Please Note:  I received an advance audio copy of this novel from Libro.fm, in exchange for an audio review.  This did not influence the opinions in my review in any way.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

A highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.

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.

A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagin:ation of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read. 

Review:

Plain Bad Heroines is a story with dual timelines. One story takes place in the early nineteen hundreds at a girls boarding school in New England, while the other is set in modern-day Hollywood.  With it's story within a story format, the book is a look at female romantic relationships in both times.  It's also a fun behind the scenes look at the making of a big budget movie, with all the power plays, and shenanigans that go along with it.  I enjoyed both stories, and found this to be a highly entertaining audiobook.

What I Liked:

Narration:

I was very impressed with the narration by Xe Sands.  She perfectly created both the cadence of New England society women and the cockiness of Hollywood players.  I particularly liked how she conveyed the longing between Libbie and Alex.  At a time when lesbians could go to jail for showing their affections for other women, Sand's voice got across all the secrecy, and fear, of these characters.

Story Within a Story:

There were two parallel stories in this book.  The story of two female lovers who are running an all girls school in Rhode Island in the early nineteen hundreds, and a modern story about the making of a film based on the girls school.  This was a fun behind the scenes look at the making of a movie, that contrasts with (and sometimes mirrors) the evolution of the female relationships at the girls school.

Characters:

My favorite character was Harper Harper, the modern-day movie star who will be the centerpiece of the movie about Brookhanst.  The tough, lesbian actress who always knew how to turn on her movie star charm, also was a young woman who knew how strange it was that she was famous at all.  I could totally see Kristen Stewart in this role.  

I also liked Audrey, the child star who desperately wants to be taken seriously as an adult actress.  The run up of her audition for the role of Clara was a riveting behind the scenes look at the movie business.  Her mother, a faded movie star in her own right, was a cringe-worthy look at a woman who ruthlessly used her daughter to gain attention for herself.

What I Was Mixed About:

Ending:

I have mixed feelings about the endings of the two stories.  I enjoyed the resolution of the contemporary story, but the one that took place in the early nineteen hundreds was unclear to me.   The modern story, which was the making of a movie based on the girls school in the earlier story, showed the completion of the movie, as well as what happened to the characters.  I was deeply invested in these characters and so it was very satisfying to have a follow up on the characters after the movie was finished.  The earlier story involving the love story between Libbie (the owner of the Bookhanst girls school) and Alex (her female lover), has a muddled ending.  Even though I could understand what happened, I had a hard time understanding WHY it happened.  The author went for a gothic horror ending, but it was tempered by the fact that it was so convoluted, the explanation of what happened wound up more confusing than revelatory.

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Rating:  

Release Date:  October 20th, 2020

Author: Emily M. Danforth

Audio Narrator: Xe Sands

Audio Publisher:  Harper Audio

Audio Length:  19 Hours, 27 Minutes

Print Publisher:  William Morrow

Print Page Length:  619 Pages

Source:  Libro.fm

Format:  Audiobook

Recommendation:  Even with it's confusing ending, this was a very compelling and entertaining book.