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    Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel
    Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel
    Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel
    Audiobook19 hours

    Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel

    Written by Emily M. Danforth

    Narrated by Xe Sands

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    “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

    “Brimming from start to finish with sly humor and gothic mischief. Brilliant.”  — SARAH WATERS

    Named a Most Anticipated Book by Entertainment Weekly • O, The Oprah Magazine • Buzzfeed • Harper's Bazaar • Vulture • Parade • Popsugar • Bustle • GoodReads • Autostraddle • 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, 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.

    Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

    Editor's Note

    A wickedly good Gothic tale…

    What better way to get those Halloween vibes than with a wickedly good Gothic tale about a haunted school for girls? In the first adult novel from “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” author Emily M. Danforth, a spellbinding story within a story within a story(!) unfolds around a curse. This wildly imaginative horror-comedy delights in celebrating the queer and defiant young women it depicts.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 20, 2020
    ISBN9780062942883
    Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel
    Author

    Emily M. Danforth

    emily m. danforth is the author of the highly acclaimed young adult novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She lives with her wife and two terrible dogs in Rhode Island. Plain Bad Heroines is her first adult novel.

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    Reviews for Plain Bad Heroines

    4/5

    475 ratings38 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I don't know what this was, but I enjoyed it. Even more so because it's queer af. Is there a single hetero character? I honestly can't remember.

      More thoughts later after I've gotten Ruth to read it and we've discussed it.
    • 5/5
      An amazing book and just perfect narrator for the audio.
    • 5/5
      Great story although there was a lot to keep track of with the audiobook. I think maybe this would have been better if I had read the book so that I could go back when I got confused with the different story times. The narration was fabulous.
    • 3/5
      Honestly, I couldn't listen to more than a few hours of this. I think the very beginning was fairly interesting, but I'm not convinced by the initial character building. It just seems vapid and a tad self-involved, but maybe this is meant to be a YA novel? The choice to make the reading kind of sensual and too cool for school only makes that worse IMO, not to mention hard to follow because sometimes it comes at the cost of reading the words in a way that inflect the actual meaning/tone. Works well if you want something to fall asleep to though..
    • 5/5
      Loved it! Definitely a page turner (or the audio equivalent) with so many great elements—historical and current narrative, generally spooky atmosphere, and unique narrator voice
    • 5/5
      So good, so satisfying! I love how she makes the readers a part of the story. I will not forget this one...
    • 4/5
      3.5?? tldr; fairly entertaining lesbian gothic horror!

      I was completely in love with the first half of this book! It felt like a cross between The Haunting of Bly Manor and AHS Roanoke and Evelyn Hugo and The Starless Sea and The Secret History and Annie on My Mind--so many stories I've loved before mixed together. I found the characters super interesting and their relationships even more so. Also, Xe Sands did a phenomenal job narrating the audiobook. Also also, Sara Lautman's illustration were a wonderful touch.

      But I found the ending disappointing and many elements of the second half terribly corny. I liked the writing style-especially some of the more unique, fun elements (the incorporation of footnotes and pseudo-first person omniscient narration), for a while until they began to feel tiresome. I was captivated by the dual-timeline storytelling and how it built tension, but felt that the climax/resolution were less impactful than I had hoped. I still have so many questions left that weren't answered and ultimately feel a slightly frustrated with the novel, but I still really enjoyed reading the story!!!
    • 2/5
      This may in fact be a good book but the person who reads it has the most grating voice I've literally ever heard on an audiobook. I've started and stopped this book no less than six times and I cannot get past the strange nature of the voice.
    • 4/5
      Solid yet flawed, sapphic American Gothic Literature, kept my interest.
    • 5/5
      The production of the audiobook is topnotch. Though the plot is a slow burn, it's so worth it
    • 4/5
      Like most books with many main characters, I found this one hard to follow at first. I stuck with it and really enjoyed the book—it reminds me of Truly Devious crossed with Sawkill Girls, only gayer—but I'm also planning to check out the physical book from my library to fill in the spots I missed.
    • 5/5
      Honestly i couldn’t put it down. It was a beautiful story, the way she enveloped the storyline in a sometimes not so subtle queerness. How she made every single sentence a part of the story no matter how insignificant it seemed. It always kept me on my toes. And the ending of a queer book finally made me happy. It was perfect :)
    • 5/5
      LOVED LOVED LOVED THIS!!!! Really my feelings are to all over the place to write a proper review but if you love Gothic settings, horror movies and your characters to be queer then pick this up!
    • 5/5
      Intriguing book that kept me glued to the key characters throughout
    • 5/5
      Absolutely alluring, sensual, realistic, and leaves you tingling, although no one likes that word.
    • 3/5
      I think my expectations were waaaay too high for this one. I don't know. I mostly sort of enjoyed the book but could have probably done completely without the contemporary component. I mean, it seemed overly long and I just don't get the point of spending so much time in the current era with the movie. And soooo many characters and twists. It was really too many for me.

