I received a free copy in a Goodreads Giveaway – this review reflects my honest opinion.

6/19/22:
I really wanted to like this but I can't say with confidence what actually even happened. ☹️ My brain feels like a cottonball trying to understand what this book was trying to tell me. Full review to come.

6/26/22:

Review also on my blog.

My Heart is a Chainsaw follows Jade Daniels, a half-Indian teenage social outcast in her tiny lakeside town in rural Idaho. Jade is angry at the world – she lives with an abusive father and neither her mother nor anybody else in town wants anything to do with her. Jade lives almost solely in her inner world, which is filled with slasher movies. Jade eats, breathes, sleeps slashers, she might as well be a walking, talking slasher encyclopedia.

Jade's hometown of Proofrock is slowly succumbing to gentrification – a group of ultra-rich real estate investors have purchased a former national park across the lake, and want to turn it into their own rural, mountain paradise. But Jade cares little for what they do to Proofrock – she's more interested in how their coming and actions seem to be heralding her town's own, real-life slasher.

Right off the bat, I'll tell you I desperately wanted to like this book, but there were many aspects that were painfully not-for-me. My Heart is a Chainsaw had all the ingredients of a book that I should have liked. I like horror movies – slashers aren't my favorite subgenre, but I liked the idea of a main character that is in love with them, as well as a societal outcast correctly predicting something horrible coming to town.

When I say that Jade is a walking slasher encyclopedia... that is not at all far from the truth. We read from Jade's perspective, so we're stuck in her internal (and external) monologuing about slashers, slasher theory, slasher motifs... yadda yadda. Even the chapters are interspersed essays of Jade's that she wrote as extra credit for her history teacher, talking about the history of slashers and slasher theory. (I eventually skimmed them.)

It felt a lot like reading a Wikipedia page, except with a healthy dose of cringe. Jade holds a sort of authority over others in the story, about how she knows something they don't know, and frankly it made her really unlikable. She believes her slasher knowledge allows her to see the signs that one is coming to Proofrock.

Anyways, without being too spoilery, Jade uses slashers to cope with some pretty horrific trauma from childhood, and to help her deal with the kind of sh*tty reality she's in, as someone extremely poor, with an abusive, alcoholic of a father. Slashers are Jade's escape, and I can respect that – I can understand that the repetition of her talking about slashers in the story is supposed to convey that. But it reached a point where it was just like... please stfu about slashers for 5 pages. PLEASE.

The events start heating up right as Jade is graduating from high school. A few dead bodies show up, and one of the new girls – Letha – from the hot-shot, ultra rich neighborhood across the lake joins Jade's class. Jade sees the signs clearly: the dead bodies are the blood sacrifice, signifying the beginning of the "slasher cycle", and with Letha being involved in finding the bodies in some way or another... she's destined to be the Final Girl.

The first ¾ of the book are really just Jade talking about slashers, and warning everyone around her that it's coming. But nobody takes her seriously, because real life isn't a slasher movie. Can't really blame them. In the last ¼ or so of the book, things finally start to heat up... or so I thought.

Jade talks a lot about "red herrings" – things that are there to distract you from what's really happening. Which I found ironic, because this story is chock full of them. There are so many moments when it seems obvious what's going on, but then the story then pulls a complete 180. It was extremely difficult to follow.

I think the confusing narration is meant to emphasize that Jade is an unreliable narrator. How much of what's happening is actually happening? How much of that is Jade's imagination, there to help her cope? But I just want a little clue at what is real and what's not real. I don't need a hand-hold, but I do like to have some idea of what's going on.

This was also made worse because I had a hard time getting into the "flow" of the writing style. Jade is not only reciting slasher facts nonstop, but the narration is almost a stream-of-consciousness style. I wouldn't say it's a true stream-of-consciousness, but at time things are really choppy and vague – like we're reading pure thoughts and what's going on isn't often revealed clearly. I really struggle with stream-of-consciousness, so I had a hard time finding the will to finish.

So after we trudge through all the red herrings, the what-ifs, and maybe, just maybe having an idea of what is happening to Proofrock and Jade – we get to the true reveal. Maybe. There's a supernatural twist at the end that was fine... but after being faked out by all the other clues, I pretty much didn't care once we got the truth of the matter. I'm actually not even sure if it was truly the end, since everything was so unreliable that I don't know if what Jade says she saw is true. I just wanted the book to be over.

Finally, I also want to take a moment to talk about a Goodreads review I read that really opened my eyes about something in the story that I didn't think much about until I read this review. Andrea Caro's review (This review might be triggering for some) discusses the scene where trauma from Jade's past is revealed. The way it's handled is kind of like tragedy porn – the way the adults in the story react is completely insensitive. Jade even changed her name because of her past, and the adults deadname her multiple times.

