This incredible thriller kept me on the edge of my seat until the last page. The characters draw you in and the plot is fast paced. I really enjoyed it and looking forward to recommending to friends.

Stephen Graham Jones has such a unique and unorthodox writing style that I find intoxicating.
This book is absolutely a love letter to slasher films and a must read for any slasher fans out there.

That doesn't mean this book isn't without its faults.
My first issue is the constant slasher references. (This coming from someone who is obsessed with slashers and has seen ever one mentioned in this book). There were so many that it slowed the pacing, made the first half of the book a bit tedious and didn't really add much to the plot.
My second issue (and it's a big one) is that this book is much too similar to his previous novel 'The Last Final Girl.'
Similarities include:
~The main character being a girl who is obsessed with slasher films
~The main character relates the circumstances around her to slasher films in order to cope with a not-so-great home life
~The main character uses her knowledge of slashers to navigate around cliched horror scenarios and survive
~An overabundance of horror movie references and insights

That being said, this book (while similar to it's predecessor) is tonally difference. This book is more raw, real and dark. This is largely thanks to the main character. Personally, I loved the character of Jade and related to her so hardcore! Much like her, I've always used horror as a form of comfort and have a particular attachment to slasher films. Jade is probably the best character I've read this year. I love her strength, her vulnerability, and her spirit.
Other high points include a nice not-so-subtle nod to "Friday the 13th" (which is hands down my favorite slasher), an abundance of gore, and an ending that will no doubt haunt your dreams.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Good book! By the end, i had a list of like 10 slasher movies I wanted to see after the main character is constantly referencing them. I feel like this is Stephen Graham Jones's love letter to 80's and 90's slasher movies. Be warmed though....the prose he uses is a bit unorthodox so you really have to pay attention to the dialogue.

One of the things I love most about Stephen Graham Jones is his unique writing style. This man writes horror like no other. I just discovered him last year and with that being said, he has easily become one of my favorite authors.

Jade, a half-Indian high school senior in a gentrified rural town with a haunting past, uses her obsession with 80s slasher movies to cope with her traumatizing childhood, family dynamic and rejection from the entire town. When a dead body of a murdered European tourist is discovered in Indian Lake, she becomes infatuated with the idea of a real life slasher session beginning in her town. She wasn’t wrong…

My Heart is a Chainsaw is a slow burn. At first, I was distracted and slightly annoyed by all the slasher references but it all tied together nicely for a gory and intense ending. If you enjoy slashers and coming of age horror, pick this one up!

Thank you to Stephen Graham Jones, @netgalley, @sagasff and @simonandschuster for my advanced copy in return for review. My Heart is a Chainsaw will be published 8/31/21.

Thank you so much #netgalley for sending me My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. A true honor to read this book. I really enjoyed it so much more than The Only Good Indians. I was honestly nervous about reading another Stephen Graham Jones because I had a hard time with his writing style. I loved the character Jade. Her love of horror movies and her dealings with her family issues. This book kept me on my toes and I couldn't put it down. It was a disturbing slasher story. A definite read for horror fans.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for this ARC. I’m happy to provide my honest review.
#NetGalley #GalleryBooks #StephenGrahamJones
“My Heart is a Chainsaw” is a delightful homage to the delicious horror/slasher genre. This novel tells the story of Jade Daniels, who is understandably angry after an abusive childhood and takes solace in horror movies, particularly slasher movies.
This book was delicious!!! Jade’s extensive knowledge of horror movies reminds me of me in the best way. I loved all the horror information. It’s strangely comforting. Thankfully, not for the same reasons as Jade. This first part of this book is a slow burn. Because Stephen Graham Jones has such a distinctive style of writing, he makes you work for the payoff. The payoff does come, however, and it is glorious!! This is the type of gore that I love!! This author never disappoints me.
This book, like all of his others, is not an easy read in any sense of the word. His writing style forces you to pay attention and take your time. He is the master of the truly slow burn. This book can, occasionally, be a bit too slow. Believe me when I say that it’s worth it.
Please read this, preferably around Halloween.

