Rating: 4.5 / 5

Book Details:
-Genre: Horror
-Setting: fictional small town in Idaho
-Features an engaging and witty lead character and numerous references to slasher movies

Spoilers included in this book: This book contains spoilers for many 70s and 80s slasher movies.

References to Slasher Movies
When I started reading this, I enjoyed how it felt like an ode to slasher movies of the 70s and 80s. There are so many references, which are fun if you enjoy those movies. It might be a bit harder to enjoy just in the start if you don’t enjoy those movies, but the references are also explained as well. There were some I hadn’t watched, and I didn’t feel like it impacted my ability to follow along or enjoy the story.

Pacing
It did take me a little bit to get fully invested in the story, but once I did, I was hooked. It was a slasher story but also not. In typical Stephen Graham Jones style, he wrote a horror novel that is so much more than what I expected going in (e.g., like how his book Mongrels is a werewolf novel but also so much more is going on than that).

Gore Warning
This is likely not a good choice for anyone who doesn’t do well with gore.

Overall
Stephen Graham Jones continues to write very compelling stories. If you enjoy slasher movies, this is a must read. But, even if you don’t, I still recommend this book!

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones is a retelling of The Boy Who Cried Wolf but this time it is The Girl Who Cried Slasher. This book is a huge homage to the Slasher movie genre and the final survival girl filled with history, facts, and opinions. Where Slasher movies are not known for their characterizations this novel is all about character; as it breakdowns the many layers of the main character Jade. Jade at first is seen as a Slasher obsessed troublemaker, rebelling from society, at the end of the story Jade is explained and grows and it is a truly beautiful thing. I was fortunate enough to get an arc of this book and sadly was not able to read it before publication so I decided to support the author by buying a copy on audible. While I liked to listen to this story because I love horror even with listening I found it hard to follow and needed to sometimes restart chapters because I felt as though I was lost. While I enjoyed was the layers that were revealed of Jade and the bits and pieces about slashers. What I disliked was that Jade was never believed and struggled to get her point across, I know that this sounds like a very uneven review but I did like the spooky aspect and would read more from this author in the future.

Last read of 2021! Brilliant book! My kind of book: thriller, slasher, well written. Can’t wait for the sequel!

There's going to be two, maybe three, camps of people for this book: Those who don't like horror movies, maybe they've seen under 25 in their whole lives. This is not for you. If you haven't watched and are not a fan of at least the big three slasher franchises, I don't think you'll get much out of this book. Then there's people who love horror. As soon as the first leaf falls to the ground at the beginning of fall they run to their living room, light some candles, and watch horror, often rewatching classic slashers. These people are going to love this book.

Our main character Jade is a 17 year old indigenous girl in her final year of high school. She lives in a town that's starting to gentrify which brings a lot of new wealthy people into the town where they're building this whole community. This community is unfortunately built on top of a tragedy which plays really well into the story.

Jade is obsessed with horror, specifically slashers, and the book is split up between the story itself and short interlude type things of Jade's school assignments on the history of slashers which she does in place of other assignments for her history teacher. She is convinced that she's about to live through a slasher in her own life and she's latched on to a girl who has just moved here with her wealthy family because she's convinced that this girl will be the final girl. Chaos obviously ensues from here.

I think the interludes are really interesting because I love taking a look at the significance horror plays in the decades they are released. You can pinpoint what is going on in the world based on what horror is released that year, and it varies by country as well. The interludes are really short so we don't dive too deep but they serve a purpose in moving to story along to the next section and if you're a slasher fan you're definitely going to enjoy these parts.

In a way this book also mimics the pacing of a slasher, starting off kind of slow and campy and ramping up into a fight for your life.

I'm torn on how I feel about this book because it took me so long to get through it that I can't really give it more than three stars but once it hits about the halfway mark it gripped me and I read all the rest in one sitting and I was really into it in the last three chapters especially but ultimately it didn't pull me in the entire time.

MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW is a slow-burn, blood-soaked slasher that will test your horror trivia along with your patience. Much of the excitement in this book is anticipatory, and just when you expect that something big will happen, should happen, could happen, Jones will expertly and quietly steer you away from those thoughts…and then repeat the process quite a few times more.

Patient readers, and those familiar with how Stephen Graham Jones likes to build up the tension and suspense, will be greatly rewarded when the blood and guts hit the fan. And hit it, it does. I’m an avid appreciator of slashers and gore and all things blood-soaked, and this was definitely all of that and more. Even with my near-iron stomach, I still found certain bits to be squicky, so take that as a fair word of warning if you’re not keen on the gore.

The storytelling, particularly seeing things through Jade’s eyes, was a bit of a genius move. And also a bit of a challenge. She has periods where she doesn’t know if she’s awake or if she’s dreaming and, consequently, neither do we. It made for an interesting position, having readers wonder if what were reading is Jade’s reality or some dark part of her mind, and that added such a unique aspect to this tale.

As with many of Jones’ other works, MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW incorporates indigenous characters and offers insight and talking points as to how Native people are treated and, more often than not, mistreated by society. His books aren’t just fantastic horror novels, they’re incredibly insightful and smart as well.

Bottom line — this is a fantastic homage to slasher films, and certainly a fantastic book for slasher fans. 5 gory stars, and I’m putting this one in my top 5 for the year.


*Many thanks to Gallery Books and NetGalley for the digital arc.

This one was a DNF for me. I tried hard to like it but I just couldn't get into it. I did read this author's previous book which I liked it but this one was a struggle.

I was excited for this book, but I had a hard time getting into it and stubbornly refused to DNF. Walls of text and stuck in the mind of a character I did not like.

My Heart is a Chainsaw was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021 and I can't even begin to explain how excited I was to get an ARC of it. It didn't take long for me to realize that this book wasn't for me. I have mixed feelings about the main character. On one hand, I liked her and could relate to her in a way because I know what it feels like for people to think you're weird for liking horror. On the other hand, her obsessive knowledge of horror is annoying. I get when you find something you like you tend to get a little obsessive about it and find out everything about it. But I have never in my life been around someone whose literally every waking hour is thinking and talking about that particular thing. That is unless they have a disability or are really young. As far as I know, the main character didn't have a disability and she definitely wasn't young.
Because of how the main character was written pretty much the whole story is her spouting out facts about slashers. So that means nothing really happens until towards the ending of the book. I wish I had liked the story more but I just found it to be slow.

There were many points in this book when I thought I'd better put it down and and queue up some slashers on Netflix, because I felt the need to keep up with main character's encyclopedic knowledge of the genre. I often had trouble nailing down the tone throughout the story. Were we in the real world? Or a slasher movie? Or something else entirely? Though I suppose that WAS the point.

I LOVED Graham Jonese's The Only Good Indians, and this was unlike his previous book, but still a solid novel. Think more like Grady Hendrix.

I could not get around the writing of this book. I DNFed it around the 10% mark. I've heard from others that this is Jones's writing style so I'm not sure if it's something I can gel with for future books.

I had been looking forward to reading My Heart is a Chainsaw. I’ve only gotten into reading horror this year and that’s thanks to another Steven Graham Jones book. Unfortunately this one didn’t live up to his other works. I honestly think it might just be the main character who kind of talks in a very stream of consciousness way, which honestly made it hard to follow along. I just found myself not really paying attention because I couldn’t get invested in her or the story.

This is a book about the real final girls.

This book subverts all the horror trope to slam into you with an irreverent & bold heroine. She’s not the innocent virgin among wolves, or the good girl staying home to babysit- she’s a real survivor. I think it’s best to go in minimal knowledge, but it’s safe to say this is chilling, clever & going to be added to my list of horror recs.

Thank you so much Netgalley & Gallery Books/Saga Press

Wow. What a ride this one was. Intense and fast paced with a narrator whose reliability I spent the entire book questioning. Fans of slasher flicks will of course love the thousand-and-one references. This book manages to combine slasher, thriller, mystery, horror, and coming-of-age all into one only-slightly-unbelievable story.

