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!

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.