This book had such a good premise, but it didn’t stick the landing. There were a few different sections that went on FOREVER. It also became a bit tedious for Jade to repeat the same details about horror movies over and over and over again. I love slashers, but she was definitely written to be very over the top.

All in all, I didn’t hate this book, but I didn’t really get much of it either. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

A true horror story with a 17-year old main character obsessed with slasher films. Jade is waiting for her town, which in her opinion, is the perfect setting for a slasher film, to have its slasher moment. When it happens she is the only one prepared for what's to come. Full of great characters and gore.

I cannot contain my excitement for MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW. Stephen Graham Jones is a master of the thriller/horror, and his love for 80s horror is evident in genius, mind-blowing ways here. We get to see all the way into the MC, Jade: how she got where she is, how her mind works, the individual, family, and cultural consequences of trauma. MHIAC had me coming back eagerly until the last page, and it’s one that I was so sad had to end.

SGJ has absolutely done it again. My Heart Is a Chainsaw has plot, social messages, decolonizing themes, vivid and dynamic characters, and twists and turns that make your heart jump and mind race.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for this advance e-arc!

'Final girls are the vessel we keep our hope in. Bad guys don't just die by themselves, I mean. Sometimes they need help in the form of a furie running at them, her mouth open in scream, her eyes white-hot, her heart forever pure.'
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If you've read any of Jones's books you'll know that he has a knack for a suspenseful build-up and satisfying payout.
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Welcome to Proofrock, an idyllic simple lakeside town nestled in a valley & forest with lots of local legends. Introducing Jade the rebellious teen who is a fanatic of a special horror genre - slashers. Jade has built her life around a fantasy that certain events will kickstart a slasher cycle complete with mysterious deaths, a big party, new rich settlers across the lake bringing along the all-important FINAL GIRL. Enter Letha Mondragon who is everything Jade wishes she was. Letha is perfect in every way be it academically, athletically, and above all morally. All Jade has to do is nudge the bits into place because the plot has already started. But reality is much scarier when dead bodies show up everywhere.
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Jones's writing takes a while to get into but eventually everything snowballs and just like 'The Only Good Indians' this book kept me guessing till the end and the reveal is really good! There are loads of little classic horror movie references which I absolutely enjoyed! My only gripe would be that Jones writes wayyy too much inner monologuing which can get tedious sometimes.
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There's this sense of Jade believing "she's-not-like-other-girls" but that quickly subverts when you read between the lines of her traumatic past. Jones was inspired by a real event and statistic among native American communities of sexual assault done by fathers to daughters. It breaks your heart reading Jade's story and justification for her coping mechanism. It's good to bring attention to topics of sexual assault, failed parenting, and mental health.
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This book is gory, unpredictable and has a host of interesting characters. It left me heartbroken even as the story climaxed naturally because life isn't a perfect movie and you don't get to pick your genre.

Thanks to Gallery/Saga Press and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. This was a DNF for me. I love a good psychological thriller, but I just couldn’t lose myself in this book.

I will probably be the minority in my opinion, but that's okay. I could not even finish this book. I thought I would like it from the dust jacket description but I just couldn't get into it.

This book wasn't horrible but it really wasn't for me. I think if you're really into slashers like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, you'll probably like this book. But if reading about a 17 year old girl with an obsessive, encyclopedic knowledge of slashers isn't your jam, I would maybe skip this one.

I liked the premise of a girl who likes horror movies finds herself in the middle of the plot of one, but Jade was a very difficult main character to enjoy for me. She was very much of the attitude that she's "not like other girls" because she's into edgy stuff and would just go on and on and on about how much of an outcast she was. Between that and the school papers she wrote about slashers that break up each chapter, the pacing was just much slower than I expected.

I thought the third act was pretty good but by then I was so annoyed by everyone that I wasn't as invested or even as spooked as I would have like to have been.

