[BOOK REVIEW] MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW BY STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

21/10/2021

The “Final Girl” trope has been done a lot lately; in fact, this is my 4th final girl book this year alone. My Heart is a Chainsaw is the best written of the ones I have read by far. In creating Jade Daniels, SGJ has created a character who was real and flawed, who was lonely and wanted family and a home. She was the absolute best part of this whole story for me.

MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW BY STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Titan Books (UK); 1st edition (7 Sept. 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1789098092
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1789098099

TW: Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Rape

Jade Daniels is a loner— she is the town pariah, her father abuses her, her classmates think she’s a freak, and her mother has abandoned her. She retreats to her inner world of slasher films, where things make sense to her: the wronged will seek their just revenge and that a final girl will always triumph over evil.

When gentrifiers come to Proofrock with plans to raze Camp Blood and build mega mansions for themselves, and blood is spilled into Indian Lake, Jade knows the town is about to experience its own slasher story. Thanks to her obsession with horror movies, her school pranks, and her off-putting behavior, Jade must work overtime to get the town authorities to believe her and prep the one she has deemed “the final girl” before more blood spills.

I love this book in a big, bad way. Stephen Graham Jones’ love letter to horror and slasher films hit the right notes for me. While not as extensive as SGJ, I am crazy for slasher movies and have cut my teeth on them since childhood. His wealth of knowledge shown through Jade throughout the book and reminded me of some flicks that I haven’t seen for years.

The “Final Girl” trope has been done a lot lately; in fact, this is my 4th final girl book this year alone. My Heart is a Chainsaw is the best written of the ones I have read by far. In creating Jade Daniels, SGJ has created a character who was real and flawed, who was lonely and wanted family and a home. She was the absolute best part of this whole story for me.

If I must state one issue that detracted from the story for me, it was the history reports from Jade that included between chapters. I realize that these were included not only to fill in the town’s backstory, but they also to educate the non-slasher fans. While they were a novel inclusion, it killed the book’s momentum for me and made it difficult for me to want to finish the book at times. I would have preferred more of Jade and less filler.

My Heart is a Chainsaw
by Stephen Graham Jones

Friday the 13th and Carrie move to The Burbs
The Jordan Peele of horror fiction turns to classic slasher cinema in this sharp and witty gentrification horror

The Jordan Peele of horror fiction turns his eye to classic slasher films: Jade is one class away from graduating high-school, but that's one class she keeps failing local history. Dragged down by her past, her father and being an outsider, she's composing her epic essay series to save her high-school diploma.

Jade's topic? The unifying theory of slasher films. In her rapidly gentrifying rural lake town, Jade sees the pattern in recent events that only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror cinema could have prepared her for. And with the arrival of the Final Girl, Letha Mondragon, she's convinced an irreversible sequence of events has been set into motion.

As tourists start to go missing, and the tension grows between her community and the celebrity newcomers building their mansions the other side of the Indian Lake, Jade prepares for the killer to rise. She dives deep into the town's history, the tragic deaths than occurred at camp years ago, the missing tourists no one is even sure exist, and the murders starting to happen, searching for the answer.

As the small and peaceful town heads towards catastrophe, it all must come to a head on 4th July, when the town all gathers on the water, where luxury yachts compete with canoes and inflatables, and the final showdown between rich and poor, past and present, townsfolk and celebrities slasher and Final Girl.

Brandi Guarino is a voracious reader and has a To Be Read list that never ends. She is passionate and committed to championing the work of independent writers and publishers in horror, science fiction, and fantasy. She is on Twitter at @bgbibliophile and Instagram at www.instagram.com/brandi_the_bibliophile.