Critics of horror love to call the genre sensationalist or lowbrow, but the horror subgenre that earns the most and the most severe critical barbs is the slasher. Focusing on physically attractive yet mentally unobservant characters who are merely there to die in horrible and creative ways, the plot in these tales are often seen as just a way to get the victims in front of the killer. But horror is also great at subverting expectations and Stephen Graham Jones has greatly subverted the expectations of slasher critics with his latest book My Heart is a Chainsaw. Not only does this book give a beating, feeling heart to the slasher genre, it may also be Jones’s most poignant and emotional work.

The book follows Jennifer “Jade” Daniels, a young girl who just graduated high school, but she doesn’t have much to look forward to in life in small-town Idaho by scenic Indian Lake. With her mother abandoning the family and her father being the town drunk, no one really expects much of Jade. But Jade knows that a killer as evil as Freddy Krueger and as unstoppable as Jason Voorhees is coming to her small town to lay waste to it, just as a cadre of billionaires are ready to spend massive amounts of money to build their vacation homes here. But money won’t stop the terror that’s coming. It falls to Jade and her encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies to find a final girl to stop this evil and save everyone, if the town even deserves saving.

If there is one thing one can expect from Stephen Graham Jones is his ability to take a reader’s expectations and turn them on their head. Yes, he demonstrates his love and knowledge of the slasher genre, especially in the chapters displaying Jade’s extra credit assignments, but there is more to this book than blood and body counts. This is a heartfelt, tragic, and soaring story that showcases all of Jones’s talent as a writer along with his love of horror. Jade is put through the emotional wringer in this story, but so is the reader. The ending of this book is one of the most powerful I have ever experienced. Yes, there will be blood and death and destruction, but its emotional core is what makes this book so powerful. This book is indeed like a chainsaw and the heart of the reader will be cut through like a block of wood.

I feel like every book podcast, bookstagram, book tok I follow goes wild for Stephen Graham Jones. As someone who grew up watching slasher/horror movies this book seemed like it would be right up my alley. I enjoy the papers that are interspersed talking about specific slasher tropes and movies. And I appreciate that there is a more weighty edge to this novel. I'm glad that I have been able to read this book and have an introduction to this author.

A horror obsessed teen sees the signs of an impending slasher in her hometown as the perfect, innocent final girl shows up in at her school just before the bodies start piling up. But of course, she's the only one who sees it, and despite all her warnings, none of the authority figures in town believe her. Full of horror tropes and twists. The point at which we find out the true slasher is a bit abrupt and some pressing questions are left unanswered, but overall a really good read for the spooky season.

TW: mentions of child molestation, rape, incest, and (obviously) murder

I wanted to like this book, but the references to people like Shooting Glasses just kind of confused me and made it hard to keep reading because I felt like I had missed something. I liked the suspense and thrills, but put it down 8% of the way. Rating it 3 stars because I didn't get far and it seems like a promising book. I would buy it for a friend. It just wasn't for me.

Well, here we are, four months (egads) since my last post. I have nothing to blame but wellness (or lack thereof), pandemic brain and malaise, family emergency and probably just sheer lack of gumption. I have a ton of catching up to do and I don't want to let good titles get short shrift because my act hasn't been together, so...

Below are a few (somewhat) brief $.02 opinions about books I've read or listened to recently. This first catchup set happens to include some of the best books I read this year. I hope you'll consider one or two for your own TBR stack if they strike your fancy.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones

If SGJ's 2020 book, The Only Good Indians, hadn't lured me with its cover and set me off on a SGJ marathon (instantly a must-read author for me), the cover of 2021's offering would have gotten me. SGJ is often billed as horror, but I'm not sure that entirely fits. Certainly there are horror components, but his work defies genre for me. Heart is certainly a thrilling love letter to slasher films and its protagonist, Jade Daniels, writes all of her English papers based on the theme (one of the coolest parts of the book). Jade is also certain her town of Proofrock is a place destined to become a horror movie - where the masked killer comes back to seek revenge. She even has all the normal slasher film "roles" cast with locals. But of course when things start to go wrong, no one will believe her. This book is difficult to describe in worthy words, so I'm simply going to encourage you to give it a try if you have even the slightest warm spot for slasher films.

I loved The Only Good Indians and Mongrels so I jumped at the chance to read this book. But the main character was so awful that I had to put the book down and walk away to read something else. I can see what Stephen Graham Jones was going for but it just didn't work for me. While I didn't DNF the book, it was also way too easy to put down. Skip this and read one of his other books.

Note: This review is of an ARC which I received for free.

Jade Daniels is not your typical high school girl -- at least, not as far as the movies are concerned. Jade is the outcast, from the wrong side of the tracks, the slasher movie obsessed freak who exists on the periphery of society. She can wax eloquent about the history of the horror sub-genre, but she's a bit lacking in the social skills department.

Jade spends a lot of time recasting the world in terms of a slasher movie. She should be ready when that slasher movie starts to become a reality.

The problem, well on of them, is that reality doesn't always follow movie logic. Are her assumptions going to lead to safety or are they twisting the way she sees things, leading to her doom? Can she give the Final Girl a crash course in survival in time to save her, or the town, or even herself?

