"My Heart is a Chainsaw" by Stephen Graham Jones is a gripping and masterfully crafted horror novel that delves into the psyche of its protagonist, Jade Daniels, a high school outcast with an obsessive knowledge of slasher films. This novel is a love letter to the slasher genre, filled with references and deep cuts that will thrill horror aficionados, while also presenting a fresh and original story.

Jones's writing is intense and immersive, drawing readers into Jade's troubled world as she navigates a series of gruesome events in her small town. The character of Jade is compelling and complex, her passion for horror movies serving as both a coping mechanism and a lens through which she interprets the unfolding real-life horrors.

The narrative is rich with suspense and dark humor, keeping readers on edge from start to finish. Jones expertly blends elements of classic slasher tropes with contemporary issues, creating a story that is both a homage and a critical exploration of the genre.

Overall, "My Heart is a Chainsaw" is a standout horror novel that showcases Stephen Graham Jones's talent for storytelling. It's a must-read for fans of horror, offering a deep, thrilling, and thought-provoking experience that lingers long after the final page is turned.

My first foray into horror and wow have I been missing out!

This may be more horror adjacent but Jones wrote such a compelling and eerie story that pays nod to slasher flicks.

I loved the MC Jade she was perfectly developed for this story and I cant wait to read the next in this series.

Jones has a completely distinct writing style that, for the uninitiated can be pretty overwhelming. It can be tricky to follow the story, it's erratic and can jerk the reader around, but if you can manage, it provides a totally unique reading experience. He manages to combine genuine terror and gore with humour and some truly tear jerking emotional moments to make for a seriuosly genre-defying story. He also takes the historically white genre of horror, and specifically slashers, and throws an indigenous spin on it to create a totally unique story.

Our protagonist Jade Daniels is one of the best characters I've ever read. I love her humour, her vulnerability, her encyclopedic knowledge of slashers. Loved her, loved this story, everything about it was perfect!

DNF at 40%

I really tried to get into this one, but I just think it was not for me. The plot may require more slasher knowledge than what I have to enjoy the references in order to truly get into it. I found the plot slow, and the main character was a little too into the mystery. I'm sure there are a lot of people who will love this, but just not me.

An exhilarating and inventive slasher thriller that pays homage to the genre while offering fresh and original storytelling.
This author continues to impress me and this might be one of my personal favorites from him. It's a really great character study of this teenage girl who uses horror to get through the trauma she's gone though.
It's a love letter to the horror genre, the misfits who love it, while also exploring deeper issues.
And that ending...perfection.
This is very slow and very internal so it won't be for everyone but it was definitely for me.

I had high hopes for this book, but it ended up falling a bit short for me. I really enjoyed the main character and reading about the events through her eyes, but had a hard time keeping engaged through the story.

I really enjoyed this one! I'm excited to read the next one when it comes out. If you are a fan of horror movies like I am check this one out!

A fantastic and perfectly executed start to a new series. Creepy horror story that will chill you but also very informative coming of age tale of an indigenous girl fascinated with the scary stories of her hometown and an obsession with slasher movies. Thoroughly enjoyed the writing in this book.

I found #MyHeartIsaChainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones, which was provided to me by #NetGalley, an extremely difficult book to get into reading. I found it slow to pick up, and the characters hard to develop any emotional attachment to.
The idea of the horror trope of the final girl was intriguing, but I found that getting to the point of the book where anything interesting actually happened was like pulling teeth.
I usually enjoy both pop-reference types of books and horror in general, but this one left me feeling wanting.

Jade Daniels is a half-Indian social outcast of her own making. Living with an abusive father, and absent mother Jade has turned to slasher horror films for comfort. Jade is constantly growing her knowledge of these films, as she's grown up in the small town of Proofrock, Idaho. There is one thing Jade knows for sure, she is not final girl material. But, as Proofrock turns into a real-life slasher movie, she must use her unusual knowledge to predict what will happen next in order to protect herself.

I feel like I am very much the unpopular opinion when it comes to this book. Although I did enjoy my time reading, I also felt that it dragged a bit, and I was bored for a good majority of the book. I genuinely thought this would be one of my favourite books of the year based off of the prologue alone, but it quickly became a snooze fest and rather repetitive. It all comes together in the end, and is quite clever, but I had to get to that point first. I did like how multi-layered this story was, and how Jade had major trauma she needed to work through as the story progressed. The book definitely has very intense, gory moments, as well as many conversations about rape, sexual harassment, and abuse so if that is something that triggers you, skip this book.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I absolutely LOVED this one. It was an amazingly well written book by Stephen Graham Jones. I cannot wait to see what else he has in store for us.

