Book Review -Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth
Rating — 3.5/5
Plain Bad Heroines By Emily M Danforth is a glitzy satirical thriller that follows two timelines in (mostly) one setting, the gothic and spooky Brookhants School for Girls. One plot follows the eerie and tragic events following the death of two students, Clara and Flow, who were stung to death by a swarm of yellowjackets in 1902. The second plot is set in the present day and follows Merrit, Harper, and Audrey. They are involved in making a big Hollywood movie about the sinister curse of Brookhants, and things start to get very freaky during the production.
The novel is spooky, gothic, pokes a bit of fun at the weirdness of Hollywood, and made me a little more scared of wasps. It’s also a great piece of LGBT literature. The novel explores the lives of queer women and a large part of the 1902 plot revolves around the memoirs of Mary MacLane, a real author in turn-of-the-century US who was outspokenly feminist and openly bisexual.
I don’t know if it’s because I’ve read too much of a particular type of fiction (by that I mean, fiction that doesn’t consider the female reader too much) but I remember having a moment where I was pleasantly surprised by how well rounded the characters were. There were moments where I could relate to them, moments where I adored them, and moments where they really annoyed me.
They weren’t annoying me because they were badly written, they were annoying me because they were acting like people thrown into interesting and stressful situations and reacting in ways that made sense for their characters. I was invested, ‘why the hell is she acting like that?’ — ‘God he’s annoying.’ — ‘Someone needs to tell her to take a breath and touch some grass.’ These were the thoughts I had, instead of, ‘I get it, she has nice tits, let’s move on please.’
I loved the illustrations throughout the book, and it made me wish that more adult fiction was illustrated, and not just poetry collections. The style of the drawings reminded me of Quentin Blake, who illustrated Roald Dahl's books. I grew up reading Roald Dahl, so these types of scrawly ink illustrations were quite nostalgic for me. Also, the motif of the yellowjacket was enhanced by these illustrations. A rogue yellowjacket on the page was an interesting way of building tension within the plot.
Speaking of tension, one thing that let it down was that it was a bit of a slog at times. It is over six hundred pages long and it is a very slow burn. In some moments the slow build of tension was gripping, but other times it just seemed to fizzle out, and it made me prone to skimming the pages. Also, the ending was very enigmatic, so mixed in with the slow pace and detailed tension building, it all kind of fell flat at the end. It could have done with a hundred pages or so being shaved off, give, or take.
I’d recommend this to anyone who likes gothic thrillers and is interested in reading more LGBT fiction, and someone who also doesn’t mind a slow-paced 600-pager