This title will be included in the upcoming July 2021 issue of FANGORIA magazine. Publishers can contact the reviewer directly for a PDF copy of the write up when it becomes available.

Jones’ protagonist, Jade, is a 17 year old girl with a bleak future. She’s also witty, creative (at least with her hair), and a slasher film aficionada. She thinks a movie-like slasher event is going to unfold in her little town.

Jade is awesome in all her sarcasm, intelligence, and drive. I wanted to reach into the book and rescue her from her dysfunctional family and missed opportunities. She is the best part of the book and worth reading just to cheer her on.

Other positives of the book: Jones’ prose is easy to “listen” to in your head as you read. It’s like Jade is sitting right there, telling you her story. The other characters come alive in the dialogue passages. (Jones is SO good at dialogue.) The reading experience was a pleasure.

If you are familiar with horror’s popular slasher films over the past few decades (e.g., Friday the 13th), then you will get even more out of My Heart Is a Chainsaw.

Plenty of gore for horror fans.

I did run into a couple of negatives, though. Jones alludes to slasher films so often that if you are more of a reader than a movie watcher, there’s a lot that will go over your head.

Also, Jade’s essays for her teacher, starting back when she was 14, sound awfully mature and cogent. I didn’t believe that a 14-to-17-year-old who struggles in school wrote them. (And they could get rather lengthy, so I lost interest a couple of times.)

Finally, the middle of the story is slow. I almost DNF’d but glad I didn’t because the fun (horror “fun”) part of the book starts about two-thirds of the way through.

Overall, this is another great SGJ’s story, but not my favorite. I received an advanced copy of My Heart Is a Chainsaw from NetGalley, and I’m happy to share my thoughts. Four stars.

First and foremost, My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones is incredible. While I thought The Only Good Indians was only "good", I saw so much potential and knew I had to read more of this author. Mapping the Interior was amazing and I plan to read more-which is why SGJ is climbing the ranks of my favorite authors. My Heart is a Chainsaw tells the story of Jade, a troubled teen with a deep love for slasher films and uses them as a way to cope with the real life horrors that plague her; but the slashers she loves might be crossing the line from fiction into reality.

The book starts off slow but this time is so well used to help get to know Jade outside of her rough exterior. However, once you hit that 40%ish mark, the book moves at break-neck speed and goes headlong into the blood soaked waters of the lake that Jade lives by. There are some scenes in this book that are so haunting that they will really stick with me. The writing was so vivid that it made Jade's small town truly feel lived in with a rich history accompanying it.
This book also has a subtle but effective commentary on the gentrification of Indigenous-Americans, something that is rarely discussed in the media. This real-life horror was seamlessly woven into the hack-and-slash horrors of the story.
-I can also see this being perfectly adapted into an HBO mini-series ala Sharp Objects.
TW: sexual assault, self-harm, suicide, child abuse, gore

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

I tried extremely hard to get into this but the writing style just wasn’t for me at all. I was confused for a lot of this book.

Simply brilliant and like nothing I’ve read before! This book did take a little bit to get going but when it took off it never stopped. I enjoyed our, MC, Jade very much and I find myself thinking back on her story even now. A truly well-written character. And SGJ can write some killer prose (pun intended).

Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for the ARC. I have already preordered the hardback.

Wow! What a finish! This book is a bit tough to review, as I found it uneven and very slow at times (sometimes even excruciatingly so) but then there are portions of such chaotic, gory brilliance that all the plodding that came before is largely forgiven.

