Plain Bad Heroines

If a novel starts with a map, immediately I am in. And if the first chapter is titled, “One Macabre Afternoon to Begin,” and the first sentence begins, “It’s a terrible story and one way to tell it is this: two girls in love and a fog of wasps cursed the place forever after”? I am 100000% in.

emily m. danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines is two stories, overlapping: One, the story of Flo and Clara, students at the Brookhants School for Girls in 1902, who are obsessed with the writer Mary MacLane, an openly bisexual woman. (“I wish someone would write a book about a plain, bad heroine, so that I might feel in real sympathy with her,” MacLane wrote in her memoir.) They start a club dedicated to Mary (the titular “Plain Bad Heroine Society”). Soon, Flo and Clara are found dead — with a swarm of yellow jackets around them, plus a copy of Mary’s memoirs. The school’s headmistress, Libbie, and her lover, Alex, are left to deal with the fallout. (No spoilers in this book preview!!) The second story: Flash forward a century, and writer Merritt tells the haunted and cursed story of the Brookhants School — and her story is (kinda) going to be adapted into a horror film starring lesbian actress (“celesbian”) Harper Harper as Flo and former child star Audrey as Clara. But the film is a lot more than it seems. It’s a lot of plot I am telling you, merely because I want to give you a sense of how expansive and delicious it is to sink your teeth into this queer, gothic novel. Plus, there are illustrations throughout.

To be honest, this is the perfect fall read. Moody, atmospheric, gripping story, complex female leads, scary: Plain Bad Heroines has it all.

Rating: ★★★★★