I totally agree with why Caro is so upset, and she's 100% right. I didn't think much about the scene at first, but it was definitely a "check your privilege" moment for me when I stumbled across Caro's review – so thank you Caro for writing your review and including this!

So to sum it up – I really didn't like this book. It had moments that were good – Jade has some small victories that were satisfying, but were ultimately overshadowed by a confusing plot and the majority of Jade's moments being annoying. I am happy that some people really liked this book, but there were a lot of elements that turned me off.

Final Rating: ⭐️⭐️

Content & Trigger Warnings:
Sexual abuse involving a minor, sexual assault, suicide/suicide attempt, suicidal ideation, abusive parent, absent parent, deadnaming, racism, murder, violence/gore, death of family members, animal death, underage drug use, tobacco use, mention of teen pregnancy. ( )

Absolutely bonkers (complimentary) and visceral! I should have known from the Grady Hendrix blurb that I was in for a wild time. I was intrigued from the start, and then just totally fell into the story as it went on. It's a bit more of a slow burn than I was expecting, but then things get so unhinged that it really makes the buildup worth it.
The main thing that held this back a bit for me is that we as the reader are SO in Jade's head that sometimes it's difficult to know if something is really happening, or if it's part of her imagination, or some other third thing. This also applies to the prose; frequently it is a very stream-of-consciousness adjacent, making the narrative/action something that has to be puzzled out rather than simply read. At one point in the third act I had to stop and go back to the beginning of the chapter and reread it because I thought I missed something, but it was really just the prose that was difficult to follow.
If you are someone who loves horror movies, this could really be a great pick! My own personal lack of horror movie knowledge probably meant I missed a few nuanced bits, but was still able to appreciate the tale. ( )

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. ( )

If I were a fan of slasher movies, I'd have understood more of the references and likely enjoyed the story much more. Still, the character of Jade, who can't conceive of herself as worthy to be a Final Girl but still desperately wants to be Final-Girl-adjacent, is one helluva lot of fun, and is written in such a way that we understand her far better than she understands herself. Jade made me cry as much as she made me laugh.

So, four stars for Jade and the enjoyable writing style, but I'm just not the target audience for this book. This is my first SGJ, and I'll look for more by him, if I can find some that aren't part of this series.

Hardcover, picked up on a whim when bookstore browsing for the first time in a year, post-pandemic lockdown.
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Stephen Graham Jones' My Heart is a Chainsaw is a beautiful love letter to horror movies, in a way that is perhaps more meta than the Scream franchise, with heart to boot.

Teenager Jade Daniels is in understandable rebellion. Her father is an abusive alcoholic (and we later learn, -trigger alert- that he molested her sexually at the age of eleven) who allows his inappropriate friends around her. Her mother is long gone. At school, she’s a credit short from graduating. Her physical presence at graduation is only a formality, and she is forced to write an extra-credit assignment for her history teacher to gain the credits she needs to pass.

Half-Indian and half-white, living in slowly gentrifying Proofrock, Idaho, is a sort of purgatory for her as she stands in limbo — too poor to be part of the crowd, too odd to be anything but herself. She self-harms to cope with her trauma. Her salvation is horror; she knows these movies backwards and forwards, and they provide a kind of holy bible for her that makes her life brighter and is what her history class essay is about. This essay is sprinkled throughout the novel.

The novel asks this question: What if your life suddenly turned into a slasher movie? For most of us, that idea is fodder for our most terrifying nightmares, but Jade Daniels is thrilled by the prospect in Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart Is a Chainsaw.

The thrill comes in the form of two Dutch tourists who have been murdered at Indian Lake near the site of a development that marks the steady encroachment of the rich people from across the lake into Jade's community. Because of this she realizes something nasty is afoot thanks to her genre experience. More people die — only rich ones. She’s on the scene graduation night at the lake, where popular rich girl Letha Moondragon stumbles on the desiccated corpse of another victim. Jade knows her tropes — she’s found her final girl. She knows she must offer a hand to Letha — and she must prepare herself for the final battle. Jade might not believe she’s final girl material, but she’s definitely up to the task of trying to prepare Letha for the final battle.

The novel tackles gentrification, addiction, and colonialism. Like the other novels from Stephen Graham Jones, it is well written and insightful. What makes My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy, #1) fascinating is the fact that Jade is so attracted to horror, whereas most final girls, are not - and are literally fighting for their lives. Does Jade have an unhealthy obsession? Perhaps. As NPR notes: "My Heart is a Chainsaw is a deconstruction of slasher films that celebrates everything about them. However, its heart — the real cake under the shiny bloody frosting — is Jade, a girl whose trauma makes her a final girl dreaming of being behind a killer's mask."

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