In a lot of ways, My Heart is a Chainsaw feels like the big sister companion piece to The Last Final Girl, so it’s interesting that I read them back to back. The general structure of both books is similar, complete with a quirky oddball protagonist who has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things slasher. In Chainsaw, we follow Jade, a self-identified eccentric outcast who serves as our local guide to the isolated lakeside town of Proofrock. In this book, Jones better succeeds at interweaving Jade’s slasher obsession into the narrative, largely delving into various movie tropes and insider knowledge via “history” papers she drops off into her patient teacher’s inbox for extra credit. While this works okay structurally, I still found some of the slasher movie info-dumps/references inserted into the story dialogue to be grating rather than charming. Life hasn’t been kind to Jade, and slasher movies are her comfort and chosen escapism, but that doesn’t mean I found the multiple diatribes about topics such as Jaws’ or Halloween’s pervasive cultural influence to be necessary or beneficial to the story. Often times the story stalled because the only thing happening was Jade obsessing about some particular facet of slasher lore.

What elevated this book for me, from a middling to a great review, was the horror elements. The opening prologue and the final third of the book are balls to the wall slashertastic blood baths that would make the greats like Carpenter or Craven applaud. Jones’ love for the genre is evident from the get go, and he does a fantastic job of balancing bone chilling with B-movie gorefest in a way that even newcomers to horror will appreciate. Jade steps into her own by the time the credits roll, and her journey of self-actualization throughout Chainsaw is earnest and builds to a satisfying end. Jade does not become a formidable protagonist in spite of her past trauma, but because she comes to accept herself for who she is and what she’s been through. An emotional yet subtle journey, contained within a book that’s anything but.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is at once a love letter to the slasher films of the 70s and 80s and an ode to the tenacity of the human spirit. Full of surprises and shocks right up until the very end!

Gory. Gross. Disgusting. Amazing. I loved this so much, and I'm normally not one for gore. SGJ just has a way with words. The man can write like none other. I will read anything he puts out.

I've been meaning to pick up this author for a while now since everybody compares him to Jordan Peele. I went into this expecting to be wowed and obsessed and in awe of the whole story...but in actuality, I wasn't a huge fan of this. I think the concept is great and I came to really enjoy and appreciate the second half, but I had a lot of problems (mostly personal preference) that limited my experience and made me more frustrated than anything else.

Number one, and my biggest...complaint? is that this book is for a very niche group of people. Even though I myself did enjoy parts of it and I had some knowledge that buoyed me through the book, this book is about slashers and I think to fully comprehend and enjoy it you need to have that background knowledge going in. While I could vaguely understand some of the more obvious references, a lot of the films and characters and quotes described are very very niche and so I felt like half the time I was just trying to understand what was being referenced. Which I think is more on me than the author — I knew it was going to be about slashers, so I should've done my research probably — but I think if you're looking to read this, keep that in mind!

I also had a hard time getting into the narration and voice of the main character. I came to really love her as the story went on, but especially at first it was just...difficult to read. But again, that could be personal preference. I just did not click with the writing style, and I also wasn't a huge fan of the little extra credit Slasher 101 essays that were sprinkled throughout the book. I felt like they didn't add much, and most of the time I barely knew what they were trying to say anyway.

What I will say, is that even though I had a hard time getting into the story and I thought the beginning was very very slow, I still really enjoyed this. Especially the second half! I think once we started getting some more killing and gore I was interested in seeing where it all was going. And that ending was just...wild. Totally worth the slow beginning just for that big scene at the end.

I think some people (most people) won't vibe with this book, and personally I wanted more from it, but I think it really made me interested in pursuing more horror and maybe picking up more from this author. For the right person — someone who KNOWS slashers — I think this book could be really really groundbreaking. But for someone who's just passively interested in some scary movies and a good horror mystery...this wasn't really that special to me. But I so wish it was!!

Anyone that's been following Stephen Graham Jones for any length of time, either as a reader or just through social media, knows that the man is a hardcore slasher film aficionado. The dude loves this particular subgenre of horror and My Heart Is A Chainsaw is his cleverly crafted, oh so loving ode to Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Ghostface, and every Final Girl that (at least temporarily) put an end to their reign of terror.

