The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
Voting ended onJul 5, 2025
Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
When Cameron Post's parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they'll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.
But that relief doesn't last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.
Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship—one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to 'fix' her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self—even if she's not exactly sure who that is.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.
Setting: Montana, early 1990s
Coming of age, rural literature, 1990s, young adult
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
Endorsement from submitter #1: "In an alternate London, boys born with violet eyes become Speakers, mediums who can communicate with the dead, and girls born with violet eyes become their wives. 16-year-old Silas Bell is desperate to avoid becoming another man's wife, but his attempts end with him institutionalised and diagnosed with 'Veil Sickness', a disorder turning violet-eyed girls mad. When the ghosts of former patients appear to beg him for help, he must solve the mystery of what, exactly, happens to everyone society throws away."
Endorsement from submitter #2: "T4T and autistic representation"
Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.
London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.
After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its rotten guts to the world—as long as the school doesn’t break him first.
Setting: Victorian London, 1883
Horror, historical fiction, gothic, fantasy, paranormal, Victorian, 1880s, young adult
...right then she felt ready to embrace every stale romantic gesture she'd ever before mocked. Isn't that what the swell of a crush is, after all? Recognizing the flush of truth in all the love clichės?
Olivie Blake (@olivieblake) is the pseudonym of the writer Alexene Farol Follmuth, author of multiple novels, anthologies, graphic novels, and film scripts, many of which involve the fantastic, the paranormal, or the supernatural. Her works revolve around the collective experience, what it means to be human (or not), and the endlessly interesting complexities of life and love. Cult-favorite The Atlas Six was re-released in a revised hardcover edition last month with Tor Books. A sequel in October and a live-action series are forthcoming. Alexene lives and works in Los Angeles with her husband and new baby, where she is generally tolerated by her rescue pit bull.
Read on for Olivie’s favored medeian specialty, lessons learned from writing fanfic, her take on dark academia, and the process of self-publishing books people love.
Not to spoil anything for the three and a half people who maybe haven’t yet read The Atlas Six, but can you tell us a bit about the world of the series?
First of all, I appreciate the wording of this question. Thank you for that. Secondly, The Atlas Six is about the six uniquely talented magicians vying for initiation to the Alexandrian Society, a secret society of caretakers who protect and contribute to the archives of “lost” knowledge from the Library of Alexandria and throughout history. In the book’s contemporary setting, the question of how to combat climate change is answered politically and economically with magic, so the characters exist openly in a world where magicians, called medeians, are university-educated and contribute to a system of capitalism much like ours. These particular six candidates each have a rare magical specialty and a myriad of personal motivations for pursuing the Society’s promise of wealth, power, and knowledge—which drives their tendency to want to kiss or kill any of the others at any given moment. (Two of them already hate each other, and the rest are about to.) And there is obviously a catch to this extraordinary opportunity: only five of the six are guaranteed initiation.
What’s the journey been like writing, self-publishing, and re-releasing The Atlas Six?
This is absolutely the weirdest timeline. I don’t know of any better way to put it. I wrote this book when I was starting to think that publishing wasn’t going to happen for me. I’ve always split myself in two, writing manuscripts to cold query to agents while also self-publishing the stories I wanted to tell that I didn’t feel were a good fit for the market. Basically, I was self-publishing for the handful of beloved weirdos willing to follow me wherever I went. (Find your flock, they say. Good advice.)
I knew from my initial concept that this book wasn’t right for publishing en masse—it was too hard to explain in a quick pitch to an agent without sounding derivative. It was too character-driven for genre standards. It had a familiar setting and hook but with a very unconventional execution. There was no hero or villain. Every character was 100% sexually fluid. It was too quiet for spec fic. I was in a really think-y place, trying to figure out whether it was responsible to bring a baby into a world where it’s impossible to be ethical. In the end, I figured I could just write it for myself, exactly as I wanted to write it, while nobody cared enough about me to say no.
So I wrote it. Released it. People seemed to like it, but it wasn’t doing numbers. Within a few months, I had finished another manuscript and finally gotten an agent for a completely separate project—my young adult rom-com, My Mechanical Romance. I figured, okay, I guess I’m a YA author now, at least until those obligations are fulfilled, so Atlas will have to wait. But, I reasoned, thankfully, only a few people were waiting.