CW: attempted suicide (in the past), rape (in the past), gore, murder

Wow, I did not like this book very much! Which is so disappointing, because The Only Good Indians was one of my top reads last year, it was SO good.
This one was excruciatingly slow. Like, nothing really started getting going until the last quarter of the book. There was just a lot of background info, but the narrator was hard to follow. I don't know that she would be a typical unreliable narrator, but she was definitely unreliable, in that she pretty much viewed her entire life in terms of horror movies. So, it was difficult to know what was real and what wasn't. Plus, I am not a horror movie buff, so A LOT of the references went over my head, which could definitely be why I didn't like it more.
So, basically, the story is about Jade, who is obsessed with horror movies and who lives in a rural town in Illinois. Then this new girl moves into a new development across the lake from where Jade lives (they attend the same school) and Jade decides that this new girl is the Final Girl (you know, the last girl standing in a horror movie who figures it all out and kills the killer) and that there is going to be a horrible mass killing on the 4th of July. And it just kind of doesn't really go anywhere for a long time, other than Jade trying to prepare Leitha (? I don't know how to spell her name?) to be the Final Girl.
The pacing was just really bad, in that it was so slow, and then all of a sudden in the last bit of the book *all the things* happen, so much so that I couldn't keep track of what was happening. And then the ending is really unsatisfying and I'm still left with A LOT of questions. Basically, WTF just happened?
A work colleague read this one and he is really in to horror movies, and he said he liked it, but also that it was incredibly slow, so maybe someone who has more knowledge in that area would get more out of it than I did? Or maybe it would at least make more sense?

Once again, Stephen Graham Jones has delivered a stunning horror novel. The world he depicts is so visceral and dark that you want to keep exploring it long after the pages stop. His characters are tender and real. What more could you ask for?

I’ve always been a horror movie fan When I was young I remember watching all the classic slasher movies-Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th. As I’ve gotten older my love of horror has evolved into more of a psychological or Gothic horror and less into the slashers. I haven’t even seen any of the Saw movies, but my introduction to horror was definitely those gory slashers so they hold a place in my nostalgic heart.

The story is told from Jade’s point of view and we spend the entire time in her head. She obviously had suffered some serious trauma and her home life was truly terrible causing her to retreat into slasher movies as a defense mechanism. Ascribing order to these films allowed her to compensate for the complete lack of order in her own life. According to Jade, and all of her essays for English class, slashers all follow certain rules and shared elements which make them generally predictable. Jade desperately needs logic and predictability in her own life and she wishes constantly for a real life slasher in her town. When unusual deaths start happening she is overjoyed that the “movie” has begun and she tries to find the familiar patterns of a slasher movie in real life events. Is there really a slasher in Proofrock or is Jade just so desperate for a predictable pattern that she sees patterns that aren’t really there? I’m not going to ruin it for you so you’ll have to read and find out.

There were many things to love about this book and the creepy opening scene at the lake immediately got my attention. After the amazing prologue we see the rest of the story through Jade’s eyes and we are in her head throughout. I will say that I didn’t always love being stuck in her brain. She thinks of noting except slasher movies and the constant death and gore. She is a true obsessive and I can’t say that I would want to hang out with her in real life but when the bodies start dropping I would absolutely want her by my side.

While the story is often gory, bleak and disturbing it is also is exciting and suspenseful, especially near the end where the action moves at breakneck speed, just like a horror movie. People are dying right and left and Jade is right in the middle taking her one chance to be the hero. She is the ultimate underdog and it is kind of enjoyable to see her fulfill her dream, even if it means mass murder. This isn’t an easy story and Jade isn’t an easy heroine but when it comes together at the end it is satisfying.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada, Gallery / Saga Press for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review.

A riveting novel about the ultimate Final Girl (whether she believes she is one or not). Stephen Graham Jones puts the reader into the mind of a young slasher aficionado who uses her intense love of the genre to navigate her own tumultuous life. Jones gives the protagonist Jade great depth and the reader can't help but be sympathetic toward her, even if the reader can't be completely sure how reliable Jade actually is as our narrator. Another in a long list of great reads from SGJ.