Like Jones, his heroine, recent high school grad Jade, is a slasher flick obsessive, so full of trivia that it literally spills out of her. She's a social pariah, but when the bodies of murdered teenagers start appearing around town, she's the only one who has any clue what's happening. She's seen enough movies and knows enough about the urban legends of Proofrock, Idaho that only one thing makes any sort of sense at all. Obviously, there's a slasher at work here, and she believes that recent rich-girl transplant, Letha Mondragon, is the soon-to-be final girl. Jades takes it upon herself to try and train Letha in all-things horror so that the young woman can survive her destiny in this slasher flick come to life.

I'm fairly certain everything Jones knows about slashers (and he is indeed a considerable fount of knowledge) makes its way onto the page here via Jade, but also through the book's tone, rhythm, and attention to tropes. My Heart Is A Chainsaw is a slow-burn sort-of mystery as Jade attempts to figure out who the killer is. Her efforts put her up against the small-town Sheriff and spark a few other interesting conflicts, especially between her and her alcoholic father.

Jade herself is an intriguing and immediately captivating character, and I love that she sees herself more as a mentor and guide for Letha rather than the final girl. Jade isn't a hero and knows as much, and even goes so far as to adamantly refuse to cast herself as the lead of this movie turned real, despite being our central character. It's a nicely subversive move from an author who routinely subverts expectations and, in the process, elevates the material to the next level. In fact, it's because of Jones' subversive nature that I constantly found myself questioning Jade's mental state and reliability, and was wholly engaged in discovering what she might say or do next.

My Heart Is A Chainsaw is a nicely complicated and richly themed slasher flick in prose form. We get some neat meditations on class and social status, and how those elements can impact the final girl trope, as well as how genres continually evolve and build off what came before. It's slick and smart, and the intense, chaotic, bloody climax practically begs for a big-screen adaptation. Jones is a potent force and, having just received two Stoker Awards a week ago for his 2020 novel, The Only Good Indians, and the novella Night of the Mannequins, this book is another clear win for him.

A Tough Read

I was anxious to read this book because of the hype and expected to be bedazzled with the premise and the slasher obsessions. I was not bedazzled; in fact, I was underwhelmed. It is a fact that I have not read much of this genre, but it shouldn’t make any difference. An author should be able to reach almost any reader to the point that the reader understands what’s going on. I fell into the first chapter easily and expected it to gain momentum; it didn’t for me. It failed miserably.

The author switched from third person (telling us about the trauma of Jade’s childhood) and then I was lost when the slasher obsessions became her way of coping. I didn’t know what was real after a few chapters. Was she disturbed and fixated on her abusive childhood? It was difficult to get through, even the last few chapters were convoluted. The book was disturbing, that is indisputable.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Gallery/Saga Press for this pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

I love horror movies. I was in my teens for the grindhouse movies of the 70s, in my twenties for the slashers of the 80s. My friends and I worked our way methodically through the horror section of our local indy video rental store (and a special shoutout to the late, lamented B-Ware Video in Lakewood, Ohio, an entire store devoted to horror, horror adjacent, and just plain weird videos). All of this is to say that I feel like I know at least a little bit about slasher films—at least I thought I did, before reading My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. I was wrong.

Jade Daniels is the town outcast of the tiny mountain lake town of Proofrock. She exists on the margins—the margins of her abusive family, the margins of her high school, the margins of life. The only thing keeping her from disappearing completely, and it’s touch and go, is her love, no, her obsession, with slasher films. Jade looks at life, at everything, through the prism of her beloved slashers. She believes fervently in the hard and fast rules they are guided by, in the life lessons they teach. She clings to them like a lifeline. The trope of The Final Girl is real to her.

