Good Reads, Lifestyle

Good Reads Challenge Book Review: My Heart is a Chainsaw

July 14, 2024July 14, 2024 by LifeByWyetha

What’s up, “fam”..Welcome back to the blog.

BOOK QUOTE
“Horror’s not a symptom, it’s a love affair.”― Stephen Graham Jones, My Heart Is a Chainsaw.

Hello friends, and how are you? I hope you are well, getting plenty of rest, staying hydrated, eating clean, focusing on your mental health, and giving yourself grace.

I’m almost caught up on all my reviews, and I’m still using and working on this new review format. It helps to pull my thoughts together and concentrate on what I loved, hated, found annoying, some great quotes, and what I think the story is trying to convey. It’s a work in progress as I tweak it, but it’s working for me. Today, I’m reviewing My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Gramham Jones. This is the 1st book in the Indian Lake Trilogy.

Book Details

Storyline

You won’t find a more hardcore eighties-slasher-film fan than high school senior Jade Daniels. And you won’t find a place less supportive of girls who wear torn T-shirts and too much eyeliner than Proofrock, nestled eight thousand feet up a mountain in Idaho, alongside Indian Lake, home to both Camp Blood – site of a massacre fifty years ago – and, as of this summer, Terra Nova, a second-home celebrity Camelot being carved out of a national forest.

A very interesting read, indeed. 4.00 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Characters/Players

🪓Jade (living in a perpetual horror movie)
🪓Jonah Daniels (Jade’s father, who is not much of a father)
🪓Hardy (detective who’s more of a father figure to Jade than her actual father)
🪓Mr. Holmes (Jade’s history teacher)
🪓Rex Allen [Rexall for short] (stupid friend and coworker of Jade’s father)
🪓Letha (Jade’s schoolmate and possible final girl. The jury’s still out on that one)
💥 African American final girls are historically missing in horror movies as anything other than a sidekick or best black friend
🪓Meg (works the desk at the police station)
🪓Theo Mondragon (Letha’s father, who is not the bad guy)

Memorable Quotes from Jade

💀 “Her earrings were full-sized dice because life is a gamble, and then you die.”
💀 “Town reject…nice to meet you.”
💀 “Fred, Freddy, the Mr. Rogers of Elm Street.”
💀 “My heart is a chainsaw, but you’re the one who starts it.”
💀 “It’s almost October, and horror is my religion. Can I not celebrate orthodoxly and honor my church’s holy days?”
💀 “Is it really winning if everybody dies?”
💀 “To put it in conclusion, sir, final girls are the vessel we keep all our hope in. Bad guys don’t just die by themselves, I mean. Sometimes they need help in the form of a furie running at them, her mouth open in a scream, her eyes white hot, her heart forever pure.”

First Impressions / Arount page 173:

I gather that Jade, who is primarily the subject of this story, is delusional. She lives and breathes in a fictional, perpetual horror movie she relates to daily while writing a slasher history paper. Mind you, Jade has graduated from high school, so …why?

I’m also having a hard time with the dialogue because it’s hard to tell what’s happening from what’s in our characters’ heads versus this fictional paper she’s been writing since the beginning of this story, in which she perpetuates a horror movie or slasher movie by tying everything she knows about them.

Around page 304:

Game time, and so the killings begin from what we think is a chainsaw-wielding, machete-carrying slasher. Jade, our protagonist, is convinced it’s Letha’s dad, and all previous signs point to him.

🩸 The Body Count 🩸

2 Swedish travelers
1 stupid townie
1 Council Member (Founder)
then …4, 8, 15 …half of Proofrock

The Easter Egg

This story has a supernatural element that I didn’t see coming because all parts leading to the bloody final ending led to someone else.

If you think about a slasher movie in terms of something supernatural or in-human, one has to go no further than Halloween or Friday the 13th. There’s no way a human could live through burning, several hundred stabbings, or a beheading while still popping up in sequel after sequel.

This story did allude to this entity, but it was recalled from the detective’s point of view at summer camp when he was a child. This information (for me) was not reliable enough to commit to memory to think… ah ok, that tracks.

Final Thoughts on This Title

There was a point where I didn’t see the ball drop because the story was leading me in another direction. By page 264, I was convinced that the main character, Jade, was two bricks short of a load, losing her grip on reality, but as it turns out, she was partially correct about everything. However (again), this tracks in the vein of a horror-slasher. No one believes the protagonist (right). People think … you’re imagining it, and there is no killer.

This story wrapped strangely because it’s not until the end that we learn about Jade’s childhood trauma, and I get what the author is trying to convey. The character Jade found her middle ground and her coping mechanism through everything horror, which was an empowering tool. She related horror and its components to her daily life, allowing her to see the absolute horror coming to Proofrock.

There is a buildup to what happens to Jade, and as she moves to what might be the actual horror happening in Proofrock, she finds that she cares about what happens. Jade desires to live and not just be picked off like a character in a movie.

I also enjoyed the comedy aspect because a slasher movie is a comedy of errors, banter, snide comments, and the protagonists’ knowledge of more than the idiots around them. Some parts made me chuckle, and some were cringe-worthy, proving that this story had a bit of everything for me.

I’m in the middle with this title, as this is my first time reading anything from Stephen Graham Jones. The hurdle is understanding his writing style. Overall, I enjoyed it, so I’m giving it 4.3 stars, and I’m also going to start the next in the trilogy, which is Don’t Fear the Reaper.

Good Reads Challenge Progress

Where I’ve posted a link, I’ve created a podcast on that review, which is a little more detailed than the written review and, of course…commentary.

What Moves the Dead (read)
Leslie F*cking Jones (read)
The Cousins (read)
September House (read)
The Echo Wife (read)
Her Lost Soul (ARC: read)
The Black Girl Survives This One (ARC: read)
The Bad Ones (ARC: read)
The Eleven (ARC: read)
The Sundown Motel (read)
We Lie Here (read)
The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar (read)
Kill The Boy Band (read)
I Need You to Read This (read)
The Wishing Game (read)
Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide (read)
The Kind Worth Killing (read)
Home is Where the Bodies Are (read)
My Heart is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones (read)
Mary: An Awakening of Terror, Nat Cassidy (read..review in draft)
Houses of the Unholy (ARC: read)
Suck-U-Bus (ARC read)
Antenora (ARC)

Good Read Challenge (Currently Reading)

The Night She Disappeared
Sophie (by the time this is posted, I will have finished this one)

For my partial Good Reads Challenge list, check out this post. For all the other posted reviews, check out my page. For the review podcast, check out my Spotify.

Bonus: I found this fantastic challenge on The Nerd Daily that I think you’ll enjoy. Click on the image for the PDF version. How many can you fill out? I’m only at 13 so far.

Thanks so much for visiting the blog today. Don’t forget to follow and subscribe, as I appreciate the support. — Peace

Good Reads Challenge Book Review: My Heart is a Chainsaw