Wednesday, March 31, 2021

What We've Been Reading #90

We’re back with our review round-up featuring three recommendations that we’re pretty certain you are going to adore!

Don’t forget to click either tag above to find more good books ♥

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

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. 

Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop

Audra’s Teaser Review

A meta-horror, gothic, sapphic novel with illustrations and footnotes about the influence of literature that comments on artistic creation and interpretation—this book is truly an experience. Danforth is a brilliant writer, and one who I can’t wait to read more from.

Read Audra’s entire review at Goodreads.

Tracy’s Teaser Review

Plain bad heroines. That’s what Mary MacLane wants to see. Not glorious damsels in distress or other such exaggerations, just a person she could see herself in. So she writes one herself. This book, as the above synopsis mentions, then seems to become the impetus for all that follows. Or is it? It’s definitely a conclusion every reader will have to come to for themselves.

Read Tracy’s entire review at Sci-fi and Scary.

Two Truths And A Lie by Sarah Pinsker

Stella thought she’d made up a lie on the spot, asking her childhood friend if he remembered the strange public broadcast TV show with the unsettling host she and all the neighborhood kids appeared on years ago. But he does remember. And so does her mom. So why doesn’t Stella? The more she investigates the show and the grip it has on her hometown, the eerier the mystery grows.

Goodreads | Amazon

Emily’s Teaser Review

This story was unsettling, and I had no clue where it was going (in a good way). It was mysterious, and there were some solid creepy storylines.

Read Emily’s entire review at Goodreads.

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel.

Pray they are hungry.

Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more you fear them, the stronger they become. 

Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop

Laurie’s Teaser Review

 I loved every moment of this often horrifying wild ride and I highly recommend it if you enjoy a little humor with your horror.

Read Laurie’s entire review at Goodreads.

Thank you for joining us today! We hope you found something to add to your tbr list. Please share your recent reads with us in the comments below.

If you are a LOHF writer and have a book you’d like us to consider for a review please visit our review submission page here.

Laurie is one of our LOHF Admins. Laurie creates our review posts, coordinates review requests, oversees the Ladies of Horror Fiction directory, and manages our LOHF Goodreads group.

You can find Laurie on her blog Bark’s Book Nonsense, on Twitter as @barksbooks, on Instagram as @barksbooks, and on Goodreads.

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