Third person limited is perhaps my favorite point of view, which this book is. However, there were so many times that it felt disjointed and it was hard to keep track of what was going on. For me, personally, I think I would’ve had more clarity throughout the plot if it were told in first person, like the interspersed Slasher 101 essays written by Jade (which I adored).
I feel like this book deserves a reread for me, and would probably bump up a star, now that I’ve read through the whole thing once and understand where it was going. I adored Jade, and I relate so much to her awkward obsession with something so not mainstream. As a teen who talked her teachers into writing essays on serial killers and true crime, I feel like I understand her to her core, and the yearning to turn her less-than-stellar life into something as fascinating and worthy of being discussed as a slasher.
This book definitely had heart, and I would still recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror and isn’t put off by reading a million references to slasher movies. I’ll certainly give it a reread in the future, and I’m interested how my rating would change the second time around.

This was an ode to the old slasher movies of the 80s for sure. Stephen Graham Jones has a style of writing all his own and it shines in this particular book. He's definitely one of today's best writers and I only hope be garners the attention he deserves. Great book!!!

My Heart is a Chainsaw is the best kind of horror novel. The kind that breaks your heart, makes you laugh a little, and scares you a whole lot. This story, and the main character are going to live in my head and heart forever.

With the rich families moving into her small mountain town, Jade is convinced that something bad is going to happen. She's seen enough horror movies to spot the signs. Living in her own little horror movie world, she navigates high school, her job as a janitor, and her crappy father and absent mother with her wit, sense of humor, and lots of great horror movie quotes.

I dug into this book without knowing the story, and I'm grateful for that. The twists and turns were exciting (and scary!) and I really had no idea what to expect. I'd suggest you don't read too many reviews. Just know that if you love horror, appreciate a final girl, and are ready to get lost in small town, My Heart is a Chainsaw is your book.

The more I read from from Stephen Graham Jones, the more I love him. He has a special way of writing and telling a story. I especially love the humor he brings to his characters. Jade is one of the most unforgettable characters I've read about, and every time I dye my hair, put on too much eyeliner, or quote a horror movie, I'll be channeling Jade.

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read and review this book!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story.. It felt exactly like watching a horror movie.. a slasher movie to be more specific. It was scary, and super creepy, and the tension built slowly just the way i like it

Jade is our main character and she is a horror movie fan.. specifically Slasher films.. She is narrorating our story and so badly wants a real life slasher to appear in her town.. She is watching for the signs that she knows preceeds a slasher in every movie, and has almost encyclopedic knowledge of these movies. In fact she reminds me of Randy from the Scream movies .He was a character obsessed with Horror movies like Jade and told everyone how the real life killings in Woodsborough would play out .Like Randy when Jade realizes that what she wants most is actually happening she does her best to warn/prepare the final girl (the girl who always survives at the end of a horror movie) for what is about to come.

I would have totally been Jades friend in high school. While I don't remember every detail of horror movies, they are one of my favorite genres

and we actually get mentions of my favorite movies like Scream, I Know What you Did Last Summer and Chucky. I think we would have gotten along real well.

Jade was an amazing character, and I loved her. She did her best to be herself and not let anybody change who she is. She knew what was coming and did her best to warn people even though it fell on deaf ears until the carnage started. She is brave and completly independant.

While I was following Jade along on her quest to find out who the Slasher is, and her trying to help the final girl I felt like Jade knew exactly what she was doing and thinking.. When she was confident in her decisions so was I, when she second guessed herself I did too.. and that ending was totally and completly unexpected and I loved it..

We were left with some unanswered questions at the end but I think that is the nature of a horror movie.. We never completly know the persons motive or what happens when the story ends.. However I would love if this book got a sequel at some point.. Even if it didn't specifically follow Jade again, or just made some vague mentions of what happened at Indian Lake and what happened to Jade afterwards.. you'll know what I mean when you finish the book..

While both of my siblings like to read, we really don't have the same reading tastes. We all do love horror movies and this is a book I could confidently recommend to both of them and know they would both enjoy it.

