I'm not sure how i feel about Plain Bad Heroines.
I really loved certain parts of the book as they were so much fun!
Sadly there were also parts that I really didn't like and made the book drag.
I think Plain Bad Heroines would have been much better if it was shorter.
Thank you netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

An ambitious read practically fizzing with Gremlin Energy, I loved this book and devoured it earlier in the year when I was on holiday. The early parts are especially good as the atmosphere builds, and I love how the multiple threads of narration are enough to keep you guessing almost until the end. I do, however, feel that the climax was a little rushed? This is only a minor complaint, though- I would stil very highly reccomend it for anyone who wants a sapphic horror story that doesn't skimp on the atmosphere, drama, or, indeed, the WASPS.

In meiner ganzen Lese-Historie habe ich niemals ein Buch wie "Plain Bad Heroines" gelesen! Das Buch (von Mary McLane) im Buch (von Merritt Emmons) im Buch ist ein Plot, den ich bisher noch nie gelesen habe. Das hätte leicht verwirrend werden können und ich muss ehrlich zugeben, dass ich dieses Buch vor allem lesen wollte, weil es sich um ein queeres Buch handelt.
Letzteres ist es auf jeden Fall. Es gibt sehr viele homo- und bisexuelle Menschen im Buch. Besonders gut haben mir dabei die Liebespaare der Vergangenheit, also im Brookhant von 1902, gefallen. Viele von uns vergessen gerne, dass Queerness keine moderne „Erfindung“ ist. Es gab schon immer Menschen, die nicht heterosexuell waren, die nicht cis waren. Emily M. Danforth stellt das gut dar.
Das Buch war auch nicht verwirrend, wie von mir befürchtet. Zu Beginn eines jeden Kapitels wird fett hervorgehoben, aus wessen Sicht berichtet wird. Vergangenheit und Gegenwart knüpfen zudem überraschend nahtlos aneinander an. Außerdem wird Mary McLanes Buch nur in Auszügen in Plain Bad Heroines eingebaut, sodass keine dritte Handlung eröffnet wird.
Gut gefallen hat mir, dass das Buch wie ein Sachbuch geschrieben ist, man könnte meinen, man hält eine Biografie in Händen. Unterstrichen wird dies einerseits durch den etwas distanzierten Schreibstil. Die Erzählerin hat sowohl den Leser*innen als auch den Heldinnen des Buchs einiges an Wissen voraus und erzählt das Buch so, wie ich eine Geschichte erzählen würde, die ich zwar interessant finde, die mich aber nicht persönlich betrifft.
Noch viel mehr als das, lassen die Fußnoten das Buch wie ein Sachbuch wirken. Teilweise handelt es sich dabei um (fiktive) Quellenangaben, manchmal werden Aussagen im Buch weiter ausgeführt.
Toll geschrieben war auch die Dynamik zwischen den Personen, also einerseits zwischen Merritt, Audrey und Harper und andererseits zwischen den Personen zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Durch diese Dynamik und den Schreibstil war ich als Leserin permanent „on edge“. Die ganze Zeit rechnete ich damit, dass etwas Furchtbares passieren würde.
Für dieses Buch wünsche ich mir unbedingt, dass es ins Deutsche übersetzt wird. Es ist ein Buch, so anders als alle Bücher, die ich bisher gelesen habe. Dass es noch dazu sehr queer ist, macht es umso besser. Also: lest dieses Buch!

I mean. I feel like this book just crawled inside my body and stuffed me full of poisonous flowers and then left me to be murdered by yellow jackets???? I enjoyed every second of this despite the fact that it was Quite Long. The history & mythology of the school felt so real, and I actually made a little sound of joy when I found out they were sending the modern-day characters in to be messed with, because that is my JAM. I do wish that the modern-day ending had tied things up a little more but damn, what a book.

In the early 1900s, Clara and Flo, two students at Brookhants School For Girls, fell truly, madly, and deeply in love, and brought together by a shared obsession with a scandalous memoir. Then they are killed by a swarm of yellow jacket wasps with said scandalous memoir found lying next to their intertwined bodies. Three more grisly deaths followed, forcing the school to close, and sparking rumours of a “Brookhants curse”. (Appropriate then, that it’s pronounced ‘brook-haunts’).

