My Heart Is A Chainsaw By Stephen Graham Jones Source Received from the publisher
Published by Gallery / Saga Press on August 31, 2021
Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Rating:
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges… a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body.
My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
I wanted to love this one more than I did! I liked Stephen Graham Jones’ previous book, The Only Good Indians, so was eagerly looking forward to this book.
The synopsis really drew me in and I’m always looking for a good horror story, but this one didn’t quite pull me in, and it took me a while to finish it. I don’t think I really got into it until the end, as the ending is propulsive and the book was hard to put down once I got to the last few chapters. But I struggled with this one and didn’t feel all that invested in it. It just didn’t pull me in.
But a lot of other readers have really enjoyed this one, so if you’re a horror fan, it’s worth checking out!