Jade, our MC, is both sympathetic and unknowable. She plays her cards so close to the chest that even though we see her every move, there's always the question in the back of the reader's mind of just what exactly Jade is up to and why.

The basics of the story are that Jade, age 17, is an outsider with a love of (obsession with) slasher films. Because of this she is more than ready when life in her small town turns into a real life slasher, complete with nail guns, chainsaws, bear traps, and local ghost legends.

Aside from the obvious slashy-slashy blood and mayhem, there's a deeply uncomfortable underlying story here which is of course the true story, that of a girl who has lived an incredibly screwed up life and her struggle, unrecognized even to herself, I think, to be someone worth saving.

I loved the story but have to admit that I'm somewhat ambiguous about the ending. It seemed an odd choice, who the killer really was, and I've almost convinced myself that it's really something else entirely. But that would be spoilers, so....

Anyway, great book. Intense and fun in some places while incredibly heavy in others. My first SGJ work but I'll definitely be reading more.

I absolutely loved this book. Jade is sometimes hard to love, but I do love her; why else would I literally yell out loud to/at her as she's making a bad choice? Her love of slashers and her encyclopedic knowledge of them is admirable if not astounding. I know this is a horror novel, but it also has heart, brains (not the zombie kind), and a cast of characters that you won't soon forget. What can you do when a real live slasher has come to your town, yet you're the only one that knows or believes it? How do you convince the Final Girl that she is, in fact, the Final Girl? Poor Jade is burdened with all of this, along with just fighting for survival, working her school janitorial job, dealing with her gross father and his drunk friends, earning enough extra credit to finally get enough credits to get her diploma...the list goes on for poor Jade. Whip smart and fast paced, this book just took hold of me from the beginning and did not let up. Horror fans, thriller fans, and fans of great writing are sure to get just as hooked and hopefully love it as much as I did. Cannot wait for Mr. Jones' next book!

Not sure what happened, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I really liked his earlier novel, "The Only Good Indians": the writing was good, the plot was interesting, characters were believable (even if they weren't lovable). in this book, however, I didn't enjoy the writing or the plot (was there one?) and the main character was extremely annoying.

This book is completely amazing. I literally couldn’t put it down. The opening grabbed you by the throat and it never lets you go. I literally lost sleep reading this book.

Well Damn, I didn’t see that one coming… that is, I didn’t expect to not love this book. I’m not new to Stephen Graham Jones. I’ve enjoyed him in the past. The premise of this sounded like a love letter to all the outcasts like Jade who have the blood shed from every slasher movie they’ve seen for the millionth time running through their veins… In other words to me, and my kin.

As I dived it, the first chapter grabbed ahold me with a white knuckled tight grip. But then, as the story progressed, the grip loosened until I reached the final chapters when it grabbed tight again, but not tight enough.

All in all, it was just okay.

Hot off tearing through <em>The Only Good Indians</em>, I’m not sure what I expected out of this one, but the recursive, obsessively referential, heavy meta(l) stylings of <em>My Heart Is a Chainsaw</em> threw me for a loop. More of a like than a love for me, but I still really enjoy watching SGJ do his thing, and the subject matter scratches a certain itch even if the story felt patchy at times.

We have here the tale of a deep nerd, the kind who retreats from daily trauma into her chosen subgenre: horror, and more specifically, slasher films. Life ultimately imitates art, of course, and you will not be shocked when our weirdo hero finds herself inside a slasher cycle of her own, but it’s hard to pin down exactly what you’re reading for the bulk of the book. On one hand, there’s a fascinating whiplash between the paranoid projections from someone who has literally seen too many horror movies and the actual horror unfolding, but even as the book and plotting often feel a bit messy, there’s something that feels just a bit too neat about it all, how Jade’s fixation on tropes and archetypes means those genre signifiers are always subtly subverted or reconfigured in a postmodern Scream type of way (which is, not coincidentally, probably the single most frequently referenced slasher film in the book), but the tropes are ultimately fulfilled nonetheless. It wasn’t quite the genre transcending work of genius I was hoping for after reading SGJ’s last book, but for something that exists squarely within the genre mold, it was certainly playful and inventive, even if the narrative thrust didn’t seem to spring so much from the world of the story as from the main character’s need to see her fantasies made flesh. Plot driven by theme and character, then, which can certainly work, but it can be hard to stay fully immersed when the construct twists itself in too many knots and starts to feel artificial.