      I read the ebook and listened to the audiobook, sometimes together. Which reminds me about how much the footnotes irritated me. Having to tap and have the footnote pop up was irritating and the reading of the instagram posts in the audiobook - ugh. I know it sounds petty but there were so many.

      I'm not sure if the time spent was worth the payoff for me.

      We picked Plain Bad Heroines as the March book on Cocktail Hour and I'm excited to discuss it with Andy and Colette.
    • 5/5
      Xe Sands is the perfect narrator for this dual-timeline, Gothic horror audiobook! It's a long one (19 hours) but it sucks you in. Creeping horror, movie-making, layered storytelling -- will look for more by this author.
    • 3/5
      The story idea and delivery were good but the book its self was just too wordy. The same good story could have been told and been just as good in about 100 less pages. The tale went back and forth from 1900 to modern day with alternate viewpoints by different characters present during that time period. I also don’t understand why it’s deemed a “horror” novel. Maybe it is if you’re 12 years old but it loses the creep factor for adults. I believe the author was trying to connect the strange occurrences taking place during the filming of the movie being made at the school and what happened on the site in the early 1900 events. Something was lost in the time spans. The book seems to have two themes; one about the proposed supernatural events and the other about being gay. It would have been better if one theme or the other was the main event.
    • 3/5
      This book has two related plotlines: one centers on a Victorian-era girls' boarding school in New England, where many of the girls are obsessed with a book that encourages them to have lesbian relationships. The school's headmistress is lesbian, and encourages the girls to read the book. However, the school is best by a series of tragedies, starting when one of the girls disturbs a wasp nest and is killed by wasps. That tragedy and the ones following it all seem to be related to the book. The other storyline takes place in the present day, when a production company makes a movie about the events at the boarding school. The production is beset with problems, raising questions about whether the school is cursed.There are a lot of characters in this book, which makes it overly complicated, and it can be hard to keep track of all the characters. Most of them are well-developed and interesting, but the time it takes to develop all of those characters makes the book move slowly. There are also a lot of different themes to the curse: the book, women loving women, wasps, fruit, greenhouses, old houses, unseasonal snow. It's not surprising that after building up all of these complicated characters and hauntings, the end of the book is really unsatisfying - there are just too many threads to be able to pull them all together.
    • 5/5
      This is one of those books that you read the blurb for it without realizing it cannot prepare you in any way for what’s to come. Then you start reading it and discover it has so many layers and levels and works perfectly on all of them! For once you can believe the hype. Added bonus are the cool black and white illustrations and footnotes! You will be tempted but don't skip the footnotes!
    • 5/5
      This Alex Award winner is not immediately easy to summarize. It's in some ways a fictional history of a curse that surrounds a Rhode Island boarding school for girls, starting with the strange deaths of two students in the early 1900s. It's also an intertwining of several different narratives which move back and forth through time; one involving the two women who founded the school and the strange events that led to the school's beginnings and the tragedies that happened there, another set in the present day and following three young women as they play their parts in a movie being made - based on a book one of them wrote - about those tragedies, with a few smaller but related stories woven in as well. All these women feel the pull of the place and of the curse in various ways, and by the end all the pieces fall into their places in an intricate and satisfying pattern. Nearly all the women in the story are either gay or bi, and the theme of lesbianism-as-curse is threaded through the story beautifully. It's not heavy-handed and it doesn't feel as if sexuality makes the rest of the plot take a back seat, but instead it is both an important part of the story and also seamlessly included. Overall, a very cool story - very creepy in parts but never outright scary - very well told.
    • 4/5
      I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book - I really liked parts of the story, but I'm also no fan of horror films and the way some of the characters manipulate each other didn't sit well. I did like the relationship which developed between Audrey, Harper, and Merritt, and I appreciated the story's eventual reveal. The yellow jackets, however, were creepy throughout, and I could have done with fewer of them, but that would make for a different story.
    • 2/5
      I really tried to read this book - several times. I can't get into it. The premise wasn't what I thought it would be although the cover, wrapper and title were great. So sorry.
    • 2/5