Then I got pregnant. I wrote another YA manuscript. Something weird happened on Twitter. (A very “somehow, Palpatine returned” situation.) People started talking about the book. I gave birth to my son. Something weirder happened on TikTok. A LOT of people started talking about the book. Suddenly my book that had absolutely no commercial appeal was...commercially appealing? I signed with Tor to finish out the trilogy (!). Then…producers wanted to meet with me? So I was like? Okay? In between my baby’s naps, I wrote the sequel and optioned the book for TV. I…got on the NYT bestseller list? I went on tour in two countries? At this point, it all dissolves into a fever dream. Is this real? I really don’t know. I haven’t slept more than two consecutive hours in almost a year.
On a serious note, revising The Atlas Six was such an incredible opportunity. I went from being a one-woman show (with the help of one or two friends and, of course, my beloved collaborator @littlechmura) to suddenly having the resources to actually make the book into what I wanted it to be. I got to stretch out a little, narratively speaking, and take up more space. New illustrations! New cover! New feedback! New ways to reach a new audience! Suddenly the book of my mind became the book of many minds and was all the better for it. It was then, and is now, a product of some kind of magic. For five years, I wrote ten to twelve hours a day, posting millions and millions of words for free, purely because I loved it—loved it to the point where it broke my heart to think of doing anything else. And now?
Well, now I have imposter syndrome, of course. But my god, what a beautiful con.
Do you have a favorite character among the six? Why? What does their Tumblr look like?
I don’t have a favorite character—I personally think it’s detrimental for the author to have a favorite when creating an ensemble cast that relies so heavily on changing POVs for the narration—BUT I do feel strongly that Libby and Nico would be the most active on Tumblr. Libby writes poems and carefully curates her aesthetic. I sense a little cottagecore in her. Probably a lot of melancholy art, too. Nico definitely runs an absolute chaosphere of a blog depending on whatever his fixation is at the time. He’s one of those mutuals where you followed him five years ago and can’t remember why because he’s changed fandoms several times, but at least the GIF sets he reblogs are entertaining.
This reissue includes illustrations from your longtime collaborator, illustrator Little Chmura (@littlechmura). What draws you to this kind of collaboration?
If you were fortunate enough to become friends with a brilliant artist, wouldn’t you try to lure them in, any chance you got? I love art. I love storytelling as an art and writing as an art. I love the adrenaline rush of creativity I get from working with other artists who are equally passionate about their craft. Sometimes, brainstorming an illustration with Little Chmura makes me feel inspiration in its purest form. The incendiary kind. All of my books contain art from her because it just contributes that much more to the story. Or, at the very least, it helps the story vibe properly.
You got your start writing Dramione fanfic. What did writing fanfic teach you about writing?
Okay, random start here, but go with me: I really loved this Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again oral history on Vulture where they said that the film was referred to as a crowd-pleaser in a way that was meant to be an insult. A crowd-pleaser, how meaningless. But the producers posed a critically important question: do you know how hard it is to please a crowd? Fanfic authors do. There is no other medium as dependent on audience enjoyment as fanfic. The entire medium is reliant on characterization and emotional beats. Imperfect plot or disrupted pacing can be forgiven if something sweet or hot happens along the way, but failing to be true to a character’s narrative arc or committing to a cheap bit like gratuitous character death is grounds for the proverbial guillotine.
The number one thing I learned as a fanfic author is always to keep one eye on the audience’s heart. Should it be racing? Fluttering? Aching? Should it, dare I say it, break? Pleasing (or devastating) a crowd is best learned via the fanfic structure: episodic and evolving with constant feedback. Learning how to make someone keysmash in your reviews is a carefully honed skill.
You’re very active online, with copious amounts of asks answered on your Tumblr and a video series on Youtube. Do you have a favorite fan interaction?
I have been more active in the past—this is a very busy year, what with the chaos goblin I birthed, a slightly unhinged production schedule, and three book releases! I’m feeling very guilty about my untended inbox, but I do love Tumblr. There, I said it! I love Tumblr! I love the multimedia curation! The possibility of long-form communication! The ads that do not, in any way, appear to be stealing my data! Anyway, no, I don’t think I could pick a favorite. There have been too many beautiful interactions, especially from people who’ve been reading my stuff for years.
Well, I guess one that stands out is a seemingly small series of events: I wrote a short friends-to-lovers fic about two engineers. It sparked a conversation on Tumblr between women who were pushed out of STEM at an early age and women in STEM fields who had never seen themselves in fiction before. It led to my YA book, My Mechanical Romance, especially after one user told me she wished she’d had my writing when she was younger. I thought, okay, well, good point, I should tell a story specifically for our younger selves. And now here we are.
What would your specialty be if you were a medeian, and why?
