MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW by Stephen Graham Jones – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
Published by Gallery/Saga Press on August 31 2021
Genres: Adult, Horror
Pages: 416
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A bloody homage to the slasher film, My Heart is a Chainsaw is a slow build tale with an over-the-top ending that ultimately won me over. 

This is my fourth Stephen Graham Jones book, and I can now say without a doubt that even when he writes a book that doesn’t completely work for me, it’s still really good and far better than a good portion of the other books I read. My Heart is a Chainsaw is Jones’ love letter to slasher films, and I do mean love letter. Your enjoyment of this book is probably going to hinge on whether or not you like Jade and her manic inner running commentary on every slasher film ever made and how it relates to the situations she finds herself in. But even Jade’s sometimes annoying voice can’t hide the fact that this is an extremely clever and meticulously constructed story, and if I had time I would most certainly go back and read it again to see what I missed the first time.

Told from the point of view of seventeen year old Jade Daniels, a half Native American, half white teenager who is obsessed with all things slasher, Jones’ story unfolds over the days and weeks leading up to Independence Day. Proofrock, Idaho is famous for the murders that took place fifty years ago, on the shores of Indian Lake at a now abandoned campground, which the locals refer to as Camp Blood. Jade lives for slasher films, and she’s memorized them all, not to mention every bit of trivia related to the writers and actors who star in them, and she’s absolutely certain that a “slasher event” is about to happen in Proofrock.

With graduation and her eighteenth birthday just around the corner, Jade begins to see signs of her slasher dreams coming true. First, she discovers an abandoned cell phone in the town boat, which reveals a very unsettling video of a man disappearing into the lake. Later, the man, a Dutch tourist, turns up dead, washed up on the shores of the lake. Then Jade meets Letha Mondragon, a new girl in school who is from one of the rich families that are moving into Terra Nova, an upscale housing development on the other side of the lake. Jade knows as soon as she meets Letha that she’s “final girl” material—pure, kind and beautiful—and this significant event is enough to convince her that bad things are coming to Proofrock. Because what’s a slasher film without a final girl anyway?

Now all Jade needs to do is figure out how to prepare Letha for the role of a lifetime, all while avoiding her drunk father, trying to make up the history class she failed due to a suicide attempt, and gathering clues about the as of yet unknown killer. It’s a lot for a girl who longs to be a final girl herself—but knows she never can be.

Let’s talk about Jade first, because it turns out I have a lot to say about her. I found Jade to be a fascinating character, even though she grated on me at times. Like many of Stephen Graham Jones’s characters, she’s an economically disadvantaged girl living with an abusive parent, trapped because of her age and resources. She has very few friends and no one really likes her much. You just know that slasher films are her escape, the shining light in her otherwise depressing life, and so she’s created a narrative for herself that revolves around them. Every person she meets and every event is part of the movie in her mind, so to speak. It’s her coping mechanism, although everyone in town thinks she’s nuts because of it. Part of what makes this story so good is that Jones had the guts to take Jade’s vivid imagination and turn it into a real horror story, almost as if Jade “wished” her slasher event into existence. 

Jones hints that there might be a reason for Jade’s obsession with slashers, although I have to admit I didn’t pick up on it right away. Even some of the other characters try to stage an intervention because Jade is a pretty messed up kid, and they think they know why. But Jade has buried her traumas down deep, covered them up with gore and final girls and men in creepy masks. Luckily, though, not every person in her life is bad. Jade meets some of the construction workers who are building the houses at Terra Nova and befriends one in particular, a boy who seems to know almost as much about movies as she does. I loved the scenes with them together and I was happy that Jade had someone she could bond with, if only for a brief time.

Jones gradually builds tension as he makes his way to the final, bloody climax, which doesn’t hit until the last hundred pages or so of the book. But boy, when it hits, it hits with the force of a machete driving into bone. There’s plenty of speculation along the way about who the killer is, and the author throws in a few nice twists that keep the reader off guard, but I wasn’t prepared for the level of weirdness and gore that Jade and Letha face at the end. Several scenes stand out for me, scenes that will probably come back to haunt me at night when I’m trying to sleep, such is the power of Stephen Graham Jones’ imagination and vivid imagery. It’s also near the end that we finally learn about a certain event in Jade’s past, and I love that she had a sort of redemption arc that seemed completely appropriate for a slasher story. 

I did have a couple of negatives, though. As I mentioned before, Jade’s inner voice is an acquired taste, and I found it to be exhausting at times. She sees everything through the lens of a slasher film, so she’s constantly referencing movies and characters and motivations. I think people who are well versed in slasher movies will probably enjoy these sections a lot, but some readers may find the endless paragraphs about Friday the 13th, Halloween, Scream and My Bloody Valentine tedious. I have to admit that parts of the story really dragged for me, although I can also see why the author needed all this set up. Jones ends each chapter with a research paper written by Jade to her beloved history teacher Mr. Holmes, papers that attempt to school him in the fine nuances of slasher films and their history. I thought this was a clever way to break up the story, but I’m not sure how successful these sections were, and I think the book would have been just as good without them.

The other small issue I had with the story was the last chapter, which almost seemed tacked on to me. Looking back, I can see what Jones was trying to do. He’s bringing the story full circle back to the beginning, when the townspeople thought the first killing was done by a bear. He also seems to be making a point about Jade’s mother and how she didn’t protect Jade when it counted. But I wonder if the story would have been just fine without this chapter. I’d love to hear what other readers think, those of you who have already read this book.

My Heart is a Chainsaw isn’t as solid and perfectly paced as The Only Good Indians, and it isn’t as emotional as Mongrels. But it definitely stands on its own as classic Stephen Graham Jones. There’s a lot packed into four hundred pages and plenty to mull over, even after you’ve finished the book. Horror fans, especially fans of slasher movies, will not want to miss this book.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.