      This is a story of multiple sapphic characters and their experiences in a spooky house and school. Honest confession. This just was not the book for me. Maybe I don't need to justify why I didn't like a book, sometimes some books just don't click right with some readers. But, as a reviewer, I think it's necessary to attempt at giving an approximation of a reason. So here it goes: For me to enjoy or like a book, I need any one or all of the following to work for me: Story - What on earth was it all about? I honestly couldn't understand the plot the author was trying to tell. The plot was all over the place and I as a reader felt like going in unnecessary circles, more than once. And, I, for one am not a big fan of being taken for rides. Characters - The less I talk about the characters, the better it will be. No depth to them. Not even Elaine. I had high hopes for Elaine but her character was the most disappointing to me. Very anticlimactic. Writing - I don't mind whimsical, poetic writing, though I don't actively seek it. I get bored easily by such writing. But my biases aside, it was not the whimsical writing that got to me. It was the neurotic ramblings of the characters that irked me. There were many times when I wondered whatever is the point of this line, sentence, paragraph, or even page? A sample of what I am talking about: People would want to visibly wince or laugh or both if she told them, but they couldn't: they'd be monsters if they did. So then that would leave them looking at her in that icky, steady-faced, not-laughing-but-yes-judging limbo, asking themselves why on earth she would share with them such an upsetting detail. And what are they supposed to do with it? When I picked this book up, I assumed I am getting into a mystery read. But, this was more literary fiction than mystery. So it's obvious that my opinions were formed basis my warped expectations than from the book per se. Despite the book being too big for the subject matter and despite the writing being of a rambling nature. I still immensely enjoyed some parts of that very same writing. Her descriptions were spot on and her pop culture references were great, though numerous. As a non-American, I had to google to know more about many of those references and to understand the context in which they were used. For example: The acronym WASP (hint: I had to google it). Some of these references were quite funny, for example: "A Bollywood star attempting to break into the American market". I legit laughed at that reference, also, it was one of the few that I did understand. In short, this book is for people who know their pop culture references, who like literary fiction, and who need some sapphic content. RRKReads rating: Freebie grade, book worth reading if you receive it as a giveaway, freebie, or gift.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed the spooky atmosphere of this book; it had a consistent, unsettling feel and a quirky eeriness to it, also it was absolutely sexy. I loved all the women in it and I was rooting for all of them, even the ones I already knew met very bad ends. But, ultimately, it didn't make much sense! Atmosphere will only get you so far in a horror mystery—you've got to resolve the mysteries so they are explicable. Even supernatural stuff has to have some reasoning behind it; plot cannot live on spooks alone.
    • 4/5
      I received this book for free from the publisher (William Morrow Books) in exchange for an honest review. This was such a unique read! The best part of this book was definitely the overall vibe and aesthetic. It had a slightly creepy and gothic feel that ran throughout the entire book, even the present day parts. There was also a fair amount of humor and satire that worked well with the gothic vibes and made for an interesting juxtaposition. The structure of the book was very clever. The story within a story element was well done and very engaging. I also liked the footnotes. They were very entertaining and added even more humor to the story.The story started out very strong, but I was a little disappointed at the end. It didn’t live up to my expectations. I was expecting more of a big reveal or an “a-ha” moment. There are still some things that I am a little confused on. This book is classified by horror, but many other reviewers say they find it to be very light on horror. I agree with that and I would say that it is more of a gothic horror. The horror is more of a gothic creepiness than any sort of gore or violence. The book also has illustrations throughout the book which I found to be a nice touch. There is even a map of the school which made navigating the story easy. Overall, I enjoyed the aesthetic of this book the most. I recommend it if you’re looking for something a little different to read.
    • 4/5
      I still don't know where to land on this, so I bumped half a star so as not to be sitting on the fence. As others have said, this is an alternating timeline story within a story. It's well-written and multilayered with some unique elements sprinkled in (toxic flowers, deadly yellow jackets, Spite tower, the Marushka dolls) but at 600+ pages, it's an investment and none of the main characters were particularly compelling to me. together it's a strange brew that manages to be a little more style than substance. It's moody, but not meaningfully so.I picked this up based on curiosity about the description of "sapphic horror," but "sapphic gothic romance" is closer. Though there are some unsettling elements, it's more ghost story than horror. Some elements reminded me of Marisha Pessl's Night Film, though they're very different. I think I finished this more out of duty than out of love. I don't regret it, but also am unlikely to remember or think much more about it as the year unfolds.
    • 4/5
