NATIONAL BESTSELLER “A delectable brew of gothic horror and Hollywood satire . . . [and] what makes all this so much fun is Danforth’s deliciously ghoulish voice . . . exquisite.” —Ron Charles, THE WASHINGTON POST “A multi-faceted novel, equal parts gothic, sharply funny, sapphic romance, historical, and, of course, spooky.” —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY Named a Most Anticipated Book by Entertainment … Weekly • Washington Post • USA Today • Time • O, The Oprah Magazine • Buzzfeed • Harper’s Bazaar • Vulture • Parade • HuffPost • Refinery29 • Popsugar • E! News • Bustle • The Millions • GoodReads • Autostraddle • Lambda Literary • Literary Hub • and more! The award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post makes her adult debut with this highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit 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. A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period-inspired illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagination of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read. “Full of Victorian sapphic romance, metafictional horror, biting misandrist humor, Hollywood intrigue, and multiple timeliness—all replete with evocative illustrations that are icing on a deviously delicious cake.” –O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
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Emily Danforth’s ingenious, jaw-dropping novel is a time-hopping epic about the history of a cursed New England girls’ school, doomed lovers, and an equally cursed modern-day retelling via film, plus yellow jackets. Hell, those yellow jackets! The expertly rendered characters are as heartbreaking as they are written with an integrity of vision that saturates every page. Plain Bad Heroines is a queer roar and it’s terrifying and it’s a goddamned triumph.
Brimming from start to finish with sly humor and gothic mischief, Plain Bad Heroines is a brilliant piece of exuberant storytelling by a terrifically talented author.
Plain Bad Heroines wears its brilliance lightly and like the Black Oxford apples described in these pages, it’s dark, sweet, and addictive. Emily Danforth displays all the gothic wit of Edward Gorey and all the soaring metafictional ambitions of David Mitchell, alongside a generosity and humanity that is uniquely her own. Simply one of the best books I’ve read in the last decade.
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth is an excellent fiction that is a dual timeline epic masterpiece that literally has it all: historical fiction, suspense, mystery, murder, intrigue, romance, and wonderfully crafted female characters. I loved the gothic feel, the sarcasm, the wit/banter, and dark humor.
This book is so unique. The author takes the situation of a mysterious death between two female students (Flo and Clara) at an All-Girls school in 1902 and entwines this mystery with a current-day storyline of a story of a movie that is filmed at the dark, shrouded grounds of the school that is an adaptation of a book written about the accounts of the several deaths of female students throughout the years of the school before it was closed. Now the reader gets to settle in to another epic angle of Merritt, Harper, and Audrey as they wade in between what is real, imagined, what is made-up, what is fact, and what is to be between one another as well as for each one respectively.
The mystery, the darkness, the suspense of not knowing what is to be believed and what will happen around the next corner kept me enthralled, on edge, and desperately turning each page to see where the author would take me next. I loved the illustrations, the concepts, the complex plot lines, the pace, and the ending. I honestly have never read anything like this before, and quite frankly, I am mesmerized. It is just stunning!
5/5 stars
Thank you EW and William Morrow/HarperCollins for this excellent ARC and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.
I am posting this review to my GR, Instagram, Bookbub, Amazon, and B&N Accounts accounts immediately. Publication date: 10/20/20.
Audiobook Review for Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. Narrated by Xe Sands.
Plain Bad Heroines is fantastically creepy. It’s a creepy that lingers, clinging to not only the walls of your thoughts but also the skin on your upper back.
Plain Bad Heroines is also proudly clever. It’s so clever that mid-sentence I would often stop to gnaw on how clever that scene, plot, set up, whatever was.
Yet, I didn’t like it. I can’t pinpoint why I didn’t like it. I listened to the whole book. I not only listened, but I listened with intent, wanting, craving to know what came next.
But when I sat to write this review, all I could think of was that the story although clever and creepy two things that I love was also too long. When I was about 80% into the book I was just wanting to finish it.
I also did not like the narrator at first. Her voice was too geriatric and shaky. The narrator’s voice clung to me like an old band-aid that I wanted to violently rip off of me. I hated it, but grew to understand why Sands was chosen as the narrator for Plain Bad Heroines. The voice acting fit the story. It not only fit the story but slide right into it like a perfectly fitted boot.