Telepathy. I’m incredibly nosy. I’d love to have a more nuanced reason, but that’s honestly it.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received?
Potentially a bit overused, but the thing that has helped me most is the “you can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page” quote that Google is currently telling me comes from Jodi Picoult (I obviously first heard it on Tumblr). I have always been a pantser, meaning I fly by the seat of my pants when I write (fanfic is very conducive for such things), and I really had to learn to love revision. It doesn’t matter if you get the first draft right. The first draft is just the skeleton. To everyone who struggles with anxiety or creative blocks, I typically think it helps to tell yourself the first draft is allowed to suck. It’s kind of supposed to suck! Don’t romanticize this idea that writing is when the muse hands you the perfect words in perfect sequence. The craft of writing isn’t about the first draft. It’s about everything you do to bring the story to life.
What fuels your interest in dark academia? Do you have a favorite dark academia book/film/series/game?
To me, The Atlas Six is true academia—very The Secret History in terms of having long philosophical discussions about the meaning of art and beauty, except I did it with physics and psychology. It’s dark, of course, because of all the gray morality and institutional rot and inadvisable sexual tension. That’s a feature, not a bug, and I love when authors get a little weird with it. I love Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas, Bunny by Mona Awad, Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth. Academia is weird and messed up by most standards, so the outsiders (BIPOC and queer authors) really do some fascinating work handling its darkness.
The Atlas Paradox comes out in October. Is there anything you can tell us about it?
I personally think it is funnier in the way things are funny when the characters have all begun existentially melting. (I’m an empath, she says chaotically.) People who have read it tell me it’s better than the first book. My publishers tell me hearts will be broken. But I leave all that for others to determine, of course…
Thanks @olivieblake! The Atlas Six is now available everywhere you can get books!
Plain Bad Heroines - Let Me Give You My Thoughts On This (Character Analysis)
**major maaaaajor spoilers ahead**
(Here we begin with the handful of characters from Danforth’s sophomore novel that have found their way into my heart and apparently, this Word document. It didn’t hurt that they were all women that love women. And I mean, they really loved women.)
· Merritt Emmons is easily my favorite character. She’s got that dry, sarcastic humor and air around her that makes it really easy to love her and hate her guts all at the same time. (If she were here, she’d tell us that this was a talent, not a flaw.) I felt personally affronted when characters in PBH didn’t like Merritt, like they were overlooking the diamond in the rough right in front of their faces. Then, like most things, it became pretty clear: Merritt Emmons could be one hell of a bitch at times. But it really only made me love her more. I realized that I identified with her. Yes, about being a queer woman that really fucking loves other women, but also because she was a writer that wanted her writing to stay true to how she wrote it, especially with so many people traipsing all over it and trying to make it into something it’s not. That was where I realized I loved her early on; when she pitched a genuine fit over who was to play Clara Broward. It was something so petty and childish, something so very me to throw a fit in a packed room of professionals when you have no idea about that kind of world and what it demands. But she fought for what she believed in, alright. Until she didn’t. This made me love her some more, incidentally. We got to see Merritt’s character development throughout the novel, and more specifically, we got to watch her bounce back and forth between the person she was too scared to be but wanted more than she could ever admit, and the person she spent twenty long years being; the person she was oh-so-tired of introducing to people. This constant shift between new-Merritt and old, crabby, prickly-Merritt was a very raw and vulnerable thing for us to experience as an audience. Merritt was certainly a lot more refreshing than every one of the overdone-Hollywood-types we became acquainted with within the book. She was mean and arrogant and wildly insecure, yet somehow confident and sure of herself, when it came to her work or her knowledge or anything that had to do with any book written, ever. A walking paradox, that one. Merritt was a good way to remember that real people, not built-and-put-together-by-Hollywood-people don’t always have their shit together, and they can’t always get it together by the end of a novel, albeit a long, six-hundred-page one. I think I’ll cut myself off here, friends. Not that I want to, but I feel we have a lot to get to in these pages, and Merritt Emmons can’t be the star of all of them (lord knows I’d let her, though). To sum it up: Merritt Emmons was the star of this book, for me at least. And I hope for you too. (This means go get your ass over to your closest B&N and buy the damn thing).
