Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not impact my rating or review.
I have to say that there were definitely parts of this book that I loved, but on the whole, when Due moved to the present timeline following Johnny Washington and his family I kept losing interest. I think that it was because the sections following Mazelle Washington as a young Black star in the 1920s and then later on when Black women and men were starting to star in “talkies” was really good. The horror aspect was really not there that much outside of some scenes here and there. I do wish that the book had explored Mazelle’s son a bit more because the choice she makes toward the end of her life was honestly terrible. That said, this was honestly a 3.5 star read, but I don’t do half stars and upped the final rating to 4 stars.
Mazywood follows Mazelle Washington as a young girl who makes a wish one day and then comes upon a dog that listens to her every command. Mazelle’s family used to be performers until her father’s back got really bad and they wanted to settle down. Mazelle dreams of being famous though. And when she shows her family that she and the dog she found (she names him Scout) can do all kinds of tricks, the family then meets with a producer who changes Mazelle and her family’s life forever. The book then shifts to follow Mazelle’s grandson Johnny who is dealing with a movie script he believes in getting passed on because it’s “too Black”. His wife has been asking to see his grandmother’s lodge cabin in the mountains. Johnny has his own feelings about his grandmother and that place though he finally relents and takes his whole family to visit “Mazywood.” The family quickly finds out though there is something that lives in the woods that has connections to Johnny’s grandmother.
As I said above, following Mazelle’s rising popularity and then her being stuck with a lazy maid role for the rest of her career was heartbreaking. She wanted to be a star and though she was darker than other Black actresses of the day, we see her getting to know some of the big names back then like Hattie McDaniel, Lena Horne, and others. When she’s a child there are more horror elements since we get to see what connections she and Scout really do have. But one day Scout disappears and Mazelle is left alone with all of the choices she made that she wishes she can unmake. When the book shifts to Johnny though, it slows down significantly. Having him dealing with getting another pass on a movie and worrying about supporting his family and not really wanting to revisit his grandmother’s place has a lot of memories unspooling for him. When something terrible happens though, Johnny is forced to go into the woods and confront something he has been scared about since he was a young boy.
Some fans of Due may recall a short story following some of these characters. I recall reading it in her anthology called The Wishing Pool and Other Stories and a link to my review can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85173872-the-wishing-pool-and-other-stories
I really did enjoy that anthology and wished I had enjoyed this one more. Maybe if the book had just stayed focused on Mazelle from her childhood to death and we didn’t shift over to Johnny and his family it would have hung together more.