It is natural to draw comparisons to Grady Hendrix' Final Girl Support Group, but where that book deals with a world where slashers are real and the Final Girls have to learn to continue to survive, this title deals with the real world which happens to be mimicking a slasher.

At least, Jade thinks it is.

This book was awesome! It reminded me of The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix. I loved how this story was told and the unique voice of the main character. This book was unusual and unlike anything I have ever read!
I plan to read some more of SGJ.'s backlist now. Great read!!

Jade Daniels loves slasher movies. They comfort her from the realities of her life. She is an angry, half-Indian outcast living with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. Jade believes her quickly gentrifying rural lake town, Proofrock, is on its way to being the site of a real-life version of the horror movies she loves. As blood starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake it seems that the town is wrong and Jade’s fever dream ranting about a killer on the loose might just be true.

MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW is filled with horror movie nostalgia that will warm any cinephile's heart. Jade’s knowledge of horror movies is an intricate part of who she is as a person and where her life is taking her. When events turn bleak in her hometown of Proofrock, her knowledge may also become the thing that might save her. Jade is a deeply layered character who took me a bit of time to bond with, but as Jones starts to reveal more about her, it's hard not to care deeply for Jade. The town of Proofrock is filled with an interesting and often unlikable cast of secondary characters who help to make the story well rounded.

I’ve seen a lot of mixed reviews for this book and I think ultimately that comes down to the intensity with which Jones fills this story with movie references. This book feels like an homage for the greats of the genre, but there are a lot of references that if you’re not a follower of horror movies you might find boring or pointless to the story. For me, they were perfect and what made me love this story. I can’t wait to see where the trilogy will go next!

50 States of Horror Challenge: Idaho

This is my first time reading Stephen Graham Jones and it will not be the last. I love a good horror book but this one stands out because it revolves around Jade-the young town outcast who is a little too into horror movies for pretty much everyone's taste. When she comes up with this idea that her town is about to embark on its very own horror sequence-sinister presence, evil villain, final girl who will be the savior of them all-it all seems like a way overactive imagination at work. This is a very slow buildup to the conclusion but the end definitely surprised me. I would describe this as the book form of a very unique horror movie. Recommend to all horror fans.

I picked this up several times, hoping to like it. I couldn't get into it at all, and that was possibly because of the horror and gore aspects of the book, but I am just NOT in a place for this right now.

Stephen Graham Jones is becoming quite the intriguing author. I especially enjoy the elements regarding local folklore (particularly for the indigenous characters) that can be found in his stories.

I also am surprised at the number of books in the last few years to reference "final girls." These are the girls in a scary story who survive the massacre and end up killing the killer. It is a fascinating concept that several authors have touched on quite well.

This was a fascinating and winding story, but a few points do get a bit weird, even for me.

This book is told directly from the main character Jade. The reader is trapped in her mind and takes a backseat to all of her deeds, thoughts, and obsessions. Jade eats, breathes, and sleeps in retro-classic slasher and horror movies from the past. When strange things begin to happen in the area that she lives in, she has to try to separate fact from the fiction. It turns out Jade's mind is a twisted place to be. I really struggled getting and staying into this book. It almost got the point that it felt like some kind of informational comparison piece on final girls in many of the movies and what made them the ideal person to stand up to save the day. I think it would have been more effective to move into another perspective when the action begins. The rampant thoughts that were going through Jade's head took away from the action parts. The dynamic between the poor and the new rich area of town was unique, however the rich people ended up just being names and having no real rationale as to what makes them valuable to the story, or sets them apart as potential targets. This was a bit distracting. Overall, I ended up liking this book and would definitely recommend this to people that are die hard horror fans and are educated on slashers. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

This is a love letter to slasher films. NOT horror, as our main character Jade Daniels makes clear, but specifically slasher films.

What does a slasher film need (according to Jade)?

1. A Blood Sacrifice. This comes at the beginning of the book, and is as terrifying an opening as you could want. It's got all the ingredients: good looking young people, a bit of titillation, a black lake, and transgression. A side note: the hapless young couple in the intro are Dutch, and I know that the author is friendly with a Dutch horror author, so I wonder if this was a tip of the hat?

2.Adults being useless. Obviously, adults cannot believe that something is actually going on, or this whole thing might not get off the ground. As we're introduced to Jade, I got a really bad feeling about her situation, but then that's left behind and glossed over- as it was meant to be, I think. A big theme of this book is girls and their parents- the fathers who betray trust, the mothers who are absent or useless as protectors. All the girls/monsters in this book suffer from their parents. And all of them wish for better. The most pertinent question in the book, asked of Jade by the only adult she trusts, is "will she or won't she what?"

3. It must happen Overnight, preferably with a Big Party. Oh yes, there is more than one! and the final party just happens to be a party in which there's a a movie projected out over the lake, and the whole town dresses up their flotation devices/boats and watches the movie while out on the lake! And what's the movie tradition? Watching Jaws, of course. Jaws, according to Jade, is also a slasher movie in addition to being a monster movie. Also a callback to that black lake that concealed Jason.

