We are never told very much about Merritt’s book, so we don’t know how much they know about the whole affair. The section set in the present doesn’t involve these three girls bonding or finding more about what happened at Brookhants. Then we have Harper Harper, an up and coming actress/influencer whose personality revolves around her celebrity status, who will play Flo, and Audrey Wells (I actually had to check out her name as I could not remember it on top of my head…that’s how memorable she was) the daughter of a ‘scream queen’ who so far has an acted in B movies and ads. The book was written by one of these girls, Merritt (a character whom I lowkey hated) who happens to know Elaine Brookhants. In the present three young women-all in their twenties-work on a film adaptation on a book called ‘The Happenings at Brookhants’. We do not know the identity of the narrator, but they posses an almost omniscient knowledge of the events they are recounting. The narrator, who playfully reminds us of their presence with plenty of direct addresses, footnotes, and asides. Another death soon rocks the school, and all of the girls shared a fascination for Mary MacLane’s work ( The Story of Mary Maclane & I Await the Devil’s Coming). Plain Bad Heroines begins at Brookhants School in 1902 when two students, Clara and ‘Flo’, who happen to be lovers are swallowed by “a fog of wasps”. There were elements that I liked, but these were ultimately outweighed by my frustration toward the tone of the narrative, the dual storylines, and the characters. This is certainly an ambitious novel, one that is a few hundred pages too long.

Plain Bad Heroines was one of my most anticipated 2020 releases…maybe I should have ‘hyped’ it so much.

Harper harper plain bad heroines