My Heart Is a Chainsaw

Book Review ✨ My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Jade knows everything about Slashers. She can tell you every body count for every slasher. Okay maybe the better word for it is obsessed. After a body is found in the town lake, it's Jades time to shine. She knows this is how all slasher films begin, and she knows who the final girl is going to be and it's not her. It's Letha Mondragon, she's beautiful, smart, kind and a perfect final girl. Jade must prepare her for the inevitable, the Lake Witch killings.

I'm not sure if you're aware but I'm not a fan of SGJ's writing but this book has given me a little hope. At first I wasn't feeling it but around 30 percent I was hooked. I needed to know what was going to happen. SGJ tends to rant and go off topic and characters often speak in circles and the story becomes hard to follow. However, after around 30 percent, his writing becomes more fluid only going off track a few times. If he could cut out about 100-150 pages of extra details, rants and boring information about boring subjects, this book could easily be a 5 star read.

The plot is what won me over. It's fun to guess who the slasher is, only to be completely surprised at the end. I enjoyed his characters, especially the main character. She's absolutely tapped, and definitely interesting.

I will say SGJ added perfect amounts of humor at the right moments. His kill scenes are also cringeworthy. Like any typical slasher, he throws in lots of blood and gore, so beware if you are squeamish like me.

In this novel, we follow Jade, a lonely half-Native American outcast obsessed with slasher movies. She lives with her abusive, alcoholic father in the small town of Proofrock, Idaho. Jade has attempted suicide before, and she tries again on the verge of finishing high school. After a few weeks at a treatment center, she comes back to school, but something feels different: Jade is convinced Proofrock has its own slasher, and when she meets Letha Mondragon, the gorgeous, smart, and kindhearted daughter of a mogul who moved into the new fancy development still being built across the lake, she thinks she has found the ultimate final girl.

I honestly just hoped that this book paid off more than it did. It had me with the prologue but was so slow to develop. The end didn't pay off enough for me and I wish it paid respect to horror slashers by being one itself but it wasn't. The slasher references also got old quickly. I love horror and slasher movies but they just referenced so much they felt overdone. I was just disappointed and bored most of the time.

I also didn't understand a significant amount of the book. I honestly think it was me and not the novel. Plenty of people will love this book but I was not one of them.

Thank you to Gallery Books, Stephan Graham Jones, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A book full of twists and red herrings that ultimately when you get to the actual reveal it's kind of a disappointment. I can see what Jones is trying to do and what he wants to say but the actual “killer” is actually less interesting than all of the possibility Jade has gone through and referenced with all of her horror knowledge. 

3.5 stars. Jade is Proofrock's “horror girl.” She seen all the movies, knows all the rules and tropes about slashers, and is pretty sure that her little town is about to get its very own maniacal killer. All signs point to it. Two random tourists are killed while skinny dipping a the lake, a massive development is being constructed near “Camp Blood” and Jade is convinced she has met the ultimate “final girl”(Letha). The stage is set. But the authorities don't believe her, and is this killer a monster? A supernatural being? Or a resident of the town hell bent on revenge? It's up to Jade to educate Letha in all things slasher - before it's too late.

Firstly, let me say, there is a lot to like about this book. It discusses and explores the gore and campy nature of 80's slasher films in quite a bit of detail. Being a child of the 80's (and probably - no definitely- way too young to watch Jason and Freddy slice their way through a group pf promiscuous teens) this book brought back a kind of nostalgia (be it one of nightmares) that I really enjoyed.

The beginning and end of the book were great, edge of your seat stuff. But the middle felt unnecessarily prolonged. And, unfortunately, I didn't really care about most the characters who fell victim to the slasher.

However, I am sure most horror fans will devour this book and love the grizzly mess of it.

This was my first of this author's books and now I can't wait to go back and read all their previous works. I really enjoyed the overarching feel of this story. I'm not really a slasher person but I have seen all the classics and I can appreciate all the easter eggs, which was definitely one of my favorite parts. The main character was super badass and I loved it.





Thank you to Interstellar Gallery Books, Saga Press, and NetGalley for providing me with an eBook copy to review.

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.

2.8 - man I really wanted to like this book... I have to agree with the reviews that say it was so drawn out and boring at times and like what even was going on at some points?? Idk maybe I'm just not mentally equipped for SGJ's storytelling but overall it didn't hit for me the way I wanted it to. It was like a reading rollercoaster where I was really into it the writing and understood what was happening and the rest was just like wtf am I reading? When did that happen?