Proofrock, and the lake it’s built around, Indian Lake, has seen more than its share of tragedy and murder, both depressingly human and supernatural. So it’s not a far stretch for Jade to see a new slasher cycle playing out in real time, and to seek a final girl (it can’t be her, she’s not worthy) she can impart her wisdom to, in the hopes of stopping the mayhem to come. Jones makes Proofrock, Indian Lake, and the people who live there feel achingly real. It feels lived in. We get to know them all, so that when bad things start to happen, it hits hard.

Where Jones truly excels, however, is in Jade’s voice. She narrates the story in a breathless, compulsively readable stream of description, snark, and above all slasher history. Everything that happens, every scene, has an antecedent in the slashers, and Jade is happy to expound at length. Her knowledge (Jone’s knowledge) is encyclopedic and endlessly entertaining. With Jade, Jones has created one of my favorite characters of all time. She uses slasher films as a way to keep the world at arm’s length, as armor against being hurt. The thing is, she’s also using it to hide. Behind the slashers, behind the dyed hair, combat boots, petty crime, and universal fuck you to the world, is, I think, a girl yearning for love and acceptance. She wants to belong, just on her terms. Jade is so achingly real, and so heartbreaking, that My Heart Is a Chainsaw is sometimes painful to read, but the story is so compelling that you won’t be able to put it down. The final quarter of the novel moves with unrelenting fury toward an ending so surprising, yet so perfectly right, that I can’t imagine it ending any other way.

One other thing. For the one teacher Jade seems to actually like, her history teacher, she has written a series of papers the define and explain slasher films, a real history of the genre as seen through her eyes. Those treatises are sprinkled throughout My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and I found myself looking forward to each one. Through them, we get a crash course in slashers, but perhaps more importantly, we get to know Jade better.

I only discovered Jones a couple of years ago, but he’s quickly become one of my favorite horror writers. Hell, one of my favorite writers, period. After Mongrels, The Only Good Indians, and now My Heart Is a Chainsaw, he has confirmed his position as one of the very best in the field. Jones writes with heart, passion, and a brutal lyricality of language and voice that is always distinct, and always just right for the story he’s telling. My Heart Is a Chainsaw debuts on August 31, 2021. Pre-order it today, and be prepared to fall in love with Jade.

I knew I’d be giving this book 5 stars before I was even finished with the first few chapters. Jade quickly became one of my favorite literary characters to date—not because she’s particularly likable, but because she’s quite the opposite. Put bluntly, this girl is insufferable, but in the most heartbreakingly endearing way. She has built a defense mechanism out of nightmares—how can you not love her for that? Her tireless passion for horror movies (excuse me, SLASHERS), sardonic wit, and sudden moments of vulnerability had me both laughing out loud and crying internally. For every time I cringed at her incessant recitals of horror facts (to people who most definitely did not care), there were at least two other times I had to admire her humor and earnesty. She is an incredibly realistic character, especially for a teen/new adult. She’s annoying, holier-than-thou, misguided, and shortsighted—but she is also intelligent, perceptive, brave, and sensitive. She sees through adults in a way only the young typically can. She hasn’t lost her childlike ability to call things what they are. Nor has she forgotten, as so many of us do as we move through adulthood, that grown-ups aren’t smarter simply because they’re older. TL;DR: I love this damn kid.

I found this book’s narrative style (third-person narrative interspersed with first-person essays written by Jade) surprisingly effective. Somehow, I felt more immersed in Jade’s own mind reading about her in third-person than I have while reading other books actually written in first-person. There is something about this book that doesn’t just “tell” or “show;” it makes you feel. I felt like I was experiencing Jade’s thoughts in real time, right there along with her. I think this is partially due to the stream-of-consciousness-esque vibe much of the book has, punctuated by pop culture references/slasher film facts/town history retellings that felt quite random and confusing at times. I felt like I was bouncing around Jade’s thoughts right along with her, in the often disorganized and nebulous way we actually think in real life. It was disconcerting and even frustrating at times, but it was real. As someone who has experienced depression, I felt a haunting sense of familiarity with how confused I felt at times while reading. I didn’t always understand how we got from Point A to Point B in Jade’s head, which is *exactly* how I feel when I am lost, depressed, and searching for comfort wherever I can find it (just like Jade). I think it’s absolutely beautiful how Jones was able to recreate that sensation on paper.

