I enjoyed this book overall. It did feel like it took a while to get going - around the half way mark for me, which might be too late for some readers.

I felt the characters in the various timelines were well written and believable, the setting itself was slightly spooky, I feel like this could have been played on a bit more to add to the atmosphere.

It is quite long but moves along nicely once you reach that half way mark. The anonymous narrator was enjoyable to me, but who was it?

Thank you to the publisher, NetGalley and the author for my copy of this book.

This book is ADDICTIVE! And also hilarious and terrifying - perfectly executed. If you loved Yellowjackets, you'll adore this.

A gripping story that is a tad long in places but worth the effort if you can stay the course.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

1902, Brookhants School for Girls sees the deaths of students Florence & Clara in an horrific wasp attack. The girls had recently become obsessed with a book 'The Story of Mary MacLane' & had formed the 'Plain Bad Heroines Club' in the author's honour & the book is found next to their bodies. Following a third pupil death, the school closes but that does not stop the strange deaths.

Over a hundred years later, Merritt, a young writer, publishes a book about the events at Brookhants & the rights are bought up to make a film. Star of the moment, Harper Harper (not a typo, that's her name) & fellow actor, one not so well-known & daughter of a scream-queen, Audrey, are chosen to play Florence & Clara. Merritt is also onset as the author of the book it is based on. Even before they leave for Brookhants though, weird events start to happen to the three women. Is everything to do with Brookhants cursed & doomed to failure?

After reading this book, I'm thinking it's not the best choice for anyone with a phobia of those little yellow & black winged pests who like to bug anyone foolish enough to be trying to drink a glass of lemonade out in their garden in the summer. Me, for example. I'd gladly banish them to Room 101 in perpetuity. (Disclaimer: Should any wasps be reading this, then my previous statement should not be taken seriously).

I was rather looking forward to reading this book, which from the synopsis, seemed like it would be a gothic, sapphic mystery. There were indeed elements of all three in the book, but they were smothered out of existence by the painfully sloooow pace. We don't actually get down to any paranormal stuff until the final 20% of the book. Out of the two timelines, I actually preferred the early twentieth century storyline. Reading about Libbie Brookhants (pronounced Brookhaunts) & her close friend/lover, Alex Trills in the aftermath of the death of Florence & Clara was much more interesting than the odd love triangle between present-day Harper, Merritt, & Audrey. I would also have liked more background about Florence & Clara & the PBH Club.

It runs on for over 600 pages & includes many a footnote which lead to asides which were meant to be witty, but on many occasions fell flat for me. 75% of it dragged which is a pity as the final 25% really picked up. If it had all been as good as the final quarter, it would have been a 4/5 star read. As it is, I can't rate it more than 2.5 (rounded up).

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, HarperCollins UK/The Borough Press, for the opportunity to read an ARC, & I apologise for the lateness of my review.

The book is amazingly weird. Interwoven stories that explore themes of lesbian love, feminism and sexist control. Such vivid and gripping writing. The novel was highly engaging, funny and gothic

This is a gorgeous read from beginning to end. This book has stolen my heart and been completely unputdownable.

I just couldn't get along with this book. I thought I would love it but I didn't connect with the characters and I found the omniscient narrator hard to get on board with.

I'll start off by saying that I absolutely adored the craft and talent that went into creating this intricate story - I love a long and interwoven book that keeps you guessing the whole way through.
This book also has fantastic diversity and lots of important conversations about diversity throughout.
My favourite aspect was the creepy past timeline and Alex and Libbie. However my love for this element meant that I found the modern timeline bland in comparison.
I did find that there were too many perspectives throughout the book which meant that I struggled to connect with many of the characters. And the wrap up of the novel was also disappointing compared to how intriguing the rest of the novel was.

The plot began (and continued) pretty well, with decent characters and a quasi-fantastical element to it. Good suspense, good juxtaposition of the past and the present, good gothic atmosphere. And then came the ending. Or rather, it didn't. A bit of an anti-climatic denoument considering how much was promised. Great to finally read a decent lesbian-centred book though, so props for that!

I don't really know how to describe this one. A strange book, and I'm not sure I kept up, but I enjoyed it nonetheless? Quite creepy.

Very interesting premise and fans of Victorian/Edwardian fiction will probably enjoy the reworking. The writing was fine but ultimately I didn’t feel this offered much new in the genre of reimagining classic tropes.

I requested this on netgalley before it came out, was declined, then when the paperback came out my request was approved (to much excitement) and then I proceeded to not do anything about it until now. Somehow I think the timing worked out all right - I read this over the course of the past two weeks, squeezing in reading time where I could, and somehow I think it made the mystery and the horror even more intense for me - having to constantly stop reading and wait and wait until I could get back to the book.

so! yes! I loved it! I am not sure what exactly I was expecting for this book, all I knew is that it's sapphic and that it was some kind of fantasy novel. well, not a fantasy novel, I don't think - horror more like it, supernatural definitely, in a somewhat vague unconfirmed sense. as in, the characters are constantly unsure if what they're experiencing is real or just something in their head, and it's never explicitly confirmed by anyone that it IS real. The format - the different timelines - and the narrative style (the novel is presented as some kind of non-fiction narrative, based on research) really amplify it. I enjoyed the narrative style a lot as well, I love it when narrators are opinionated and insert themselves into the story. (and though the narrator did say early on that at the end, the Reader would know who they are, this, too, was not confirmed. so I have a theory, but I'm not sure it's right, and...well. does it matter? Not really.) also! I love footnotes! the footnotes in this were great.

