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Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Book Review: My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

My Heart Is a Chainsaw
By Stephen Graham Jones
August 31, 2021
Publisher: Gallery/Saga Press
Genre: Native American Literature, horror
ASIN: B08LDXS2B5 
ISBN: 9781982137649 Hardcover 
ISBN: 9781982137632
“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”

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.


My Heart is a Chainsaw is a homage to slasher films and their fans. The heroine, Jade Daniels, is a young adult gothish fan of slasher and horror films. These films are her escape from her traumatic past. She is half Native American--Blackfeet and caucasian. 

    Letha Mondragon, the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer, starts attending Jade's high school. After a couple of possible murders turn up, Jade believes a slasher is in town and that Letha will be the “final girl.”A final girl is the last girl standing after a serial killer has killed everyone else. The final girl will either defeat the killer or survive until the next movie when the killer returns. 

My Heart is a Chainsaw is Friday the 13th meets Scream mashing up with Mean Girls and Sixteen Candles. Stephan Graham Jones wrote an interesting character. Jade feels she is more antihero than final girl material. But it is Jade who draws me in, making me see beneath the goth makeup and colored hair to the true final girl. Then toss in a good story and the author completly hooked me into wanting to read the book to the end.

I gave My Heart is a Chainsaw 5 slasher sheep.





Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney


About the Author:
Stephen Graham Jones is the author of sixteen and a half novels, six story collections, a couple of standalone novellas, and a couple of one-shot comic books. Stephen’s been an NEA recipient, has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, a Bram Stoker Award, four This is Horror Awards, and he’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award. He’s also made Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels, and is the guy who wrote Mongrels. Next up are The Only Good Indians (Saga) and Night of the Mannequins (Tor.com). Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado.

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