Read Plain Bad Heroines if you love under your skin creepy strung together with a well thought out story. It is a fantastic read but left an aftertaste.
Overall I enjoyed reading this book. I liked the historical stories more than the contemporary one. I really liked the school and estate setting and the characters. The contemporary characters and story line were less interesting. The book was too long and sometimes it seemed if the book was not sure what kind of story it wanted to be. Enjoy
An insane, feminist, gothic story of revenge and curses. I was so creeped out the entire time, but by the end I was cheering. The characters were fascinating! Will be looking into the rest of Danforth’s writing for sure!
“Plain Bad Heroines” by Emily Danforth is perhaps misnamed. The characters may not be the historically portrayed shrinking violets, but they are complicated, daring, and interesting women. Set at a posh, Gothically-atmospheric boarding school, a modern film crew documents unexplained deaths and a rumored curse involving a forbidden red book and some savage and unsavory yellow jackets. This dual time-lined story often breaks the 4th wall, dear reader, which is charming and unique, though it does give the story a bit of a fairy tale feel.
There are some loose ends that were never tied, but there was plenty of humor laced through the action. As with most Gothic books, the assent to the peak of the story builds slowly to allow readers to grow attached to a fairly large cast of characters. My favorite memorable aspect of this was, indeed, those nasty yellow jackets and their peculiar way of getting into everything.
Part historical, part contemporary, serious and humorous story about mysterious deaths at a girls’ boarding school in 1902 and the making of a movie about the deaths in the present times. Uniquely special.
Utterly spellbinding, that is the phrase I would use to describe Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. There are a lot of things I loved about it – great chapter titles, different timelines expertly weaved together, and the fact that it was all-consuming to name a few. This is a very large book and the audio is almost 19.5 hours long, but I was completely captured by it and I spent my time savoring it. I usually listen to audio at around a 2.5x speed, but for this book I slowed myself down because I didn’t want to miss a single thing, and I REALLY enjoyed the narrator’s voice. Xe Sands completely crushed the narration for this book, and I couldn’t have asked for anyone better. The book is told from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator which I don’t read all that often, and I think it worked really well.
So, this book is labeled as horror, and although I haven’t read much of that genre, this is definitely the tamest of any I have read. I didn’t find anything particularly freighting, and I definitely wasn’t scared, but there is a general sense of foreboding, especially at any scene that takes place at Brookhants. One thing I can tell you though, is that I definitely won’t look or think of a yellowjacket the same way ever again. The story is heavy with them and a lot of other small creepy things that happen. The physical copy is gorgeous, and I loved the illustrations throughout. I also loved the way the book was written and all of the footnotes which was very unique. Luckily the audio does have them included, but there was just something about looking at the book as well.
Plain Bad Heroines is by far one of the most unique books I have ever read, and I really have to hand it to Danforth. I can’t imagine how she was able to write this and keep everything straight, all the while writing something so different. I have to say the ending left a little to be desired for me, and I was hoping for a little more, but other than that I was a huge fan and will certainly be reading more from this author!
Thank you to Libro.fm and the publisher for my advance listening copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
dnf
Note that I listened to the audio version courtesy of Libro.fm and the narrator was outstanding…
Okay, so a haunted girls boarding school set in Little Compton, Rhode Island…. this book had me at hello. Emily Danforth has such a punchy and quick-witted use of language that there were always several layers of entertainment going on for me, and I was taken by her unabashedly addressing the reader throughout. This novel has been described as Gothic, but it harkened to early Nineteenth century novelists such as Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, and George Eliot in its third person omniscient voice. The story braids two time frames, 1902 at the Brookhants boarding school with contemporary Hollywood, and features a mostly all-female cast of characters. Both time periods include triads of young women who fall in love and suffer jealousies within their respective triangles. The initial love at Brookhants between Flo and Clara and curious Eleanor (on the outside) was inspired by the work of Mary MacLane, a shocking memoirist who in the late 1800’s scandalized readers with her bisexuality. I mention this only because it was the first of many literary and cultural references that made my experience of this book expansive, ie a second layer of entertainment value… As for the story itself, it was not so much a haunted tale as it was a parody of haunted tales past and present, and I am not lying reader, when I say a portion of my home was infested with yellow jackets while I was listening to the audio (you must read the book to get this.) I hear the printed version is 600+ pages, but still I would suggest picking it up if you like smart writing and courageous technique.