I also really liked the setting. I'm not American but have read my fair share of Stephen King novels and stuff (though I couldn't get into Lovecraft - and he's referenced here too), and I am Aware that New England has some kind of general status or reputation of being Haunted and Weird, and this novel delivered that in spades. Is it a bit overdone? maybe? I don't care, I liked how it was done here. I also appreciated the pop culture references as framework for setting a tone or mood or giving a context. I don't always know the material being referenced and some times I do but disagree (there's a whole bit about The Blair Witch Project in there, which I hated) but I like picking up on what seems to be author's (or the narrator's, at least) special interests that they could give an impromptu powerpoint presentation on if asked.

I could go on about the things I liked (the characters! the puns! the unfolding subversions and metatextuality and mounting horror and so on and so forth!) but I'd be here all day. This book delighted me in so many ways.

4.5
i read this in 5 days. as you can tell from reading a 600+ book so quickly (at least for me) and reading half of that in one day, i really loved it. the prose was rich and haunting. the story was slow, yes, but took its time unravelling the many plots within, which kept me hooked the whole time. and of course, so very sapphic. i think what kept it from being a perfect book for me was the ending, which skipped over a bit and fizzled out. i’m not usually a fan of pop culture references and reading about hollywood in general, but i can gloss over some of the cringier stuff and champion the uneasy gothic undertones which i thought was done brilliantly. i’m glad i finally read it because it was worth it!

Thanks to Harper Collins UK and NetGalley for ARC.

This is a clever, funny, gothic tale set over two time periods (early 20th century and present day), two locations (East and West Coast USA), two stories (the 'original' book and subsequent legends about doomed young love, and the modern day movie about that story) and two sets of characters. It's spooky, it's sapphic, it's supremely clever. I'm about 40 years too old to be its target market but I was in awe of the skill on display and I enjoyed it immensely.

An interesting story, with two storylines intertwined. One in the past, and a modern take as well.

Not exactly the horror I was expecting, a couple of creepy moments, but I found the story long and drawn out.

I loved the premise and set-up of this book, and the irreverent tone throughout. Bonus points for all the creepy elements too! I felt it was a little longer than it needed to be but overall I really enjoyed reading this, and love to see queer storytelling.

This was definitely a book all about the vibes and the tone and thankfully, I really enjoyed both of those aspects! The banter between Harper, Merritt and Audrey was great fun and I particularly enjoyed the historical elements of the narrative. There were some genuinely creepy moments and all of the references to insects definitely leave a squirmy feeling behind. I do think that the book was a bit too long and that the pacing was pretty meandering at times, with the ending coming all in a rush after 600 pages of slow build. With that being said, I did really enjoy the narrator's snarky footnotes and their nods to the reader were much appreciated. I would recommend this to those who enjoy Gothic stories that live and die on the vibes - just don't expect a tightly woven plot-fest!
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thanks so much to Borough Press for letting me read Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth! This is one I had been anticipating reading for ages – seriously, I requested it before the hardback pub date and was only approved on NetGalley for the paperback publication in February – and although I enjoyed it, I am slightly disappointed?

Plain Bad Heroines tells two interlinked stories: firstly, a narrative uncovering a series of untimely deaths at Brookhants, a Rhode Island boarding school in the early 1900s; and secondly, the film being made about two of those deaths, starring the beloved actress and influencer Harper Harper and horror film royalty Audrey Wells – and inspired by the book written by the prickly and dissatisfied Merritt Emmons. If you think there's a lot going on in that sentence, then wait until you read this book. It's a horror novel, a period drama, a supernatural tale, several different lesbian romances, a Hollywood story, a narrative within a narrative within a narrative. I still don't quite know what it is and what happened.

I never quite fell under the thrall of Plain Bad Heroines, but it was a good read. It has an arresting and attention-grabbing premise, and the world is full and vivid and layered. (I was seriously shocked to learn that Mary MacLane was a real person!!) I liked – or at least appreciated – all of the main characters, and I liked the Hollywood setting and all the behind-the-scenes filmmaking processes. But I didn't realise quite how supernatural and horror-adjacent Plain Bad Heroines was. The most important thing to know about my reading tastes is that I HATE anything vaguely related to magical realism, and I'm not sure I would have picked this book up if I'd known. I want my realism to be real and my fantasy to be fantasy and the mingling of the two just annoys and bores me. This, combined with the fact that I feel like the second half was less well-executed than the first, meant that my interest in Plain Bad Heroines did wane a little. The book went in directions that I didn't expect and didn't particularly relish – basically, I wanted more of the real-life tension and less of the haunted stuff – and I was thrown by how increasingly often situations seemed to be settled off the page. I was disappointed by the ending, too, by the way all the creepiness and uncertainty just sort of fizzled out, with no resolution or conclusion.

