Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Our story begins in 1902, at the Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it the Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, the Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.

Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer Merritt Emmons publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.

Thank you to William Morrow Books for the #gifted finished copy of emily m. danforth's PLAIN BAD HEROINES! This has not influenced my review, which is honest. I was not compensated to read or review.

It's rare to finish a 600+ page book and feel disappointed that there's not more left to read.

Okay. This book... it is genius. It's a plotty onion, with layers of Gothic, sapphic, meta, all laced with a great sense of humor. It's also, at various points, unpredictable and eerie in wholly satisfying ways. PBH features a darkly funny narrator commenting on both past and present, with footnotes and illustrations that amp up the experience.

The pacing in this book is perfect, and it builds slowly over time but in a captivating way. Then there's a series of events that had me flipping back and forth and rereading more closely.

I'd highly suggest this one as a print book; personally, I struggle with audio a lot, and I feel like it would be confusing to keep track of the plot and time shifts. And for the ebook, I heard that the footnotes actually become endnotes in the digital version, which is tough because I think they lend a lot of context and enjoyment.

I loved this book, especially as a buddy read.

This was creepy and weird and delightful. I found the ending unsatisfying but the rest of it was so good that it almost didn't matter.

This book is not good. It has good portions, but, overall, it desperately needs a better editor with a chainsaw and a friend who can tell the author that she's not nearly as clever as she thinks she is.

There are two timelines of the book: old and new.
The old timeline is best, and most neglected, section of the book. But it builds and then fizzles, so another disappointment.

The new timeline is, uh, not good. It doesn't even build; it's just disappointing the whole way. Sixty percent of it is absolutely useless that leads nowhere. You'd think it'd be groundwork for character development, but nope! Turns out none of the named people are actual characters anyway. One character, Harper, has one personality trait: being cool. Another, Merritt, has one personality trait: insufferable (like if Tumblr was a person, and not in a good way). The last, Audrey, is simply there. But we're supposed to believe that any character cares about any of the other? Like, I can see where Danforth TRIES to show chemistry between characters, but she ends up writing the most soulless, bland conversation. Like, saying the words, “they were flirting,” does not actually mean that they were flirting if it sounds like two omega simulators were talking.

And the author has an annoying habit of just having characters say things that the author wants to be, rather than them actually be true. Having two actors get together to gauge chemistry isn't weird. It happens all the time. But you have a character say “this is weird,” presumably to set some sort of mood, but it's factually not true, and you just leave it for the reader to blindly believe. Like, Emily, you just overwrote this book by 400 pages! You can't add in one paragraph to explain why something is weird, rather than just say “this is weird”?

Remember when I said I was annoyed by the indulgence of Honey Girl? That its irreverence impeded it more than colored it? This, this book is how you do indulgence. Where else are you going to get a story where three women fall unapologetically and non-committedly in love with each other?

Ok, sometimes the irreverence was a bit much, but most of the time it was just right.

Plain Bad Heroines is many stories in one. If that's freaking you out a bit, I wouldn't worry. It's less confusing and unwieldly than it sounds. There is the story of Flo and Clara - the inciting incident, that in fact only takes a small portion of the book -, two girls enamored with the memoir of Mary Maclane and each other (I read this book under the assumption that Ms. MacLane was something Danforth had made up, but she and her books are very real, as it turns out), the story of the chaos that erupts at their school after their horrifying deaths, and then the story of two actresses and a young writer a hundred years later, all trying to put the story to screen without falling to the supposed curse themselves. The stories of Audrey, Harper and Merritt in the present day has the clever irreverence of contemporary fiction along with a suspenseful Hollywood feel, while the one happening in the past is a frightening gothic horror story. All the while yellow jackets hum in the background, shining black apples rot in a field, and Emily Danforth is intent on haunting your mind with every element of this story.

This book is great. Despite its girth, its a profoundly easy read. It's 600+ pages and I read it in 20 days. I haven't done that in...I don't even know. Ninth House took me four months. As stated, this book is indulgent with the way it digs into the characters stories and relationships, but its also economical and efficient with the way their drawn. Harper Harper, the bona fide movie star, is marked by her affableness and charm, her ability to be indefatigably sexy and pleasant at the same time. Merritt Emmons, the author of the book that tells the story of Flo and Clara and their school, is understandably the opposite - prickly as a cactus, but deeply relatable. Audrey Wells is the closest to the “everywoman,” the mostly unremarkable actor daughter of a notorious scream queen, who is the most effected by the otherworldliness of shooting a scary movie at the cursed Brookhants school. Danforth gives each of them their stories and their perspectives, but also doesn't try too hard to make you believe them. Which I appreciate. Danforth trusts her story and her reader.

This strategy is maybe a little less effective with the characters in the past story - Libbie Brookhants and her lover Alexandra Trills. It's not until you hear Libbie's backstory that you understand that this principal of a boarding school for girls was in fact a wild child caught in a web that she never could have anticipated (well, maybe a little), and poor poor Alex deserved better (I hate that phrase, by the way, especially when it comes to horror. It's horror! Everyone deserved better! But still, poor Alex). When we had to return to the past, especially when it was Alex's POV, I found myself a little irritated. But Danforth is very clever with the way she bounces backing forth between past and present, from character to character. It's done in a very crafty way to keep you engaged, and just about every chapter is worth it, even if there are certain characters that you would prefer to be reading instead. While the present story is funny and charming with some thrills thrown in to remind you this is in fact horror, the one in the past is rich with mystery and intrigue. For those aesthetically minded, its a brilliant mashup of dark academia and pulp slasher vibes.

That all being said, Plain Bad Heroines is a lot of a lot of things. As such it lacks the streamlined precision that is often necessary for the genres and elements its throwing together. Instead of choosing a particular ghost or reasoning, Danforth instead uses these pieces (black seaweed, buzzing yellow jackets, nesting dolls, poisonous flowers etc etc) and repeats them over and over to get you drunk on atmosphere. The characters are not so much terrorized but so overwhelmed they become delirious. Its incredible fun and deeply absorbing, but when all is said and done its a little...meaningless? There's no evil witch to defeat, no malady to overcome, no tortured ghost to free. No lesson. Should all scary stories have lessons? Most of them do, at least the ones we like to tell. This one though is more like real life ghost stories. The characters live through it and then live on with it. It's not clean and tidy, but it is very satisfying and very enjoyable.

Also gay. Just absolutely undeniably sapphic and gay. Like I said, this is the kind indulgence I like.