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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Of all the really great words I just finished reading in Stephen Graham Jones' My Heart is a Chainsaw, the best words of all were the ones I found on Goodreads, after:

Jade Daniels #2 ( )