My Plain Bad Heroines Story
There isn't anything inherently horrific about this book. With the opening tale in place, it positions itself to be a run of the mill, albeit unique and sapphic, haunted house affair. Apologies for the verbosity, the book brings it out.
This book is, above all else, about a collection of queer women at various points on their own journeys to "confident". They live in different time periods with different relationships and their own dramas (brought on by a curse or not, whose to say) but all with the same core dilemma: being a queer woman in a world that still doesn't understand queer women. Yes, the world knows how to gawk at them, masturbate to them, and copy their haircuts, but does the world know how to leave them alone to live their haunted and complicated lives, not really. The actual horror elements of this book fell a little flat for me. The people of the story were far more terrifying than the things happening to them. Perhaps that's the point. Real people and the real shit they bring to your life are the true things to fear.
It's challenging to face the pacing of this book, if you're looking for real feedback on a real problem I had with this one (some people aren't). The pacing is slow. Switching between narrators, timelines, and interstitials was delightful in practice but big picture I really know or care about what happens in much of the middle of this book. It isn't straight-forward by any means. Did I like it, yeah! Did I push myself through it because it wasn't the right time, probably. Would I recommend it to people? Some, enthusiastically so. Does the font on the cover still bother me? 100%.
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