· Harper Harper is somewhat of a mystery to me. She was a major character in the story, as well as one of our three protagonists, our three heroines, and yet I have trouble finding her as authentic and outlandish as she tries to come across. What I’m still having trouble deciphering is if this is an intentional character flaw created by our Miss Danforth, or if Harper Harper really has nothing to her besides being completely reinvented and marketed by Hollywood. Even in saying this, I know I have to give Harper credit where it’s due. She’s a proud queer woman in the movie industry, as well as openly queer online and really with just anyone and everyone she meets. She’s known for various flings and love-interests of the week, which is still a gross misrepresentation and stereotype of (masc?) lesbians and how they’re emotionally unavailable and unfaithful, which again is a possibility of the author’s intentional writing, something that we can leave for further discussion. We do get a bit of a glimpse into Harper’s life – her real-life – about how her mother is struggling with her sobriety, how her little brother seems to be caught in the middle of her mother’s messy relationships, and how she really has mixed feelings about how she fits into her new movie-star life. That’s about all we get from Harper, though. And it really is almost enough realness to take away from the fact that everyone else in the world sees Harper as the face of Hollywood, as this thing of beauty and money and badassery instead of a real person. But still not enough. And I could be wrong, friends. I could be pulling all of this out of my ass because Harper Harper is a badass queer woman that took over the movie industry with barely any experience under her belt. Harper Harper took every room she walked into by storm, and she made everybody pay attention to her, and she became the character we had a little crush on, simply because she was that big of a deal. But nothing of substance, not really. Not ever. But perhaps she had been her most real self with Merritt Emmons, in between the quiet pages that we didn’t get to read entirely. Merritt, our dry and arrogant and favorite heroine, had been Harper’s favorite, too. The most credit that I find myself giving Harper is her aid in Merritt’s character development. She brought Merritt out of her shell in a massive way, though at times she did have a hand in driving her back into the said shell. It was flawed, their relationship, which is another authentic Harper Harper insight we saw, as little of it there was. They were hot and cold, on and off, but always so enthralled with each other. And while Harper seemed to have had an impact on Merritt (among other factors), it doesn’t seem like Merritt had the same effect on Harper. I could be wrong and do feel free to correct me, friends, but Harper Harper did not come out the other end of PBH a changed woman. She was not burdened with the weight of a life-changing revelation. She was Harper Harper, as she always was, floating and untouchable, the kind of woman you wished to know, maybe to be, but also the kind you see right through. They’re transparent, friends, that’s what I’m trying to get at here. And they tend to stay that way. And I realize as I’m nearing the end of this, that I sound harsh in my critiques and analysis of Harper. I don’t mean to come off that way, friends, I really don’t. The truth is I love Harper, she’s everything we wish we could be. She’s gorgeous and sought after, can land any girl she wants with the bat of her eyelashes and a lazy smile. But you have to remember, she’s everything we’re not. I can only speak for myself, friends, and I encourage you to speak for yourselves if you find you have anything to add. I never related with Harper the way I did with Merritt’s character, but that doesn’t mean that Harper isn’t a beautiful enigma waiting to be unwrapped. I just don’t happen to be the kind of reader that would know where to begin unwrapping her, if that makes sense. And because I’m afraid it doesn’t, I do believe it’s time to stop with the metaphors and wrap this up nicely for you, friends: Harper Harper is number two on my list of favorite characters from PBH, and that is not something done lightly or by accident. She was one of our three heroines, after all. And a proper heroine she was, friends. Don’t you ever forget it.