4. Signature Weapon. Jade lovingly describes the history of slasher weapons, from Jason's machete to Freddy Krueger's slashing glove. Jade herself has kept a machete on hand, just in case a slasher does show up. There's a creepy new serial killer weapon in this novel, and I've just got to say that this author understands the inherent creepiness of so many day to day tools.

5. The Slasher themself. This is a book of dualities. The most important characters have more than one identity. I mentioned Jade's machete above, and she transforms into a being closer to Jason as the book goes on. But she's not the only one. There are several characters who make unexpected transformations, usually in really disgusting ways. Hey, no one said that change is easy.

6. A Final Girl. Jade believes that the slasher movie scenario is a crucible in which the Final Girl is tested, transformed and purified in order to become her most distilled self, necessary in order to triumph over the forces of darkness. She even thinks that the slasher themselves knows this and is complicit in it so that they have a worthy adversary. Letha Mondragon, the new girl that Jade thinks heralds the coming of the slasher, has a great Final Girl name. Is Letha referring to Lethal? Lethe? Both?

7. Masks. All good slashers are grotesque or hidden in some way.

8.Slashercam. Seeing the scene from the slasher's point of view- but also keeps the killer hidden from the audience's sight. It allows viewers to see the victim's fear, but not to see what the victims see. It heightens the suspense.

There's a lot going on underneath the surface of this book. It lurks there, with just a hint at the beginning, only to reveal its true horror at the climax. And that's funny, because there are info dumps in the form of Jade's extra credit assignments for history class, which she naturally converts into a history of slasher films and local lore, which are extremely on the nose and should be telling you exactly what you're in for. This author clearly knows his slasher movies- I caught some of his references to the hairy knuckles of the stuntman in the first Friday the 13th and the Captain Kirk mask of Michael Myers but I'm sure there is a LOT that I missed. Those of you who love these films will surely see more that I've missed. There is some slack in the middle of the book- there's a lot of background information and exposition (and red herrings) and I got impatient for the slasher to arrive just as Jade did. But that's life as opposed to a movie, I guess, and a book has more room to build tension than a movie does. Or was it all a jump-scare, intended to get me to relax before the gruesomeness of the climax? Gore hounds will get their due in the end. It felt like the author loved pouring his heart's blood into this book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Are you a fan of horror films? And I mean the horror films that defined the horror genre for everyone (Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream etc) If you are, this is the book for you. Its a fun book that I was not expecting to enjoy as much as I did!

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the ARC

DNF at 33%

My thanks to the publisher for an advanced copy of this anticipated title.

The Only Good Indians was in my top 5 of 2020, so I was very excited to get another title from Graham Jones so soon. Scream being one of my all time favorite films, I was especially excited by the premise of My Heart Is a Chainsaw.

Unfortunately, I found this one very messy in execution. We're dropped in, not given time to know or understand the main character, and made to wait too long for things to ramp up.

I also found the third person narration in the chapters as underbaked as the first person essays interspersed throughout the chapters.

i really liked this book...until i loved it.

it came at me like a slasher-villain; stalking me quietly for ages before murdering me spectacularly in the last act, and i never even saw it coming.

So, here's the thing. The enjoyment level for My Heart Is a Chainsaw will be determined by your slasher film knowledge; not just the generic facts of well-known franchises such as Halloween or Friday the 13th, but also lesser known, cult classics spanning across decades. As someone who enjoys horror movies every once in a while, I was more than happy to stop and Google, but I couldn't deny that this almost constant interruption did impact my overall enjoyment.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw's pacing is possibly its biggest conundrum—restricted to the "cliche" slasher story beats by concept, and without the option to be unexpected. The constant armchair analysis from the 'presumed safe' protagonist can be quite monotonous, resulting in the first 75% of the book being extremely low-risk and low-tension, which is never a good sign in horror. The last 25% is definitely horrifying mayhem, but it's woefully short and takes a questionable narrative turn that I wasn't a huge fan of.

This is one where I enjoy the idea of it much more than actually reading it. In his acknowledgments at the end, Stephen Graham Jones mentioned this story has been rewritten a few times, and somehow in its final form I can still feel the grind and revision of getting it across the finish line. Overall I'm very happy for the existence of this heady, literary horror take on slashers, even if part of me wishes this had been a novella instead.

*dnf at 40%*
something about Stephen Graham Jones and I just does NOT vibe. this is the second book of his I've DNF'd, which makes me so sad because I've loved the premise of both. but I realllly struggle to read & process his writing. so that being paired with how slow this book was just made it really not work for me and i decided to put it down.

This book honestly let me down pretty hard. I'm not sure if I went in with the wrong expectations or if I just didn't mesh with the storytelling but I just felt like it was a drag for me.

I thought I was getting myself into a horror novel which sounded super cool and unique, but what I got was 90% girl talking in circles about slashers, 5% no one believing her, and 5% weird lake scene? After I finished the book I was just confused as to what the overall point of the story was. I couldn't tell if I was supposed to be on Jade's side or not, at some points I thought the reveal was going to be that she was institutionalized and everyone was just going along with her ramblings.

Overall, cool concept it just didn't resonate with me unfortunately.