Absolutely magnificent. Loved the format, loved the characters, loved the slow unveiling of mystery and the way you doubt your own experiences. I keep hearing wasps buzzing.

The title refers to a quote by Mary McLane. The novel takes place in two time periods, 1902 and present day. In 1902 Flo and Clara attend the Brookhants School for Girls. The girls adore each other and are obbsessed with Mary Maclane and her memoirs to the point where they form the Plain, Bad Heroine Society. The Society meets in a nearby orchard and are stung to death by yellowjackets. More deaths follow and the school closes five years later. A century later, the abandoned school is the site of a film based on the school's tragic history. As filming commences, the actors and film crew discover that the curse still exists. This was a spooky, exciting read. Fans of gothic romance will enjoy this as will anyone who enjoys a good story. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Here’s the pitch: A sapphic Gothic haunted house novel featuring a story within a story within a story, black-and-white illustrations done in Gilded Age-style, and portentous yellowjackets that emerge as recurring characters in the story.

The story begins in 1902 when we meet Clara and Flo, students at Brookhants School for Girls. They are completely infatuated with each other and with the author Mary MacLane. Or, more specifically, her book The Story of Mary MacLane, a sensual, self-aware memoir that highlights Mary’s attraction to women. (In real life, MacLane’s memoir sold 100,000 copies in its first month in print.)

So taken with this book, our girls create a secret club: The Plain Bad Heroine Society.

One afternoon, whilst enjoying a romantic tryst in the orchard, dear Clara and Flo are attached and killed by swarming yellowjackets. Over the next few years, there are a few more deaths, and the school gets a reputation for being both cursed and haunted. So far, so Gothic.

Fast forward to our modern times: The school has become the set for a movie based on the Brookhant’s story. And three modern young women get caught up in a delightfully sexy, messy relationship. We meet the ridiculously named Harper Harper, famous actress and lesbian it-girl… another actress who’s the daughter of a former Scream Queen and is herself a former child star, trying to make an adult comeback; and the author of the book on which the film is based. All of them have something to prove. All of them have issues with a capital I. It’s fantastic.

The threads of the 1902 story and the modern story continue to intertwine as we follow the three women and their experiences making the film. There are strange happenings afoot: Is the set haunted? Are they hallucinating? Are pranksters merely making up supernatural happenings? Read on to find out!

A bit snarky and self-aware, Emily M. Danforth’s prose is sharp, entertaining, and unputdownable. It’s also embellished with charmingly sarcastic footnotes and a narrator who addresses the reader from time to time in arch Victorian fashion.

The story is set in a beachside village in Rhode Island (the atmosphere of crashing waves! the maybe-cursed school rooms!) and Hollywood (bold ambition! social media!). Equal parts Gothic horror, love story, a send-up of Hollywood, and good old-fashioned storytelling, sentences like this one — ‘There was that in the air which is there when something is going to happen.’ — make this novel utterly irresistible.

A story within a story that may seem to take forever to get "there," but is worth the time. I recommend this read and will look for other works by this author.

I'm so guilty of choosing this book because of my own jaunt at an all girl's boarding school.
The book, well, I liked it well enough. However, I felt like there was something missing, especially when it comes to tying up all the loose ends. I absolutely loved Harper, Audrey and Merritt, would totally hang out with these 3. The book also flows very well and i liked how the timelines work off each other, even being a century apart,
I'll absolutely read more from this author.

This book is a literary masterpiece. Due to the extensive footnotes that are really part of the story, it is best read in print rather than as an ebook, since it can be difficult to keep up with the footnotes in the ebook version. The story is woven with many, many threads that come together into a beautifully maneuvered conclusion. While not all of the characters are "likeable", they are all well developed and have their place in the story. Absolutely recommended for any fiction collection.

This doesn't work with my device. I was very excited for this. I hope to read it in the future. Plain bad heroine sound like a great book.

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

This book is quite an undertaking. While I think it was a little too long, I don't necessarily think it dragged. I was compelled by the atmosphere and the character's voices through the whole thing, so I don't necessarily say it was a trudge to get through like you may feel with other long books. A mix of horror, historical, mystery, and contemporary--this queer narrative perfectly executed the gothic, dark academia it promises. My fear of yellow jackets is definitely more potent now...I think there is a lot of really striking imagery in this book that stuck with me. The opening scene alone had me backing away and distancing myself from the narrative. I think this book does a good job of starting with that eeriness and dread and continuing to thread it throughout the novel. I loved the characters as well. I think there is no denying that emily is a very skilled author. I would definitely recommend this to fellow dark academia fans who don't mind a longer, more slow-paced story (think The Secret History, Ninth House, etc.)

