Review: My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was so great! If you love 80’s slasher movies you need to read this! You can really feel the author's love and knowledge come through in this book. I have to admit I'm not a big horror movie buff, I prefer my horror on the page. I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies, but I got to read horror growing up which is probably why. I have seen enough of them to know that this is a wonderful love letter to the slasher genre and I loved all of the references.

This is so much more than just a horror book! There is much more to Jade being the outcast in town that loves slasher movies. The author has an almost poetic style of writing that gives Jade somewhat of an unrealistic narrator feel, which for me added to the suspense of the book. You really didn't know what was happening until it happened. You aren't really sure if Jade is stuck in a horrible nightmare and she's going to wake up, if there really is a slasher on the loose, or if there is something even weirder happening. Jones weaves this amazing horror story into a plotline around a broken girl and the things she's had to endure to get to the present.

I loved Jade. She is such a complex character, and nothing she does is without reason. There are moments when you don't like her, moments where you want to hug her, and moments you cheer her on. She loves slashers, so naturally she is thrilled when she thinks one is in her town. She also does everything she can with her knowledge of what is to come to educate who she thinks the final girl is to prevent it and stop the slasher in the end. There are also some good side characters that try to help her, but they don't believe her about the slasher.

Parts of this are a little slow moving and I can see some readers will feel parts are repetive. I kind of loved all of the movie references, and while parts of it were a bit slow moving it made it all worth it when you go to the end. This was a book to be savored, not rushed through. Jade uses horror movies, slashers specifically as a handbook to guide her through the events of this book and what she thinks is happening in her town. They all sort of follow a certain outline of events, and Jade is an expert in slasher films. She knows them all by heart, and mentions them frequently. As the story progresses she is certain that she is living in a slasher and is waiting for events to unfold as they would in her favorite genre. Things don't go exactly as they would in a slasher, but the way they did play out was pretty awesome.

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