Thank you to the publisher for my copy - all opinions are my own.

If ever there was a book so perfectly suited to Halloween or horror lovers, it is this piece of absolute perfection from Stephen Graham Jones.

On the surface this is the most incredibly written homage to the classic slasher/horror genre, and the Easter eggs throughout are so incredibly done.

Below the surface of that homage is a brilliantly crafted story that speaks to deeper, tougher topics - neglect, race, societal class systems, abuse - and the plot let’s each of those pieces simmer on the edges of each paragraph and each twist.

As usual, I don’t have eloquent enough words to do justice to Stephen’s brilliant mind and stunning writing. I can just tell you that you should be reading this man’s work if you love horror that builds on character drama in the most deliriously unique way. A must-read, always, for this reader.

Just finished reading THE PERFECT FAMILY by Robyn Harding. Thank you to @simonschusterca for my eARC copy via @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Official publication date was August 10th, 2021.

I struggle to write a review for this one as I wanted to like it soo bad, and I kept reading hoping the ending would blow my mind...But sadly it didn't.

This was a fast paced non-thriller that I guessed the ending of too early on. All the characters are annoying with no redeeming qualities 😬. I made it all the way to the end for that.

This was my first Stephen Graham Jones book, and while I didn’t enjoy the book in its entirety, I can see that he is a very talented author and will seek out his other works sometime.
I am not a fan of horror films and so I think I would have received more enjoyment from this book if I was more familiar with popular slasher movies, as a lot of references likely went over my head. I found the book to be very dialogue heavy for the first half, and coupled with the main characters narration of every thought and frequent horror history tangents, I did find much of the book overwhelming and was a bit exhausted trying to keep up with the plot.
Things changed about 60% through the book and a plot twist grabbed my attention and held it for almost the duration of the book.

“Horror’s not a symptom, it’s a love affair.”

My Heart is a Chainsaw was my third book by Stephen Graham Jones and dare I say my favorite so far? A lot of reviews talks about how this book is the slowest of slow burns, and it is, but in my review I want to talk about how this book made me FEEL.

In My Heart is a Chainsaw we meet Jade, a teenager obsessed with all things slasher. She’s seen every slasher movie EVER, and is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to the genre. It’s evident that Stephen Graham Jones is an expert on horror, and his knowledge shines through Jade’s character.

But why is she obsessed with the killings, gore, and suspense of these movies? She’s suppressing trauma, and is hyper-fixated on horror as a way to cope.

We see it in her school essays which are placed throughout the book, and get an inside look at her messy, unreliable narration. Her character is chaotic, and I saw so much of myself in her. I’ve talked to my therapist about how I consume horror to cope with trauma, and I just know that Jade and I would be friends.

But this book isn’t just about Jade and how she copes. No, it’s about how she recognizes horrific patterns in her hometown, and figures out something terrible is going to happen, even before the useless cops know what the hell is going on.

Yes, this book is slow, but there are so many DETAILS that matter. The plot is a lesson in patience and paying attention, and the payoff is better than the corn syrup and red dye used to make that gory, glorious fake blood in our favorite slasher films.

We get the best of the best: nail guns, machetes, final girls, local folklore, piles of carcasses, and enough blood to fill a lake.

My Heart is a Chainsaw is indeed a love letter to horror and slashers, but it also punched me right in the heart in the best way, and I never wanted it to end.

This book may not be for everyone, but it was perfect for me. I hope fellow horror fans are able to find and read it.

Thank you to the publisher, Simon & Schuster Canada, for sending me a digital ARC via NetGalley. My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones came out on August 31 and can be purchased wherever books are sold.

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for the review copy of this book. This book was very slow going at first and took me about 2/3 of the way through before I was truly into it. Jade was not one of my favourite characters. Her slasher obsession took me out of what was going on at time. This is mostly likely because I am not a huge slasher fan. I love me some horror books but can't watch horror movies. As for the last 1/3 of this book all I can really say is wow what an ending. I loved the writing and will for sure be checking out more of Stephen Graham Jones books. This one just wasn't the book for me I think with me not being a slasher movie fan. Still very enjoyable and I do recommend checking it out especially if you are a fan of slasher movies.