A word of warning: the slasher references are often obscure, and even when they’re not, they reference details even committed fans might not have fresh at hand. I hope you know the names of the individual characters in every major slasher franchise, and I’m not talking about the slashers themselves; we get that level of detail casually referenced a dozen times a page. I’ve seen thousands of horror movies, but I haven’t committed them all to heart, and I could barely keep up. SGJ clearly has endless faith in his readers, which I suppose is nice, but anyone picking this up on a lark with no knowledge of the genre would be lost inside the first 20 pages.

I think the best way to put it is that the book is exactly as lurid, absurd, nonsensical, and FUN as the stories it puts on a pedestal, though there’s quite a bit more heart on display. Jade, the main character, she of the titular chainsaw heart, is wounded but indomitable, and easily the best part of the book. It sounds like SGJ will be rounding this out into a trilogy; quibbles aside, I look forward to seeing where this all leads.

Amazing book! Loved this story and highly recommend it! I look forward to more books by this author!

Jade Daniels is a slasher-obsessed half-Indian almost-high school graduate living in Proofrock, Idaho. She is obsessed with the idea that a slasher is coming to Proofrock, and she believes she needs to educate a new entrant to the town, Letha Mondragon, who she has dubbed the "final girl," on all the ins and outs of being the last survivor in a slasher. Jade pretty much eats, breathes, and sleeps slashers - each chapter is followed by a "Slasher 101" essay that Jade writes for her history teacher, and is intended to give the reader a background of slashers. She eventually bundles all of these up and gives them to Letha as prep for her day in the sun as a final girl, but Letha doesn't take it seriously. Finally, when others start to believe that there may be a slasher on the loose, it might be too late to take Jade's advice.

I am so, so truly bummed to say that I did not like this book. I really enjoyed [book:The Only Good Indians|52180399] and was so excited to read this one given the stellar ratings that I've seen so far. It was a highly anticipated release of 2021 for me and I typically love the horror genre (although I admit slashers are not usually my preferred sub-genre).

But there was so much that just felt off to me - the number of plot threads, the pacing, the tone, even the "horror" elements were just not all that well executed. The first 80% of the book is so painfully slow and boring that I almost DNF'd it many times over. I kept going because so many reviews have said that the last act of the book is totally worth staying for, but I kept waiting and waiting and not seeing the payoff I was expecting.

Jade is not a reliable narrator, and honestly, I don't like how she was written, how she thinks, or how she acts - she's kind of an insufferable character who cannot shut up about this niche topic that no one knows or cares about (I'm sorry!). I'll also say that the way the audiobook narrator played her did not do Jade any favors. I know deep down, she's hiding in the world of slashers as a way of dealing with her trauma, using these stories to protect herself. But this single-minded focus, her being so closed-off to anyone trying to know her or reason with her, it makes it hard to empathize or connect with her. She's also clearly living so much in her own head and her own world that I found myself struggling to parse out what was real from what was imagined.

I was also really thrown off by all of the different plot lines that SGJ tries to insert. There's elements of slashers, elements of supernatural horror, obviously the constant references to slasher films, keeping track of all of the characters in Proofrock and Terra Nova, oh lord. It becomes increasingly hard to follow everything that's going on, and I have no idea what purposes some of these plot lines served other than to confuse the reader.

Sadly, this was a total hard pass from me. Thank you to Gallery Books for the ARC via Netgalley!