I don't really rate my books on Instagram reviews anymore, but I feel strongly that this would be a 3.5 ⭐ read. Entertaining and enjoyable, but not a favourite!

I was really looking forward to this – it promised mystery, multiple narratives and meta-fiction. The prologue was atmospheric. The set-up intriguing. I wanted to find out what happened next. But then I got distracted by my inordinately busy life, set the book down for a week or two and when I came back to it, it was an utter puzzle. And somehow I failed to quite engage with my early enthusiasm. It became a chore to remember which character came from where and what they were supposed to represent. And with so many unreliable narrators and such a heavy level of meta, I was not able to connect with the characters. At the end of 640 pages, I didn’t feel that I knew who any of them were and more importantly, I wasn’t particularly bothered. I just wanted to get to the end. This was an example of a book that I desperately wanted to like and which ended up feeling like a chore.

I think that a problem here was that I had heard a lot about The Miseducation of Cameron Post but I’ve never read it and so when I spotted the chance for a review copy of Plain Bad Heroines, I jumped at it. Every so often I think to myself that I should try to diversify my reading and this seemed like an opportunity. But although I could admire the ingenuity and complexity of the story, I just … didn’t feel an interest. It felt like one of those books where the narrative danced up close and then just as you thought you had the rhythm, the tempo changed completely. The problem was that I found the historical fiction chapters infinitely more interesting than the contemporary sections and as the novel wore on (and it wore on for a good hundred or so pages longer than necessary), it became far more focussed on the trio of ‘celesbian’ Harper Harper, former child star Audrey and ‘Not Like Other Girls’ wunderkind author Merritt. And I couldn’t stand any of them.

It’s extremely possible that I just read this at the wrong stage in life. I’m a sleep-deprived new-ish parent (I’ve been doing it for four years but only been wrangling two for the past six months). This is a significant part of why I didn’t feel able to knuckle down and focus in a way that might have helped me keep the thread of the story better – I read for ten minutes here, ten minutes there and rarely for whole hours which I suspect that this book needed. But there’s also the non-monogamy angle which I was never going to get on with – the headmistress of Brookhaven may be considering betraying her long-term partner while in the modern day Harper Harper is in an open relationship while also pursuing Merritt. Merritt is fine with Harper’s girlfriend but is consumed with jealousy at the idea of Harper working with Audrey. As an unabashed monogamist, I neither understand nor am interested in reading about polyamory and I don’t really engage with the dilemmas faced by fictional characters who pursue it. It’s not a moral thing, I just think it’s a bit tedious. And the various plot lines around jealousy meant that some supposedly grown women stomped around acting like petulant teenagers and really, who wants to read about that?

I think what frustrated me with Plain Bad Heroines is that I came to this book with the intention of enjoying it and what I got was what my grandmother would have called a ‘knotless thread’. The two dead girls from the prologue were mere plot devices. So was the next dead girl. We never find out what wunderkind Merritt’s book was actually like. And what even was the whole mystery? That wasps can be kind of scary? To make matters worse, every so often Danforth would break the fourth wall with phrases like ‘and just as the story’s tension reaches fever pitch’ which would leave me scratching my head because where was the narrative tension? The reader is here ordered to ‘calm down’ and there told to stop rolling their eyes and it just felt a bit … much for a book that even after six hundred pages had never seemed to actually get going. I had the idea that this was a comedy/horror novel but nothing ever happens which is particularly funny or frightening. So … what was the point?

The book felt like such a missed opportunity. Danforth is clearly an intelligent writer and yet she never really interrogates the significance of the plain heroine in literature. From Jane Eyre onwards (although really Agnes Grey came first), the idea of the heroine who does not fit in with conventional beauty standards has fought for its place in fiction. But so often the ‘plain’ heroine is still possessed with magnetism towards the male romantic leads (see Bella from Twilight, Katniss from Hunger Games, Anastasia Steele and more). The truer plain heroine is Merritt but she was also snide and alienates the reader. So is she then a plain and bad heroine? Danforth never really explains and Merritt’s plot line is never fully realised.

I would be quite happy for someone to come along and give a more positive counter-opinion for this novel. LGBTQIA+ representation in mainstream fiction is important. There were moments like the prologue where the book really did seem like it had potential. These occasional glimpses of a novel that I might have enjoyed more were tantalising, such as the intriguing question mark over Libbie’s fate. But the main feeling I had was disappointment. From one of my most eagerly anticipated reads, I was just relieved to reach the finish line.

Irreverent, clever and wholly original, this book feels like a revolution. I loved it and have been pressing it into the hands of all my closest relations.