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A review by culpeppper
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
Did not finish book. Stopped at 36%.
This is gonna be negative, you've been warned.
The premise was fine, but the length of this book is absurd considering the absolute nothing that happens. I cannot stand the shifting perspective of the story. It makes it clunky instead of intriguing, and I really think it could have been a shorter, better story if it had been told from only one perspective. But we have four; Audrey, Harper Harper, Merritt, and an omniscient narrator that refuses to identify themselves (but I suspect is Merritt, based only on the fact we are reading a story about a book and one of the characters is the author of said book.)The modern storylines are boring (the three heroines don't even meet face to face until 200 pages into the story) and tedious to get through. The characters are either flat, bland, or just plain unenjoyable. They do a whole lot of nothing for twenty pages, then cut to another whole lot of nothing but this time, there's /wasps/ and shadows.
Audrey is fine, and if I had to choose one perspective to keep out of the three main characters, she's the easy pick. She's got an interesting enough backstory that could probably be better explored, a lot of characters in her personal life that we know a little bit about, and her personality is one that makes you want to root for her. Harper Harper's character is basically rich young hot "celesbian" with some deeper stuff under the surface but even 200 pages in you don't really care about her anyway. She reads like a caricature. Merritt seemingly has no redeeming characteristics that Danforth decides to show us to off-set the general callousness she shows everyone and everything around her, with a dash of self-confidence issues that excuse it all, that makes her the queer not-like-other-girls-girl. We're supposed to be inspired and surprised that she, as a mere 16 year old infant, was able to write a story and it was good. Because of that everything else about her is special, so she can be selfish and not care about others. I'm not saying that all characters can and should be likable, but in a nearly 700 page book, surely you could do without some of that.
The horror/suspense elements don't work, because I didn't care about these characters and the atmospheric storytelling is lacking. The historical timeline would have probably gotten tedious too but that was the only part of the book that had me thinking it would turn around.
Eventually, though, the whole audition scene was what did me in. I felt 0 chemistry between the characters once they were on page, and I genuinely didn't think it was worth pushing through if that was all there was ahead.
Audrey is fine, and if I had to choose one perspective to keep out of the three main characters, she's the easy pick. She's got an interesting enough backstory that could probably be better explored, a lot of characters in her personal life that we know a little bit about, and her personality is one that makes you want to root for her. Harper Harper's character is basically rich young hot "celesbian" with some deeper stuff under the surface but even 200 pages in you don't really care about her anyway. She reads like a caricature. Merritt seemingly has no redeeming characteristics that Danforth decides to show us to off-set the general callousness she shows everyone and everything around her, with a dash of self-confidence issues that excuse it all, that makes her the queer not-like-other-girls-girl. We're supposed to be inspired and surprised that she, as a mere 16 year old infant, was able to write a story and it was good. Because of that everything else about her is special, so she can be selfish and not care about others. I'm not saying that all characters can and should be likable, but in a nearly 700 page book, surely you could do without some of that.
The horror/suspense elements don't work, because I didn't care about these characters and the atmospheric storytelling is lacking. The historical timeline would have probably gotten tedious too but that was the only part of the book that had me thinking it would turn around.
Eventually, though, the whole audition scene was what did me in. I felt 0 chemistry between the characters once they were on page, and I genuinely didn't think it was worth pushing through if that was all there was ahead.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Lesbophobia, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Biphobia, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Suicide, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Outing
Lots of wasps, dead and alive.