Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
Synopsis
"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."
My Thoughts
This book was so engrossing I was literally inventing projects so I could listen to more of this story unfold. The story is told by a rather cheeky narrator and is a fascinating web of interlocking stories both past and present. The story within a story structure kept me on my toes the whole way through.
This book was eerie, intricate, and very very queer. There wasn't a minute of this book that I wasn't eager to learn more of the slowly unfolding mystery that was Brookhants. This book had me questioning everything in an effort to figure out what was real and what was fabricated. I listened to the audiobook of this one and the narrator, Xe Sands, delivered the cheeky storytelling of the narrator in such a fantastic and engrossing way.
I would most definitely recommend this one if you're into queer mysteries that delicately walk that line between mystery and straight-up horror.
Genre: lgbtqia+, mystery
Representation: lesbian, gay, bi, queer
Content Warnings: death, gore, alcoholism (mentioned), suicide, homophobia, fatphobia, assault (attempted rape), murder, drowning, forced outing