Fast forward to the present day and our plain bad heroines three: Audrey, Harper, and Merritt. Audrey and Harper are Hollywood actresses, brought together to play the starring roles of Clara and Flo in the film adaptation of Merritt’s book about the Brookhants curse. But as they all assemble to start filming, strange incidents start happening, past and present seem to blur, and soon it becomes difficult to tell where Hollywood ends and the curse begins…

Reading Plain Bad Heroines is like gorging on a dark, dense, rich, boozy cake, to the point where you go past feeling sated and start feeling sick. And if that doesn’t sound like much of an endorsement, I promise you it’s meant as one!

Danforth is well known for her YA debut, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a story about a young girl sent away for conversion therapy, made into a film starring Chloe Grace Moretz. This, her second novel and intended for adult audiences, is a great big gothic, sapphic romp.

Playful is the name of the game here: the narrator addresses the reader throughout, in the narrative and in footnotes, and the tone is distinctly sly and conversational, not only commenting on proceedings but frequently offering their own opinion, and is as much a character in the story as the characters themselves. And the narrator is not the book’s only meta element. The conceit of The Happenings at Brookhants—the film being made in the modern day strand of the story—is that it’s really two films: the story of Clara and Flo and the Brookhants curse and the behind the scenes story of the people making it. So far so Blair Witch, which even the characters themselves lampshade, allowing the story to have even more fun by interrogating and playing with modern horror film tropes (Audrey is the daughter of a ‘Scream Queen’ for instance).

But like the undergrowth in the Brookhants tricky thicket, hiding the fateful yellow jacket nest, there are layers to this story and beneath the playful upper-most layer is genuine gothic chill. Brookhants is situated in Rhode Island, which as the narrator points out, is the birthplace of H.P. Lovecraft and his brand of nightmarish, creeping horror. And it’s this, rather than the high camp and jump-scares of Hollywood horror, that permeates the book. The hauntings manifest through sensations—the recurring scents of overripe apples, the salt and brine of the sea, fresh lavender; the constant presence of yellow jackets; what may be aural and visual hallucinations—as well as strange occurrences, to the point where the lines between reality, fantasy, and coincidence are irrevocably blurred, particularly on the film set where we know that there will be incidents that are supposedly engineered. In this way, another good comparison is Shirley Jackson as Brookhants and Spite Manor (the other important location) feeling very much in the vein of Hill House.

This dichotomy between the gothic and the playful is also shown in the differences between its US and UK covers. The US cover is all gothic: black with red silhouette Angel’s Trumpet flowers and the title in a cursive font. Whereas the UK cover is bright yellow and hot pink, with the title in big block capitals (and the only time I will praise a cover that has a giant wasp emblazoned on it).

The last layer is, of course, a sapphic love story. There is LGBTQ+ representation all over this book as nearly all of the characters, major and minor, identify as part of the community, and there are several sapphic love stories that the narrative follows (it’s not entirely in jest that Harper refers to Brookhants as “Planet Lady Love”). It also uses certain elements to explore, or at least dip a toe in exploring historical LGBTQ representation, in particular The Story of Mary MacLane, the first memoir of the early twentieth century American diarist of the same name—in which she openly expresses attraction to another woman, her “anemone lady”—the same memoir that Flo, Clara, and many of the other characters become obsessed with.

The action in both time strands builds before coming to a head, then winds down, ending with neither a bang nor a whimper. It leads to an epilogue that, if it were the final scene in a horror film, isn’t a return to normality nor a surprise where the monster makes one final lunge, but rather leaving the door to the monster’s room unlocked—whether for good or ill is up for the reader to decide.

In all, Plain Bad Heroines is a fun, sexy, and genuinely spooky doorstop that once you’re in its pages, it grabs you and doesn’t let go, despite its size. And if you were already scared of things that buzz, skitter, and scuttle, then prepare to be made even more wary.

“What’s the racket yell-ow jacket? At Brookhants you roam…”

This is an amazing book! So uniquely creepy yet full of the most amazing female characters you’ll ever ‘meet’. The narrative voice is fantastically matter of fact, providing light relief with frequent sardonic asides. I loved everything about this book: the settings, the structure, the various lenses, the characters, the atmosphere. It’s a book that I can’t stop thinking about and will be with me for a long time.

I'm sad I didn't enjoy this more. It's very long and could have done with more editing, but it's also full of subplots that I couldn't keep up with. The quirky narrator was fun but a little tiring after 600 pages and I found the footnotes irritating, but they do fit with the tone of the book. The illustrations are beautiful and I loved the Brookhaunts setting, we just weren't there enough. I enjoyed spending a long time with one book though, so I think I'll pick up another chunky read soon.

Although I really liked the sound of this book I found it rather difficult to follow and although I hate to do so gave up reading part way through. I’m hoping this is a book I can return to and enjoy in the future but it may just be a matter of taste differences

I was expecting a more straight-forward dark academia story which I usually love so was excited. I was even more pleased with what I got.