I would definitely read more books by this author in the future and look forward to reading his backlist titles.

The author pigeonholed this book in an unfortunate way. The plot is premised on a slasher-flick-obsessed teen girl who must save her town from an IRL slasher plot. I don’t like slasher films, but I’ll read books with the same plot points and this is a book, not a movie, so, whatever, I can totally get on board.

But, the book gets too obsessed with the minutiae of slasher films and drops the ball on being a slasher itself.

Part of that delay is that every other chapter is an essay written by the main character about slasher films. And, maybe this is just me because I taught writing to people about the same age for about a decade, but I wanted to gouge my eyes out. Kudos to the author for getting the voice and nonsense of high school writing VERY right, but why do I need to read it? The plot wasn’t furthered and the character wasn’t developed. The essays just made the book longer and took the reader out of the slasher atmosphere after every chapter until the onslaught of violence.

There’s some good stuff in here, but it’s buried under too much excess, which is a shame because another book of his, The Only Good Indians, is excellent and taut so the editing talent is there.

ARC from NetGalley. The book is due out in August 2021.

Just WOW! An amazing look into the dynamics around a female sociopath and how she is enabled by her family and acquaintances. I felt the older sister was more to blame since Ayoola couldn't control her actions, but her older sister could and covered for her, allowing her to skip along taking and killing. A really great read and excellent from the female perspective rather than the typical male.

Stephen Graham Jones is one intense writer and I love their writing. Jones has a penchant for scaring the hell out of me in the best way possible, while also adding some serious social commentary to the story. I can imagine that Jones isn't for everyone, but I recommend their works to patrons looking for a scare and this is no exception. We will absolutely be buying this for the collection.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Storygraph!

Horror stories, are, I’ve always assumed, an acquired taste. Like olives. You either like ‘em or you don’t. I write myself and put a story out on offer the other day—free, mind you—and had a fellow come back and say, “Sorry, I’m not in a place I can read that sort of thing right now.”

I suppose I get it, being in kind of a dark place personally myself right now as I’m sure a lot of us are…there’s simply things I don’t feel like doing under present cirumstances. TV, for example, doesn’t get a lot of time for me. I do read a lot though, and it’s the darker tales that tend to keep me occupied and divert me from my own rather dimly-lit life. Mostly it’s short stories, but sometimes a novel comes along…

F’r’instance: Stephen Graham Jones. I’ve read and enjoyed some of his short work, most recently “This Was Always Going To Happen” in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year collection (which is essential, by the way.) Now, one upside to reading such annuals is that you get to sample writers you may never have experienced before. My usual example of this phenomenon is the brilliant Priya Sharma, whom I discovered in Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror collections. But now it seems I will have to add Jones to my “must buy” list, for his new work, “My Heart Is A Chainsaw”, is astonishing.

As a racing fan, I can appreciate someone who devotes themselves to a topic, genre, or whatnot. Jade Daniels is just such a character, and her thing is horror flicks, details of which she can recite off the top of her head like my brother does music, or Donald Davidson can recall Indy 500 trivia. It’s very possible she’s eidetic, though it’s more likely she’s just incredibly obsessive. But there’s more to her than a mere fangirl: she also knows, in nauseating detail, how horror movies are constructed and the arcane rules thereof…and when things hit close to home—namely, Proofrock, Idaho, where she may or may not be about to graduate from High School—she feels she’s been called upon to Save Everyone.

As it happens, Jade’s graduation—and thus, her escape from Proofrock—kinda hinges on her history grade, and in hope of obtaining extra credit she is submitting essays on horror flicks to her favorite teacher, Mr. Holmes, because...well, why not? Exactly why horror movie details count toward a history grade I don't quite grasp, but never mind, never mind. Her detailed synopses do make nice interstitials amongst the furious action. Dig them, all of them, if for no other reason that they give you a chance to breathe. You’ll need every breath too.

