The Brookhants School for Girls is said to be cursed. Or at least haunted. There were a number of very unusual happenings around the turn of the twentieth century, and the grounds of the school may still be haunted by the ghosts of the three teenaged girls who died there.
At least, that’s what Merritt Emmons’ book claims. The Happenings at Brookhants, which she wrote when was only 16, became a huge bestseller, and soon it will also be a major motion picture. Famed horror director Bo Dhillon will be directing the movie, and Harper Harper, Hollywood’s favorite ingenue and social media darling, will be its star. Harper and Caroline Wells, daughter of one of Hollywood’s most beloved former scream queens, will be playing the roles of Flo and Clara. The teenagers’ close relationship and fondness for Mary MacLane’s scandalous book of young sapphic love and please for help from the devil only added to the oddity of their deaths in the orchard attached to the school.
Later, another student found Mary MacLane’s book and slowly found herself succumbing to a numbness to reality, slipping away into her own world, until she was found dead in the school’s Orangerie, poisoned by one of the plants growing there. This student, Eleanor, was the last girl killed at the cursed school, as the school closed soon thereafter. However, one of the teachers died, and her lover, the headmistress and owner of Brookhants, mysteriously disappeared.
Now Bo is determined to take all these stories and turn them into a horror film masterpiece that none can rival. He has Merritt, the expert on the stories of Brookhants. He has his star, Harper. And he has his horror film legacy Caroline. But it’s when he adds in his last major character—The Brookhants School for Girls herself—that the real work on the film can start. But the shoots are plagued with problems, and the women feel themselves being drawn into the same nightmares that these students felt before their deaths. Yellow jackets buzz around them. Fruit rots in an instant. Flowers bloom out of dead plants. And the shadows seem to watch them. Will the curse have its way with these young women too, or will they turn out to be stronger than the black magic that haunts The Brookhants School for Girls?
Plain Bad Heroines is a masterwork of interweaving stories. The stories of these young women are infused with great emotion and dark shadows, they speak of passion and destruction, with the red book written by Mary MacLane running through them all. Author Emily Danforth has written an epic 600-page thriller that skips from present to past, from gothic to gossip, from haunted to Hollywood. It’s a powerful story, told well, and a truly enjoyable thrill ride from start to finish.
That being said, I did have some issues with the book. There were times that the narrator of the story interrupted the narrative, which would have been okay, but there were also footnotes with extra information. Personally, I’d rather have one or the other. Using both became a distraction. And while most of the characters were lesbian or bisexual, it seemed like those who were most deeply in love suffered the most. Because Mary MacLane’s book was both about her love of women and about her crying out to the devil, it was difficult to know which of these were the cause of the hauntings. I don’t think Danforth meant it that way, but I worried about the message underlying the deaths of the young women.
This is not a book for everyone. The length alone will intimidate some readers, as will the horror themes. I get that. There was a time in my life when I wouldn’t have tried a book like this. But it is also a good story well written, and if queer Gothic horror and/or behind-the-scenes Hollywood interests you, then it might be worth your time. Give it a chance.
Egalleys for Plain Bad Heroines were provided by William Morrow through NetGalley, with many thanks.