So much sapphic representation! Sapphic-ness is all over this book and I loved it. Also loved that unlike a lot of books I read where sapphic romance has to be presented as super soft and wholesome (nothing wrong with that, just not my cup of tea) in this book we got the good, the bad and the ugly of the characters. They were frequently ‘unlikeable’ I guess but I wholeheartedly loved them all.

It’s a very ambitious book – and won’t be for everyone – but it was so for me. It’s slow, very detailed and has a ton of inside baseball stuff on the film industry which if you’re not into I’m sure will bore the shit out of you. Lucky for me I was all in on the mundane details. The characters – in particular the modern-day trio of Harper, Audrey and Merritt were so real and fully formed that I could read another 600 page book of them just shooting the shit and going about their daily lives.

I had unanswered questions but wasn’t upset by that. I expected more horror than what was present but I found the spooky parts super unsettling.

I can’t stop thinking about this book, one of my favourites of the year and I’m on board for whatever the author writes next.

Apologies Harper Collins but I mist have accidentally requested this book. It looks great but sadly just not for me, so I will not be reading or reviewing as it isn't my type of thing. Sorry!

Plain Bad Heroines is a labyrinthine tale in every way, slowly unfolding horror after horror with a sense of creeping dread and inevitability invading every page. It really draws upon the Gothic tradition in all the best ways and is the kind of book you’ll spend forever picking apart. For me, it still hasn’t left my head.

If like me, you need something to fill the Haunting of Bly Manor hole in your life, you need to pick up this Gothic, sapphic and entrancingly beautiful tale. I really loved Danforth’s style of writing throughout, with these achingly gorgeous touches and flourishes of description. From the very start, I knew this was going to be an excellent read. As someone who is an avid fan of the Gothic genre, I adored Danforth’s play on the tropes and trappings of the genre. She pays homage to what has been created before, while also ensuring that she puts a fresh spin on it. There’s just all these brilliant undertones and horror moments that build and build. I felt tense the entire time reading, not quite knowing what to expect next.

The most important update Danforth brings to the genre is just how brilliantly and unapologetically queer the book is. Considering how the genre has always broken expectations, often using far-off locations in order to challenge social conventions, it is amazing to see how far we’ve come. This kind of representation just means so much and reminds us that everyone deserves to see themselves in every type of story. I really loved the different relationships and how they were all these complex, beautiful, flawed and tragic stories. They were so authentically human and therefore fallible. This sort of realism extends to our wonderful cast of characters, who are each distinctive, yet slightly removed from the reader. We don’t quite get to know their every intricacy, yet you feel as though you’ve known them forever. Behind them lies a twisted, dark backdrop of secrets, obsession and one infamous book.

Danforth does not make it easy for you, with a complex web of characters and story-lines that slowly connect. There’s quite a few narrative threads and interconnecting stories to unravel, which for me is just perfect, as now I can just return, knowing I’ll notice something different every time I reread. That for me is the hallmark of an outstandingly well-crafted novel. The whole way through, the story is tinged with acerbic wit, particularly through the mysterious narrator and the footnotes, which are just so clever and meta. Also, don’t go in expecting any easy answers. Danforth wades in the murky waters of ambiguity, leaving certain events and themes open for interpretation. In this, it feels like the story becomes the reader’s own gift, to view however they wish.

Plain Bad Heroines is a spectacularly brilliant book. Obviously, I’ve fallen completely in love and I believe you’ll lose your heart to this darkly entrancing book too.

I enjoyed this a lot. This book is definitely spinning a lot of plates - there's a lot of characters across several timelines. The main locations are so we described you feel like you're really there.

The characters are vivid and feel like real people. They prove themselves capable of evil deeds and they also have a capacity for kindness.

More filled with a creeping sense of dread and a few spooky moments than more in your face slasher style horror it lingers in the mind after finishing.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

A gritty and lively book that diverts so many expectations expectations. I was keen to read after V E. SCHWAB recommended and it didn't disappoint!

Oh my gosh this book is excellent. I was literally on the edge of my seat while reading it and I am now very very scared by anything that buzzes. Those yellow jackets are terrifying.

The plot centres around Brookhants school for girls and a mysterious set of deaths linked to the native wasps. A mysterious book by Mary MacLane and The Plain Bad Heroine society also seem to be playing a role in these unnatural deaths. We jump from the early 1900s to the present day and we meet some truly gorgeous heroines.

