My Heart Is a Chainsaw

I received a complimentary digital ARC of this title from the publisher through NetGalley. My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones is a triumph. This love letter to the slasher genre is an excellent ode to Michael, Jason, Freddy, and the like, but it's also a powerful story about coming of age, being different, and longing for love in a world too often filled with hooks, machetes, and yes...chainsaws. High school senior Jennifer “Jade” Daniels is an Indian girl living in Proofrock, Idaho. Jade is a hardcore horror nerd, and her obsession with the slasher genre is the lens through which she sees the world. But as strange things begin to occur in Proofrock and the new development across the lake, could it be that she's living in one? Reading this book was a good time. Before I started I wasn't very familiar with the slasher genre. After reading another slasher book earlier in the year I realized that having some familiarity with slasher films would probably enhance my experience reading My Heart is a Chainsaw. So I started with Friday the 13th (the first three), then Nightmare on Elm Street, then Halloween, then Candyman, then Bay of Blood, and finally all four Screams. I watched as I read and it was fantastically thrilling to begin to really understand many of the references Jones via Jade makes to these films throughout the novel. Thank goodness I watched them because a major part of this book is discussing and relating the characters and events of the plot to these films, often dropping both minor and major spoilers along the way (to be fair some of these movies are 40+ years old.) I felt like I was receiving the slasher education Jade was giving other characters in the book, and it was FUN. This novel made me want to learn about this genre, and Jones taught me to love it via Jade's enthusiasm. That's pretty freakin' cool. Apart from being a love letter to the genre, this book is a story about growing up, dealing with life, feeling like an outcast, etc. Jones' prose is strong throughout. I did think that the pacing of the plot was a little slow at times, and it was hard for me to put all the pieces of the plot together in my mind, but it all built up to an AWESOME penultimate chapter! The actual ending was not something I saw coming. I'm still processing what I think about it. Overall, this is an awesome book. A slasher with heart that's both bloody and meta and unpretentious and fantastic and real. It's a book that opened up a genre of film for me. This is a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me.