Kept me guessing up until the last minute! I can now see why everyone speak so highly of his writing and this book. Jade is wonderfully complex character and telling her story through slashers is beautiful and chilling!

Merged review:

Kept me guessing up until the last minute! I can now see why everyone speak so highly of his writing and this book. Jade is wonderfully complex character and telling her story through slashers is beautiful and chilling!

Rating: 3.91 leaves out of 5Characters: 3.75/5 Cover: 3/5Story: 4.6/5Writing: 4.3/5Genre: Horror/Mystery/ThrillerType: BookWorth?: YeahHated Disliked It Was Okay Liked Loved FavoritedMy second book that I have liked out of the three that I have read by him. At first I didn't like Jade at first and maybe even more through to the halfway mark and maybe she just got tolerable. Either way she wasn't the best and majority of the characters as well were okay. As for the story it was good but it dragged a bit. It was worth at least a read through once, for sure. The ending had me a bit annoyed but that's just me!

I received a complimentary digital ARC of this title from the publisher through NetGalley. My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones is a triumph. This love letter to the slasher genre is an excellent ode to Michael, Jason, Freddy, and the like, but it's also a powerful story about coming of age, being different, and longing for love in a world too often filled with hooks, machetes, and yes...chainsaws. High school senior Jennifer “Jade” Daniels is an Indian girl living in Proofrock, Idaho. Jade is a hardcore horror nerd, and her obsession with the slasher genre is the lens through which she sees the world. But as strange things begin to occur in Proofrock and the new development across the lake, could it be that she's living in one? Reading this book was a good time. Before I started I wasn't very familiar with the slasher genre. After reading another slasher book earlier in the year I realized that having some familiarity with slasher films would probably enhance my experience reading My Heart is a Chainsaw. So I started with Friday the 13th (the first three), then Nightmare on Elm Street, then Halloween, then Candyman, then Bay of Blood, and finally all four Screams. I watched as I read and it was fantastically thrilling to begin to really understand many of the references Jones via Jade makes to these films throughout the novel. Thank goodness I watched them because a major part of this book is discussing and relating the characters and events of the plot to these films, often dropping both minor and major spoilers along the way (to be fair some of these movies are 40+ years old.) I felt like I was receiving the slasher education Jade was giving other characters in the book, and it was FUN. This novel made me want to learn about this genre, and Jones taught me to love it via Jade's enthusiasm. That's pretty freakin' cool. Apart from being a love letter to the genre, this book is a story about growing up, dealing with life, feeling like an outcast, etc. Jones' prose is strong throughout. I did think that the pacing of the plot was a little slow at times, and it was hard for me to put all the pieces of the plot together in my mind, but it all built up to an AWESOME penultimate chapter! The actual ending was not something I saw coming. I'm still processing what I think about it. Overall, this is an awesome book. A slasher with heart that's both bloody and meta and unpretentious and fantastic and real. It's a book that opened up a genre of film for me. This is a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me.

I loved the story and the message of this book, yet it was just so confusing. It's my second book from Stephen Graham Jones and it's the second time his writing style leaves me lost and guessing what's going on. I understand that part of it may be caused by the fact that I'm not a native English speaker, yet I still don't understand why the author needs to make it so complicated...

I don't know how to rate this.

I don't think I've ever read a book like this.

This is trippy because Jade is fully trippy as a character and as a protagonist. Being inside Jade's head was fun, but it was also confusing, I didn't get all the references, but the ones I got made sense and weirdly elated me. Jade is unhinged, delusional, and honest to god and needs lots of therapy and good friends. And for a second there I rooted a lot for her and Letha to get together.
The end left me wanting more, and I know it is purposeful because this is a trilogy, but I still feel a little unsatisfied by this, like something I needed wasn't delivered.

However, the author's acknowledgments were touching for me. Knowing the reason why SGJ decided to write this book and the process, shaped it beautifully, and it's ultimately the reason for my rating.

The first time I had to dnf cause I had no idea what was going on, but always knew I'd have to go back to it and I'm so glad I did. While I enjoyed this story once I understood the style, I was left very confused by the actual end and what was going on there and it seems at least I'm not alone there. Looking forward to part two.