a child performer with an amazing hook: a terrific (though strange) dog named Scout that could do almost any trick and seems to be completely in sync with her. As Mazelle gets older and still tries to find a big break, the cogs of old Hollywood and its corruption and racism are prevalent at every turn, whether she’s type cast into an incredibly racist caricature of a role, or has to work ten times harder than white performers but with little to show for it, or how she has to contend with criticism from the Black community for conforming when it’s clear that if she wants to make it she has absolutely no choice but to do so. The Mazelle that we have known from the previous stories is bitter and cruel and has created rifts between her and her loved ones that seem too large to cross. But the Mazelle here is so sympathetic and tragic as she deals with racism, misogynoir, humiliation, and sexual violence all the hands of powerful white Hollywood elites who see her as nothing more than a cash cow until she is tapped out. Due paints a stark and biting portait of the shit Black performers had to go through during this time, and also brings in real life people like Hattie McDaniel, Sammy Davis Junior, and Lena Horne to emphasize that this struggle and injustice wasn’t just limited to Mazelle’s youth during the silent era. I really loved seeing the real life people and how they were used to make these points (and I know that Clark Gable was a complete shithead in a lot of ways, but I enjoyed how Due touched on his relationship with Hattie McDaniel because it does seem like they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company).
“Mazywood” is another spectacular horror novel from Tananarive Due! If you haven’t read any of her books yet, you MUST pick this one up (and then go back and read the short stories that preceded it).
Rating 10: A searing story that is part monster in the woods horror tale, part historical fiction examination of racism in Hollywood’s Golden Age, “Mazywood” is a fantastic new book from Tananarive Due!
Reader’s Advisory:
“Mazywood” is included on the Goodreads post “Peek If You Dare: Our Guide to New Horror Books Coming This Fall”.
The Library Ladies 