Don't Fear the Reaper

Once again Stephen Graham Jones delivers a fun, entertaining slasher novel full of our favorite iconic slasher movie trivia and facts. Jade is back and after (coming to her senses)better than ever. She is after all a final girl.

I have no obvious issues with this book, but I enjoyed My Heart is a Chainsaw a little more. They do say the sequel never lives up to the original right?

I wanted more blood and gore. I wanted more amazing kills.
There was a lot of dialogue, and as much as I love dialogue, I would have liked more action.

One thing I totally loved was the twist SGJ threw in there surrounding who is commuting these serial killings. Although I figured it out early on, it was fun to see the utter confusion and shock from the characters when they eventually figured it out.

I'm looking forward to book 3!

I really wanted to love this, but I had such a hard time keeping track of who the possible villain was, and the description of character choreography was so vague sometimes that I couldn't figure out who was doing what.

The prose is really juicy and descriptive, and I liked a lot of the characters, but I kept taking breaks from reading this because it just couldn't hook me. Took me months to finish.

So while I did enjoy this book I think it's hard to compare sequels to the first and I definitely enjoyed the first book a lot more, I found the multiple character point of view a lot less enjoyable, and I also found that it felt at times like there was just too much going on. The end also wasn't great and felt a bit rushed. However it was still very enjoyable and a good book ! Closer to a 4.5

The second book in the Indian Lake Trilogy did not disappoint. In fact, I think I enjoyed this read better than the first.

Jade Daniels, now going by Jennifer, returns to Proofrock after spending the past 4 years in prison due to the infamous events that people call the 4th of July massacre. Right when she returns, a convicted serial kill named Dark Mill South escapes his prison transfer convoy right near Proofrock during an intense blizzard. Jade (or Jennifer) is thrown right back into the world of slashers and will have to use her vast knowledge of horror movies that she's tried to forget to save her and the others in this town. But as before, Proofrock and Indian Lake are never quite what they seem.

First, I want to say that if you are a fan of horror movies, especially slashers, at the very least you'll appreciate the vast knowledge Stephen Graham Jones includes in this series. It's a dream for horror aficionados - I even wrote quite a view titles down that I wasn't familiar with.

While I enjoyed the first book, it was exhausting being inside Jade's head the whole time. Sometimes it was hard figuring out what was fact and what was just in Jade's head. I very much enjoyed how this book jumped between narrators. While it may seem confusing (and could be at times) I felt like I had a better understanding of what was going on. It also really allowed me to get a sense of just how impactful the Lake Killings of 4 years prior were to the town and people in it as a whole. The amount of characters are a lot, however, each one serves an important purpose and helped the many moving parts of this book to come together. This book also solidified my love for both Jade and Letha.

Overall, I highly recommend this horror series. To fully appreciate Don't Fear the Reaper I recommend reading the first book My Heart is a Chainsaw first.

I was a little disappointed with this book. I was so excited to get an old skool feeling slasher read and half the time I felt lost with the storyline and it felt like nothing was really cohesive.

The characters were just ok for me and felt a little lifeless. The storyline was excellent in theory but it didnt' equate to the pages for me.

I did finish it and it was worth doing it that for me but it was a bit of a slog and I hated that I didn't love it more.

The writing style of this is usually a style I like. I usually like books written in a short, clipped, frantic, in-media-res tone that makes you continue flipping pages. This was just not it for me. I liked Jones' The Only Good Indians and yet I found this awkward and hurried in a first-draft way, and beyond having a very busy December, I just don't feel compelled to finish it.
Just read the inside cover again. It's a sequel and I didn't read the first book. I see now why I found it so confusing. LMAO.

I loved Only Good Indians so much, so not sure why the Indian Lake trilogy just doesn’t click for me in the same way. I spend half the book trying to fully grasp what’s going on, and then I get it by the midpoint, but am just never as drawn in as I want to be. Looking forward to Teenage Slasher and seeing how he’s reading outside of Jade Daniels these days.

I am happy that I read this book. After reading the first one in the series I wasn’t sure about continuing, but this book is worth it.

This book is closer to what I thought the first one would be. I enjoyed the story and the kills as I read. I did find that we got introduced to a lot of characters which is fine but sometimes we spent too much time on a few that didn’t matter. Not that I don’t like world building, but some (not all) character views didn’t add anything to the story, world, or deaths. I liked that the body count starts from the beginning of the book and kept up throughout the rest of the book like a true slasher.

If someone wanted to read this book without reading the first, you could get through it with little questions. The author does explain enough of the first story to get you though, but you do miss a little relationship/character building, and I think that it’s something that made this story greater.

A few issues I have with the book are:

The twin sister switches are confusing. Nobody seems to have as many issues as possible with the janitor recording students in the high school or the teacher student relationship that is implied. It is also a little weird that in this book everyone starts quoting slashers except for Jennifer/Jade. The spirit elk did not seem to have much of a purpose in most of the story. Although I did like the spirit elk ending. I did find it weird that the book description mentions Jade getting out of jail when nothing was mentioned in the last book. I would rather they left that out for you to find out when you read.

All this is not to say I didn’t like the book. I enjoyed reading though it and would recommend others to check it out if they can. I can’t wait until I get a hold of the next one.