This is a book that is by turns menacing, gothic and often rather spooky. An LGBTQ horror mystery thriller. I highly recommend it.

Plain Bad Heroines is a fun romp of a girls' school story, with plenty of sapphic desire and high drama. The plot was original and I enjoyed the interplay of the characters immensely.

Warning: if you're frightened of wasps, this novel will not help!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

I already read this for awards consideration for the British Fantasy Awards 2021 and loved it. A fantastic multi-layered horror novel dealing with sapphic relationships in both past and present, ambition and feelings of stifled potential and competition. I especially loved how the themes were mirrored in both story-strands. Despite being nearly 700 pages in length, it didn't feel too long, but coherent and immersive. I also loved the illustrations which make this stand out in the market.

Unfortunately I've had to DNF Plain Bad Heroines for now. It's definitely a novel I'll try reading again. I requested this earc prior to the hardback publication and then borrowed a copy from the library as this request was still pending.

This book really blew my mind. It blurs the lines of reality and fiction using the real person of Mary Maclane to create a horror story that is truly unputdownable. At first I didn't know that Mary was a real person or that she had written the book constantly mentioned in this story which makes this book so much more interesting.
I loved how the story kept transferring from past to present, with the story of the Brookhants school for girls and Libbie Brookhants and Alex's lives in the early 1900's to the present day where we get to see a close up of the film being made and how the actors' lives intertwine. Harper Harper, Audrey Wells and Merritt Emmons are completely different characters but I loved each one and the whole story perfectly put together was really fascinating.
This is a really unique book full of queer horror delight that is surely one of my favourite books of the year

2 ½ stars

Readers, I am disappointed.

Plain Bad Heroines was one of my most anticipated 2020 releases...maybe I should have not ‘hyped’ it so much. This is certainly an ambitious novel, one that is a few hundred pages too long. There were elements that I liked, but these were ultimately outweighed by my frustration toward the tone of the narrative, the dual storylines, and the characters.
Plain Bad Heroines begins at Brookhants School in 1902 when two students, Clara and ‘Flo’, who happen to be lovers are swallowed by “a fog of wasps”. Another death soon rocks the school, and all of the girls shared a fascination for Mary MacLane’s work (The Story of Mary Maclane & I Await the Devil's Coming). The narrator playfully reminds us of their presence with plenty of direct addresses, footnotes, and asides. We do not know the identity of the narrator, but they posses an almost omniscient knowledge of the events they are recounting.
In the present three young women—all in their twenties—work on a film adaptation on a book called ‘The Happenings at Brookhants’. The book was written by one of these girls, Merritt (a character whom I lowkey hated) who happens to know Elaine Brookhants. Then we have Harper Harper, an up and coming actress/influencer whose personality revolves around her celebrity status, who will play Flo, and Audrey Wells (I actually had to check out her name as I could not remember it on top of my head...that’s how memorable she was) the daughter of a ‘scream queen’ who so far has an acted in B movies and ads.
The section set in the present doesn’t involve these three girls bonding or finding more about what happened at Brookhants. We are never told very much about Merritt’s book, so we don’t know how much they know about the whole affair. This timeline is also not all that concerned with filmmaking. What this storyline cares about is famous people: how they are followed by journalists or fans, how their lives revolve around instagram, how little privacy they have, and of their self-fashioning ways. The three girls do not really along. Their meeting, which happens quite a good chunk into this slow burner of a novel, reads like something that belongs in the realms ofGossip Girl or Scream Queens. And here I was hoping for an actual horror or at least something in realms of American Horror Story (the first seasons of course).
Our not-as-half-as-amusing-as-they-think-they-are narrator never really delves into these characters. It mostly describes what they are saying or doing. It focuses more on their ‘role’ (Harper=celebrity, Audrey=daughter of an 80s horror actress, Merritt=not like other girls writer). Their personalities are...kind of not there. Merritt is the only one with a semblance of one, and it ain’t a good one. The narrative tries really hard to establish Merritt’s ‘prickly’ personality (in a few occasion Merritt says or asks something generic and we are told “Merrit said like Merritt would” or “Merrit asked like Merritt would”). She’s petty, cruel, and domineering. She’s given a Sad Backstory™, so Readers are meant to let her behaviour slide. Except that this Reader could and would not. She seems blissfully unaware of her own privilege (she’s in her early twenties and has published a book, her mother teaches at a university and she has access to the library there, they are adapting her book and want her to be part of the process). She’s also not ‘plain’ looking. Her hair is pink because she’s Not Like Other Girls™ (a random character tells her she has “great fucking hair”) and she is also called hot by Harper. Yet, throughout the course of the book, Merritt acts like a fifteen-year-old girl who is spending too much time on Tumblr. Her pettiness is unwarranted and uncalled for, her jealousy is also over the top (she's only just met Harper and she already jealous at the possibility of Audrey working alongside her...yet she knows that Harper is already in an open relationship).
Harper is also not plain. She’s famous, beloved, and uber cool. She has short hair, tattoos, smokes, and rides a bike. And of course, she also has a Sad Backstory™. The story mentions some family-related drama, but this a thread that is never truly resolved. Her motivations, desires, fears...who knows? I sure don’t. Maybe she likes Merritt? Maybe not?
While Audrey may not be plain looking, her personality is definitely plain. She doesn’t seem to possess any discernible traits.
Anyway, these three ‘work’ together (there are actually very few scenes that take place while they are working on the film sadly) and weird things start happening (we have wasps, weird weather, and a general heebie jeebies atmosphere).

