A review by bethsreading
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

dark funny tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I had high hopes for this book but sadly it was ultimately really disappointing. It was a great concept, I loved the queer rep, the spooky cursed girls school, and the experimental haunted film set. However, in the end, this book was just a mess. 

My main issue with it is that it needed some serious, brutal editing. It was far too long and the pacing was completely off. As a result, some parts really dragged, others felt completely irrelevant, and worst of all it was then impossible to built any proper tension. This is meant to be a horror novel and any scenes with scary content got lost in a surrounding sea of boring filler. The first 50% of this book was just set up and I think over half of it could easily be cut and you could still understand the characters’ motivations and the background for the shooting of the film. By the time we got to the ‘main’ part of the story where they’re filming at Brookhants, there wasn’t enough time to give many spooky specifics. There had been so much set up and it just fell flat. At one point they said: ‘Things kept happening all the time now at Brookhants. Who could even keep up to write them all down?’ You could?? Is this not a horror novel?? Is this not what I’ve read 400 pages of build up to witness?? It was so frustrating! Squeezing so many storylines into one super long book just didn’t work and none of them had enough breathing room. I think it would’ve worked much better as two books; the first one could be about the girls who died at Brookhants and the film being made, and then the second book could be about the origins of the curse and Libbie/Alex. Then we could get the depth that the author clearly wanted to give to each aspect of the story but the pacing and tension would’ve been so much better. 

Sadly, I found the narrator to be particularly annoying. They use ‘Readers’ to address us and while this is a personal gripe, I don’t mind it being used when done well but in this context it felt out of place and awkward. The tone of the narrative voice was conflicting. It seemed as though they were both ‘above’ social media and gen z culture but also a part of it. There was a large focus on social media which I find is always hard to do well and in this case it was not great. The references felt a bit out of touch and a times cringey (they even used an emoji mid sentence at one point, which I hope was meant to be ironic but it did not land at all). It is important for it to be in there in the modern day storyline and some elements of it worked but many did not in my opinion.

My next problem is very small but I found it so unbelievably frustrating. Because this book was so long, the font was really small and that meant that the astrixs indicating footnotes were teeny tiny that I could never see them! I would get to the bottom of a page and see an unread footnote and have to go back playing Where’s Wally to try and find it, which completely ruined the flow of reading. 

Overall, I was sad that this book wasn’t what I wanted it to be and what I thought it could have been. On paper it was exactly my sort of thing and could’ve been a new favourite. The issues with the book that I have focused on in my review overshadowed the good parts of the novel and I think that is in part out of frustration that it did not live up to my expectations. If you felt similarly about this book and you want a fantastic mystery thriller (with some genuinely scary parts too) that is also set in a secluded school, then please read the Truly Devious series by Maureen Johnson, I promise it will not disappoint. 
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