Is there a curse on Brookhants? Follow the story through the dual timelines. In 1902, it was a school for girls, run by Libbie Brookhants and her Alex(andra). Girls were enamored with Mary MacLane’s book and formed the Plain Bad Heroine Society….until the mysterious deaths. In the present, they are making a movie about Brookhants – the school, the girls, the curse – based on the book Merritt wrote about it. The main characters of Flo and Clara are played by actresses Harper Harper and Audrey Wells. The three girls develop a very special relationship as they work together with all the creepy happenings around them and the movie. There’s love, romance, friendship, and determination in this atmospheric story. It’s long, but it’s entertaining. It’s creepy but not too scary.

While the premise of this novel was very intriguing, the execution was a bit confusing. There were definitely some great parts that gave the novel a creepy feel, but it could have been shorter and conveyed the same story and feel. I thought the last portion was great, though!

This book... where do I even begin?

I didn't hate Plain Bad Heroines, but I didn't absolutely love it either. At 600 pages, the book is long, and you do feel those pages (and I normally don't shy away from long books). I even stopped halfway through the book to read something else because the pacing of the story was just. so. slow.

Danforth's writing is super creative, and the story is definitely layered, with the whole movie-within-a-movie, book-within-a-book element. Her characters were intriguing, if not totally loveable, and I did enjoy the story. It didn't feel like anything I'd ever read before, and I do think Danforth is a talented writer.

However, my problem with the book was that it wasn't "horror." I was never scared, or thrilled, and I felt like I spent the first half of the book waiting for the plot to start and waiting to finally figure out what the book was actually about. I was entertained, and I was intrigued, but I wasn't so drawn into it that I couldn't stop reading (seeing as I did take a break for 3 months in the middle).

The second half of the story was much quicker, though I do agree with other reviewers that the ending, well, sucked. I also agree with another reviewer I saw on here who said that the book could've done without the present-day timeline and would've been much stronger for it.

Overall, I'm glad I read this book. I wouldn't read a sequel if one ever gets written, and I wasn't completely satisfied by the ending, but I was entertained by the unique storytelling.

Plain bad heroines. That’s what Mary MacLane wants to see. Not glorious damsels in distress or other such exaggerations, just a person she could see herself in. So she writes one herself. This book, as the above synopsis mentions, then seems to become the impetus for all that follows. Or is it? It’s definitely a conclusion every reader will have to come to for themselves.

This book is 600+ pages of intricate world-building, relationships, and modern/classic gothic storytelling. Quite simply, I loved it. From the unusual way the book addresses the reader to the tangled f/f relationships throughout, readers will be hard pressed to find another book quite like this. A “story within a story within a story” could be confusing. Danforth is able to deftly carry readers along, pushing them to understand each piece and the intersection where the walls between worlds grow thin.

The settings at Brookhants and Spike Tower evoke all the best classic gothic horror books and movies. As Libbie and Alex and Clara and Flo and, later, Harper/Merritt/Audrey live and breathe in those walls, so do the buildings themselves. Plain Bad Heroines evokes a real sense of horror as the author explores the idea that time is immaterial in a place that has been…changed. To say more is to spoil the book, and this is an awful book to have spoiled.

Big books are an investment of not only time but of faith. Can you trust the author to live inside your head for such an amount of time? For me, Emily M. Danforth has done something amazing here. I normally read quite fast, but with this one I found myself letting the book choose the pace. It took me a little longer as I explored the relationships of these women, traversed time and horrors at Brookhants, and I ultimately found the experience all the more rewarding.

This is Danforth’s first adult novel and I certainly hope she continues to write more. Even the novel production was thoughtful. The red hardcover book with occasional black and white illustrations really adds to the lushness of the reading experience. I hope readers find their own plain bad heroine to fall in love with.

A novel to sink into for hours or days at a time. Just about every woman in this book has Sapphic tendencies, leading to an exploration of the different ways that experience can manifest across different time periods and locations. This book also gives a big dose of the creeps.

** Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for a free e-ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review **

Plain Bad Heroines follows two timelines, one which takes place in 1902 at The Brookhants School for Girls where the students are influenced by a book by the rebellious writer Mary MacLane. To show their dedication some of the girls create a society in its honor called “The Plain Bad Heroines Society”. But soon after girls begin to die and five years later the school closes its doors permanently. The story then picks up in modern day when Merritt Emmons publishes a book surrounding Brookhants. Its adaptation into a movie brings in celebrity actor Harper Harper, and the less well known actor Audrey Wells. But strange things begin to happen again, and the past and present become entangled as the filming of the movie takes Merritt, Harper and Audrey to the abandoned Brookhants school.
This is one of the most unique books I have ever read. From start to finish I was entranced by the writing, the story and the characters. From the first chapter I could tell there was something different about this book and it’s not one that I’ll forget soon. The interactive aspects of this book create an immersive experience for the reader. And the storytelling is so visceral it draws readers in immediately.
Danforth’s talent for creating unique and realistic characters is clearly displayed in this novel. Each character seems to have their own agency and none really blend together. I really enjoyed the large cast, it kept my interest and showed how much work was put into this book. Danforth’s ability to create such tangled characters and storylines was one of the main highlights of this book and was so well done.
I don’t have many critiques of this book except it’s length. I believe it could’ve been cut down quite a bit and the pacing was a bit off. Because this book was over 600 pages that made a pretty big impact on my opinion. It’s sitting right in between three and four stars for me and I’m excited to see what Emily M. Danforth does next!

There are so many things I love about this book. It is a joyfully, unapologetically queer book filled with queer characters, queer cultural references, etc. It's dark and twisty at the same time that it's sly and wry. It creates a complex web of interlocking narratives spanning over a hundred years of time and weaves them into a cohesive whole. It uses literary techniques like the hilarious footnoting so skillfully that they add to and become a vital part of the story as opposed to being annoying or distracting. It makes this reader care deeply about the characters and their eventual fates. All in all, one of the best things I read in 2020.

This is one of the harder books to review. I love gothic fiction and was really looking forward to this one. It was a very long read though and the details buried the story. There’s dual timelines and alternating omnipresent viewpoints that make the story difficult to follow. I was excited when it was based on a cult and possible curse at a girls boarding school that is now having a movie made about it. The story just moves very slowly and the yellow jackets keep showing up. It is a story more about the journey than the plot.


Thank you Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book well enough as I read it but I didn't find myself looking forward to picking it up again after I set it down, and because it's so long I ended up skimming after about the 30/40% mark.

There are two main storylines. One tells the tragedy of a pair of girls that fell in love at a girls' school around the turn of the 19th/20th century. The heroine they worshipped before they died wrote a book, a sort of feminist/queer manifesto that allowed them to find and see themselves before they came to their own bad end. After this, the school experienced various spooky events.

The second storyline is all about the public life that stars lead these days and how artificial a manufactured authenticity can actually be. It features three girls/young women, all of whom are various flavors of queer, and shows how they actually market this aspect of themselves in order to maintain social media supremacy, get parts in movies, or become celebrated authors. These three girls have varying degrees of awareness and agency of just how staged and curated their lives are.

The movie being made is taken from the original tragedy of these two young girls who died at the school. One of our modern day heroines wrote a book about them and became a teen author celebrity. The other two girls are actors, one with a big name and one who's still trying to make it. They all come together in the making of this movie.

I think that in the end, the monstrousness of the story is that none of these young women were allowed to just BE. They are all expected to conform to certain roles, and being unable or unwilling to do so puts them in danger of either a career death spiral or actual death itself. This is actually a pretty interesting idea. And the author has a sense of the absurd in how she describes how these women live their lives in pursuit of some ideal that can never be achieved.

I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked because it's just a very young book that is about shallowness. Everyone in it is very young, very self-conscious, and I got exhausted with their constant fixation on their public images. Everyone is just a little bit mean, if not a lot, or is more manipulative than they look. These girls never graduated from the high school nightmare of wondering what everyone is thinking about them, because their careers are still all about what everyone thinks about them. Ugh.

There's tension in the book, but I'm not sure there's a great climax to it. I'd try something else from this author, but something with a different subject.

I tried to get into this one, but I just couldn't get into the story. I tried to get out of my reading comfort zone a little, but I just couldn't.

A queer-centered romp of metafiction. Spooky, gothic, and compelling! Clever, smart writing. The story within a story within a story works well. Character development is on point and you want these characters to succeed. I wasn't sure how Danforth would be able to end this complex story but she nailed it!