The storyline set in the past had much more potential. Sadly, it doesn’t focus on Clara or Flo (their lives prior to their peculiar deaths of course) or Brookhants but rather it follows the headmistress of the school who lives in a house nicknamed ‘Spite Manor’. She lives with her lover, who also teaches at Brookhants. This timeline was definitely more Gothic, and there were scenes that struck me as quite atmospheric and well-executed. Sadly however the relationship between the two women was a let down, as it never struck me as the complex love story I was hoping for. Creepy things begin to happen, and they begin to grow apart. The deaths of three of their pupils forces them to question whether the ‘supernatural’ is to be blamed.

I was hoping for a Gothic love story, with some horror undertones. What we actually get is a work that is extremely meta. Some may find the narrator to be amusing, I mostly didn’t. The mystery is the most disappointing aspect of the whole book. It was very anticlimactic, as we simply get a chapter in which our narrator explains things to us. Flo, Clara, and the other girl are unimportant, they function as the Dead Girl trope. We don't learn anything more about them after the 20% mark or so nor do we learn more about the book Merritt has written about them.
The storyline set in the present never reaches its apotheosis. Nothing major happens, there is no overlapping between the two timelines.
While I loved to see so many queer women, the relationships they have with one another are...a let down. Mean Girls ahoy. We have Merritt who says things like “Significant eye roll” or scenes in which characters take selfies, duplies, even quadruplies (uuuugh). More attention is paid to their hair and clothes than their actual personalities. Harper and Merritt begin flirting as soon as they meet, and later on, when there are more scenes of them together, they mostly bicker. They are sort of physically attracted to each other, but there is no real connection between them (I craved longing, passion, LOVE).
The creepy elements...aren't all that creepy? If you have spheksophobia you might find this book scary...I mean, wasps do not inspire any real fear in me (I don't like them, they strike me as kind of mean, in fact, I love CalebCity's sketch on them). Mary's writing is extremely camp and I just found it silly. While I could see why the girls back in the 1900s could be enthralled by it...I had a harder time believing that Merritt or Harper could find it as compelling.

Perhaps I approached this book with the wrong expectations (I saw Sarah Waters’ name on the cover so…) but Plain Bad Heroines was not the Gothic novel I was hoping it to be. The 'past' timeline was far from being a satisfying historical tale of paranormal suspense (I was hoping for something on the lines of Picnic at Hanging Rock meets A Great and Terrible Beauty). On the plus side: at least it was hella sapphic. I also liked the illustrations by Sara Lautman (I wish there had been more) and the chapter names could be kind funny.

Anyway, just because I didn’t think that this book was the bees knees (or perhaps I should say wasps knees) doesn’t mean that you won’t love it as it may as well be your cup of tea.

I loved Emily M. Danforth’s first novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and count it among my favourites.
So naturally when I heard that Danforth was releasing a new novel, with more queer characters and a horror theme, I was so excited to read it.

Plain Bad Heroines is nothing like The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Not in genre, story, narrative or writing style. Where TMoCP bought me in and made me feel a whole spectrum of feelings, PBH took a lot more effort. There are many moving parts to this story, we have numerous plot points and characters to follow in the past, as well as in the present.

I really really wanted to like this book more, but I found it difficult to settle into the narrative style, The 4th wall, so many plots and characters to be following, the footnotes, and the backwards and forwards storytelling - disrupted the flow of the story during pivotal moments, had a negative effect on my reading experience.

I did enjoy it, but not as much as I had hoped I would.

Thank you to Emily M. Danforth, HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction, and NetGalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.