On to the matter at hand: there’s someone carving up the good folk of Proofrock, or, more correctly, the new and ever-so-exclusive settlement of Terra Nova, which just happens to be sited on ground that once was a Sleepaway Camp (see what I did there?) and which has a awful lot of blood soaked ground…hence the nickname, Camp Blood. There’s one wonderfully gross bit here where Jade and her presumed “Final Girl”, one lovely Letha Mondragon, hide out in a pile of rotting elk corpses. BUT WAIT! It gets grittier! Here’s a bit of what ultimately happens to the so-called "Final Girl":

“No, now she’s gasping, blood sheeting down over her face from a gouge across what used to be her eyebrow, and that eye’s not moving with her other one anymore, but that’s nothing—her jaw. It’s been wrenched out of place, cracked away at the hinges, so her chin’s hanging low and crooked. The only reason it’s still even close to in place, isn’t torn away and tossed aside to sink is…it’s her moisturizer regimen isn’t it? Her skin was elastic enough to hold on.”

EEGAH! This is not a story for the weak of stomach.

Mind you, the whole concept of the “Final Girl” is kinda pivotal here, and just when Jade thinks she’s got it figured out, she finds out she might have it wrong...dead wrong. The action builds and builds through several climaxes…seriously, just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water…HAH! Look around! THERE’S CHUM (and chums!) EVERYWHERE!

What this is, it’s loads of creepy, bloody, gory delight, and if I’d have been inclined to keep a body count it would be in the dozens. But it’s all in good fun, and the esteemed Jade Daniels goes to the top of my list of Horror Heroines for 2021. Better still, Stephen Graham Jones goes straight to the top of my Must Read list. How about “The Only Good Indians” next? Yes, I think so…

Another terrifying social commentary from SGJ.

Both an homage to the slasher genre and a critique of gentrification and American colonialism, Stephen Graham Jones knows how to scare and enlighten us.

Jade Daniels is dealing with a lot. Between the loneliness of her mother's abandonment, her abusive father, and being estranged from her town, Jade seeks solace and comfort in horror movies. But when those movies come to life on the waters of Indian Lake, she uses her knowledge of slashers and masked murderers to get ahead of the very real killer in town.

The gist: There’s no two ways about it, My Heart is as Chainsaw is a masterclass in slasher history and execution. Jones has woven slasher lore through a slasher tale that still punches you in the gut with a fist full of heart.
It’s a real deconstruction of slasher history, with sections dedicated to Jade’s papers on slasher films that genuinely made me want to watch and re-watch some of the classics of the genre. But the core of the story is about real lives and real trauma, and a character who escapes into the horror of film as a recourse from the horrors of life.
For me, the best horrors are those that play with the idea of horror, that toy with the focus of fear, our understanding of monsters. And Jones does that so expertly he’s absolutely one of my ‘go-to’ horror authors.
I hugely enjoyed The Only Good Indians, and although My Heart is a Chainsaw is in some ways a different beast, it still has heart pulsing through the horror. Oh, and some elk, but it’s probably better you find out about them for yourself…
Favourite line: it’s all deadly in the wrong hands, with the right intent.
Read if: You want an education in slasher history, and a slasher story that will do it’s best to break your heart.
Read with: An archive of slasher films ready to watch with new eyes. And by new eyes, I mean, a fresh look, don’t be going and getting yourself anybody else’s, that’s the start to another story…

Review to be published at www.thedustlounge.com closer to publication date

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones is a great story. and Stephen Graham Jones's writing is spectacular and breathtaking.

When reading the description for this book, I went in expecting something much more serious. Jade is a horror movie obsessed teen getting ready to graduate and move into adulthood. Much of the story is broken up with extra credit assignments written to her teacher explaining her love for horror movies and their formula. Just the right amount of gore, maybe not quite enough of a backstory, and a perfect amount of early horror movie nostalgia.