Thank you Emily Danforth, William Morrow Books & Librofm for the #gifted copy & audiobook.
3.5/5 Stars
Plain Bad Heroines is a queer gothic story, written around the backdrop of Brookhants, a haunted boarding school for girls. This story is told from two timelines; one during the early 1900s when the boarding school was open and girls were dying, and one in the modern day following the making of a movie about the school and its eerie occurrences.
Buckle up, this is a mammoth of a story at just over 600pgs. Danforth did an amazing job at creating the spooky world around Brookhants and the haunting occurrences that take place with our heroines. I enjoyed how queer this story was; heterosexuals were a rarity in this story, which really helped to magnify the interactions between the predominantly female characters. This book is sprinkled with fun/creepy illustrations that tie into the story, you never know when a random yellow jacket will crawl onto the page.
Although I found Danforth to be an imaginative and skillful writer, at times I felt that the story was just moving at too slow of a pace for how long it was. I felt like some parts could have been whittled down a bit to keep the story moving at a better pace and to keep me engaged and hooked into the story. I also found the overuse of the word “said” to be a bit annoying and I dreaded those prolonged conversational parts.
Overall, I thought that this was an interesting story and one worth checking out!
Gothic ghost story with Hollywood satire? Sign me up. This book has shaken me out of a reading rut as it’s different and fresh and not like anything else you’ve read- I promise
This book was fun and different and I look forward to purchasing a copy on publishing day!! I became completely immersed in the story from page one and the creepiness of it just built up.
My Review of
PLAIN BAD HEROINES
By Emily M. Danforth
Published by WilliamMorrow
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I found this book to be absolutely mesmerizing. My days I looked forward to knowing that this book was waiting for me to finish. The writing was smooth and flowing with wit that continued to make me smirk and laugh to myself. Just simply genius work that created a world of two different time periods and of different lives and how expertly Danforth was able to converge into one haunting, but at times; beautiful novel.
A gothic read with a twist on a curse told from two time periods, the early 1900’s and then again of modern day times. When a boarding school was thought to have been haunted and where girls ended up dead. Things continued to happen at this said school where the majority of girls and headmasters were queer. All blamed on a book written by a queer Author that the girls seemed to be fangirling.
Then today when a movie is in the making to remake the happenings that occurred at the cursed school based on a book written a queer young lady named Merritt who is a frequent guest of one of the original headmasters. The bring on two actresses that are also queer and there is tension from the start. When they begin to start filming, things begin to happen to almost seem as if the curse is still there and possibly preventing the movie from being made. Add in a Director with tricks of his own and characters that all have very interesting story’s to tell; leaves for a read that will have you thirsting to book each page.
This gothic tale is not a book you want to enter into lightly. Make sure your schedule is clear and you will want to give your full attention to Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I really did need to concentrate. There were footnotes, sly comments, and metafiction to keep your mind engaged. And the gorgeous illustrations throughout by Sara Lautman added another wonderful element to Plain Bad Heroines.
This was a slow read for me, but the story pace wasn’t slow. There was always something happening (not fast and furious like a thriller), but the story progressed in such a way that I wanted to keep reading to see where it was going next.
I enjoyed how Danforth shared with the readers how sapphic all girl schools were in days past (and still are today). And then how she incorporated the LGBT characters into today’s world without making them into stereotypes was a great change of pace.
It was interesting to read about a horror movie being made during the age of social media. While there were horrific events that happened throughout the book, I personally wouldn’t classify it as a horror, more of a suspense. But it could just be that I’m so jaded from reading and watching horror for many years now.
I really recommend Plain Bad Heroines, but you need to realize this will not be a fast read. There is so much to dig into and digest. While you should purchase the book right now, you may want to wait until February when the world has slowed down a bit and you have a good chunk of time to dedicate to reading it.