The story itself was interesting, well-paced, and unlike anything I’ve seen before (which is saying something, seeing as it’s based around slasher flicks and I’m a major horror book/movie fan). There were some times the story felt like it was dragging, but as Jade herself says, that’s what experiencing a slasher movie is like in real life. You see all the in-between scenes and stages of the story unfolding. I enjoyed every minute I got to spend with Jade, even the “boring” ones where she was picking up trash while imagining how she would kill people or wandering around annoying the adults of Proofrock out of their tired little minds.

I will say I didn’t *love* the ending; it was a little too fantastical for my tastes and there were some loose ends I desperately wanted to be tied up. However, I loved the first 90% of the book to offset my disappointment.

In conclusion: As our lord Lady Gaga once said, “talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it.” That is how I feel about this book and I would like to lodge a formal complaint against Stephen Graham Jones because I am angry I have to just go back to reading books that AREN’T this one now.

Deepest gratitude to Netgalley for providing me the opportunity to read this book in advance.

Synopsis & Quick Thoughts
My Heart is a Chainsaw is the latest horror novel by author Stephen Graham Jones. Jade Daniels is an outcast in the gentrifying rural lakeside town of Proofrock. She lives her life through the lens of a horror film, relishing in the comfort they bring her as she imagines there’s a killer seeking revenge in her community. But when blood is shed in the waters of Indian Lake, Jade puts her encyclopedic knowledge of horror to work, predicating plots and trying to help her final girl to victory.

Gah, Stephen Graham Jones does it AGAIN ladies and gents and everyone in between! He’s absolutely solidified himself as an auto-buy author for me for any of this upcoming works. This is both a violent and poignant read. Admittedly, it was slow starting off and I didn’t fully understand the reveal, but Jones writes such good horror that the negatives didn’t impact me too much.

Positives
I feel like it may be hard for you to believe me when I tell you this book is a beautiful blend of horror and a moving story of self-discovery. This book demands a lot from its readers and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being pretty polarizing. If you’ve been following along with me and my horror recommendations, you’ll know they tend to be a little against the grain of what’s popular on Goodreads. I suspect book will follow that trend. This book left me tired, a little grossed out, and rereading the last page or so multiple times.

Strangely, this book is strange in that I’m having a hard time pinpointing an exact list of positive things. It was just good. If you’ve liked my horror recommendations in the past, or you read and enjoyed The Only Good Indians, I really don’t think you’ll regret picking this one up.

Negatives
Much like his other recent novel, The Only Good Indians, this book too struggles with a pacing problem. The first chapter/prologue brings the horror hard and fast, and then the action grinds to a halt for the next 60% of the book. Don’t get me wrong, the last 40% of the book is fast and gory and everything I want in a horror, but it does take a while to get there and I could see some people not having the patience to keep going with this one. While I’ve grown accustomed to Jone’s writing style by now, it’s much the same as his previous novel, and that was a negative for me then.

On a very short and small plot related note, I didn’t fully understand the slasher reveal at the end of the novel. It’s probably a metaphor and I’m just not big brained enough to understand it. Maybe there are more paranormal/supernatural elements in this book than I picked up on. Anyways, it wasn’t my favorite thing.

Rating & Final Thoughts
I’m going to give My Heart is a Chainsaw 3.5 out of 5 stars. I think if you’re wanting to try a Stephen Graham Jones book, start with The Only Good Indians. If you vibe with that, give this one a go. I think this novel definitely takes a certain personality type to enjoy it. I really did; I just wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.