      Captivating and enigmatic cover art tantalizes the reader to open the pages of Plain Bad Heroines, by Emily Danforth. Touted as horror, Danforth's novel might be better described as gothic romance with multi-layered suggestions of the paranormal. Numerous forces of nature act as intervening deities serving to complicate or encourage displays of human emotional and physical attraction. The novel opens with an excerpt from the fictional "Story of Mary MacLane," a book that provides the rationale behind the title and epitomizes its recurring theme. Through her "plain bad heroines," Danforth subverts the cultural idealization of women, proposing instead that character flaws and expressed imperfections are more authentic signs of courage. The author initiates the action with the backstory of two students attending The Brookhants School for Girls in turn-of-the-century Rhode Island. Their love for each other and shared obsession with the Mary McLane book results in an unexplained tragedy, and launches rumors of a supernatural force that lingers at the institution for decades. The narrative then jumps forward to the current century, just as a movie is being cast based on the girls’ story and subsequent strange happenings at the school. The present-day generation of "plain bad heroines" consists of: Audrey, self-conscious daughter of a former famous scream-queen who is cast in the movie; Harper, the adoration-seeking star attached to the project; and Merritt, the prickly wunderkind author upon whose book the movie is based. As the three women bond, the energy of the location triggers a similar chain of uncanny events-ones that may have their origins more in manipulation than in magic. Danforth repeatedly breaks the "fourth wall" to elicit camaraderie with her "Reader," but this device would have been more effective if it had been used more sparingly. Symbolism using apples, yellow jackets, water/contamination are also heavily employed and serve to connect the different timelines, but become tiresome and predictable from overuse. The real appeal of Plain Bad Heroines is the casual but loving way that the author incorporates a cast of almost exclusively all-queer characters. Her frank and open depiction of Sapphic desire and emotional connection is refreshingly depicted. In many ways, Danforth may have set out to write a terrifying twist on gothic suspense but more convincingly offers a tale of quiet acceptance and feminist freedom.Thanks to the author, Harper Collins and Edelweiss Plus for a pre-published ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
    • 4/5
      Plain Bad Heroines was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. I am a sucker for a lesbian tale. Add in a Gothic New England boarding school for girls? Sold.The story centers around two time periods. The first, 1902, at the Brookhants School for Girls, run by Libbie Brookhants. A book by a young writer, Mary MacLane has come out--one that's incredibly scandalous for the times. Two Brookhants girls, Flo and Clara, are obsessed with it and establish The Plain Bad Heroine Society. The two are in love, meeting in secret--until they are attacked by yellow jackets at their hiding spot, a copy of the book found with them. A few years later the school closes, but not until after more scandal and death. Now, our second period, over a hundred years later, where Merritt Emmons, a young writer, publishes a book about Flo and Clara's story. It inspires a horror film starring Harper Harper, a famous lesbian actress. Harper will be playing Flo and B-list actress Audrey Wells, Clara. Filming on-site at the abandoned Brookhants site, the three women converge. But soon, weird things start happening, and the curse of Brookhants seems back to haunt the set--and our three modern-day heroines.This book is absolutely enthralling at times. I flew through these 619 pages, that's for sure. My notes state "very lesbian," which is, of course, a major plus for me. Believe me, we don't get a lot of books starring ourselves. And you know, where we are killed off by swarms of yellow jackets. I honestly found both storylines compelling. It's hard not to fall a bit in love with Harper Harper, the charismatic celebrity (out!) lesbian. And 1902 isn't just about Clara and Flo, but Libbie Brookhants and her life trying to run a cursed school in the early 1900s. Honestly, the pages really flew by most of the time. Though, there are certainly moments where I felt some of the story could have been cut.And yes, the narrative style is different, though it really adds to the uniqueness of the book. It's basically told by an omnipresent narrator, talking directly to the reader. There are footnotes, often humorous ones, and the end result is something you don't often find. For the most part, I felt like Danforth pulled it off, too. I do think Libbie was a little more fully developed than Merritt, Harper, and Audrey, but that also may have been because that trio could come across as a bit spoiled at times.Probably my two biggest issues with this book (regretfully): for a Gothic horror novel, it's not really that scary. There are a few creepy and eerie moments, especially in the beginning, but it never really builds up to that terrifying moment that you're expecting. And, somewhat related, the ending. We read and stick with our various tales for the entire time and then... poof! Everything just fizzles out. I was so bummed. The ending was such a disappointment after all I'd read and kept this from being a full-fledged 4 or 4.5-star read. I couldn't believe it after what we'd been through. It was like even the author was tired.So, overall, this is an original and fascinating read. I'm certainly still advising you to read it (especially if you're queer or enjoy reading queer fiction). Just be prepared that the ending may not have that big scary moment you're expecting. 3.5 stars, though I'm rounding to 4 here on Goodreads.A big thanks to HarperCollins and William Morrow for my copy!
    • 3/5
      I wanted so badly to like this novel. A horror novel with strong comedic elements about a movie based on a book based on a (fictional) historical event? With strong, snarky, queer, female protagonists? Alas, I started at the beginning, got annoyed, skipped to the ending, which seemed interesting, and then moved to the middle - which even with the payout of finding how we get to the ending, was just unbearable. The "dear reader" asides were too much, and Merritt's confusing disdain for the boring Audrey got to be too much for me. I just saw another review refer to this book as twee and YES! That is the perfect description of the "dear reader" parts. I don't know if horror novels should be twee.