· Libbie Packard broke my heart more times than I count, friends. You’ll notice I have kept her maiden name, then. This is intentional, friends, for our Libbie never wanted to be a Brookhants, not really. It wasn’t towards the end of PBH that we learned much of what we now know about Libbie, and how it came about that she had been married (to a man no less!), as well as the very young principal of an all-girls school. Throughout their chapters in the book, Libbie and Alex, her Alex, were seemingly at each other’s throats constantly. There seemed to be a mysterious tension that we as an audience weren’t privy to – but it didn’t stop us from speculating. I found myself drawn to Libbie more than I did her counterpart, and I still can’t point my finger as to why. Libbie seemed sad, right from our first introduction, and Alex always seemed angry and cynical (as a queer woman in 1902, is there any other way to seem?). This might serve as a dual character analysis yet, friends. I’m not sure how much I’ll have to say about our Alexandra Trills, but Libbie Packard deserves a long sentence, or two. You know when something finally clicks into place and you can’t help but just let out a long “ooohhhhhhh”? That’s a recreation of how I looked when I read the explanation of how Libbie Packard became Libbie Brookhants. Learning that she had become pregnant with a baby she didn’t want was mind-blowing enough, and it filled in the blanks of how young, gorgeous Libbie had become the wife of a rich, old, old man. Libbie gave up her child was because she didn’t want to be a mother, and she had originally rejected Harold Brookhants offer of marriage because she didn’t want to be a wife, regardless of false the marriage was. And for a while, Libbie’s new life was amazing; she got to live with her Alex in a beautiful house and became the principal of a promising school. This was the life she’d always wanted. Or was that just what we wanted to believe, friends? Only at the end did we learn that Libbie had rejected Harold Brookhants offer (to live a quiet, queer life with her lover and without the child she clearly didn’t want) because she didn’t want to be tied down; not to Harold, not to anyone. If you think about it, friends, this was exactly the life that she had been living for years to come now. The tension with Alex had much to do with the circumstances surrounding them at Brookhants and the evil that was unfolding before them, but it seemingly had even more to do with the fact that Libbie Packard felt smothered. She was hiding secrets from Alex, secrets that she felt could destroy this already fragile relationship that they had between them. How vastly different it was to read and experience their relationship at the beginning of their love; playful and full of joy, both women giddy with the promise of something new and exciting. To compare that kind of love to the broken, tight-lipped, empty vessel of the relationship they now pretend to have is heartbreaking. And yet, completely understandable. Alex had fallen in love with the Libbie she wanted her to be, not the Libbie she was. Our Libbie wanted to be eternally young; playful and happy, bouncing from city to city with Sara Dahlgren in a sea of eligible bachelors (and bachelorettes!). It was almost a shock to discover that this life Libbie tried so hard to defend and protect was not a life she had ever wanted for herself. Despite this, she loved her Alex and her students, and devoted her life to them. There was that whole business with cheating on Alex with Adelaide the housemaid (don’t even get me started on that broad) but I’d like to extend to you, friends, the fact that I won’t comment on this. Queer relationships in 1902 are definitely not what they are now, complete with century-old curses and dead schoolgirls. Libbie Packard became the 1902-lesbian-headmistress version of our stereotypical bored housewife, stuck in a marriage that she secretly wishes she could be free from. And my heart broke for her, friends, it really did. But she was a heroine all on her own. A deeply intelligent and remarkable woman. Make no mistake, friends. Libbie Packard and Libbie Brookhants differ by more than just a surname. Our young, vivacious Libbie disappeared the moment she accepted Harold Brookhants’ offer, and this is indeed the sad truth of it, friends: Libbie Packard was gone before she could ever find herself. But Libbie Brookhants was our gorgeous, brilliant, queer heroine that never got what she deserved. So, friends, let’s all have a moment of silence for our dearly departed Libbie Brookhants… wherever she is.
· Alexandra Trills is a character that I don’t know where to begin with. Her end is not one that I saw coming, at least not in the gruesome and deranged circumstances that came to surround it. Or maybe, friends, I just didn’t want to acknowledge the clear downwards spiral that our Miss Trills had seemed to be heading towards. Her steadfast and growing obsession with the death of Florence Hartshorn and Clara Broward was apparent in every page we turned, and the following death of Eleanor Faderman did not aid in absolving Alex of her obsession with the one, single copy of a book they had all possessed at one point: The Story of Mary McLane. Alex grew hysterical in her investigation of the novel and whatever evil she believed it had brought to the students of her school. I remember feeling a bit hysterical myself at times, following along with Alex’s scrambled train of thought that never seemed to find a place to stop. She was right, you know, my friends. And now what does she have to show for it? A gruesome death and an eternity of haunting the same grounds, day in and day out? I may not have liked her, and felt like she had been the reason Libbie was so unhappy and stuck in a life that she did not want, but the way Alex’s story had ended really did take me by surprise and break my heart. She deserved a better ending than what she got; she deserved to reconcile and fix her strained relationship with Libbie. Damn it, they deserved to live quiet, happy lives with each other. Neither of them got the endings that they deserved, and God, did they deserve plenty. This, friends, is the hill I choose to die on tonight.
Alright, friends, this is it for my character analysis of Emily Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines! I have a special place in my heart for book characters that you can relate with (or characters that just really make you love them). The way that Emily Danforth brought our heroines to life was remarkable and highly impressive (I say this because it’s decidedly been a while since any book character(s) have weaseled their fictional way into my little heart). It’s rare that I give a book five stars (check out my Goodreads reviews) (oh god, please don’t), and yet halfway through PBH, I knew that this book deserved it. Good book characters are the ones that stick with you long after you’ve closed the book on them, and our heroines are stuck with me. And believe me, friends, I’m certainly not complaining.
