Reviews for My heart is a chainsaw
School Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Jade Daniels is an outcast in the quickly gentrifying Idaho lake town she's always called home. When a Dutch teenager is found dead, Jade takes morbid delight in the fact that this is surely the first victim in a horror film come to life. Everyone in town is a suspect, and beautiful new classmate Letha Mondragon is the perfect Final Girl—the genre's famous lone survivor. If Jade's obsession with slasher movies is the center of this novel, issues of class, power, and addiction are the spokes that connect the wheel. Content warnings include sexual abuse and suicide, as the protagonist lives in poverty with an abusive father and attempts to take her own life. Jade's family belongs to the Blackfeet tribe, and Jones (Blackfeet) authentically conveys feeling unwelcome in one's own home. Tropes from horror movies play a big role in the novel. The omniscient narration tracks Jade's obsession with these films, a hyper focus that frustrates the few reliable adults in her life as she struggles to communicate in any way other than through the lens of slasher movies. Readers can't help but root for her and implore other characters to heed her warnings, especially in the last third of the book, when the pace sharply quickens. VERDICT A horror novel not dissimilar to slasher movies. Recommended for mature teens.—Lindsay Jensen, Nashville Public Lib.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Following the success of The Only Good Indians (2020), Jones returns with a love letter to the slasher film. Jade, half-Indian, poor, and motherless, finds her only solace in the slasher movies of the 1980s and the extra-credit essays she writes for her history teacher explaining the genre’s themes. A group of rich investors “discovers” beautiful and secluded Proofrock, Idaho, despite its troubling history of mass murders and lake witches. Issues of class and privilege collide with the threat of a Fourth of July massacre, though no one takes Jade's warnings seriously. She pins all hope for survival on the new girl—the rich and beautiful Letha, the perfect "final girl." Readers will be drawn in by the effortless storytelling and Jade’s unique cadence. This is a methodically paced story where every detail both entertains and matters, and the expertly rendered setting explodes with violent action. This brilliantly crafted, heartbreakingly beautiful slasher presents a new type of authentic "final girl," one that isn’t “pure” and may not be totally innocent, yet can still be a vessel for hope. Pair this with thought-provoking, trauma-themed horror such as Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) or Victor LaValle’s The Changeling (2017).
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A Catcher in the Rye meets Friday the 13th in the latest slasher novel from thriller aficionado Jones. Jade Daniels is the local weird girl in her small town of Proofrock, Idaho. After a suicide attempt cements her status as a pariah, Jade retreats into her encyclopedic knowledge of the slasher genre as a way to make sense of her troubled world. Jones presents a deep character study that explores all the typical terrain of both an angst-y teen coming-of-age story and a campy slasher film, but with a protagonist so invested in her slasher world that it takes on a fresh presentation, not to mention a fair bit of humor. Rather than doing two things poorly, Jones is able to leverage the strengths of each genre to complement the other. Jade’s capacity to examine her own trauma, heartache, and desire to belong is repeatedly fashioned through the slasher lens with surprisingly satisfying results. When local events begin to more and more resemble the conventions of her particular obsession, Jade finds herself in a unique position to witness the story unfold in real time. Despite the inclusion of some coming-of-age story stereotypes, like the absent mother and deadbeat father, Jade’s earnestness grounds the novel with a clear protagonist and stakes. Jones’ invocation and subversion of slasher tropes and traditions are delivered masterfully in this love letter to the genre, where newcomer and entrenched fan alike will feel rewarded. In no small way, Jones demonstrates the heights to which the slasher genre can aspire. A magnum opus that has the power to send readers scrambling for more. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Seventeen-year-old Jade Daniels is something of a pariah in her small town. A member of the Blackfoot tribe, she is obsessed with slasher movies, has an abusive father, and is just counting the days until a real horror event happens in her tiny town of Proofrock, Idaho. After the mysterious deaths of two tourists Jade is convinced that all the signs point to a slasher event, and she fruitlessly tries to warn the town. She identifies all the typical slasher players, especially the Final Girl, whose virtue gives her the strength to defeat the monster. Jade has few allies, but her history teacher, to whom she writes papers explaining all aspects of slasher lore and how it relates to the sinister events occurring in Proofrock, is one of them. These papers are interspersed among the chapters explaining the increasingly mysterious and terrifying deaths occurring in Proofrock. Class, race, and education all play a role in the story, and one need not be familiar with the slasher film genre to understand Jade's references. The tension builds to a horrifying climax with all the gore Jade could ever have hoped for and ends on an uncertain, supernatural note. Cara Gee narrates the book with extreme skill. She gives perfect voice to Jade, evincing her cynicism, anger, and deep hurt, but also her hope, kindness, conviction, and bravery. The building tension is perfectly paced; listeners will journey with Jade through redemption and freeing acknowledgment of what really happened to her in the past to bring her where she is today. VERDICT This is a must-have for public library collections.—B. Allison Gray, Goleta Valley Lib., CA
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Jones (The Only Good Indians) expertly mixes the frightening and the funny in this no-holds-barred homage to classic horror tropes written under the heady influence of splatter films. Its outsider heroine is Jade Daniels, an affectionately cheeky 17-year-old high schooler of Blackfoot descent, who finds escape from her dead-end life in rural Proofrock, Idaho, by gorging on a steady diet of slasher flicks. When a spate of bizarre deaths targeting the wealthy residents of Proofrock’s newly developed Terra Nova community rocks the town, Jade recognizes all of the elements of her favorite films’ formulae at play. Certain that the deaths presage a bloody slaughter, she tries—with little credulity from authorities—to warn the town of what is coming. Jones weaves an astonishing amount of slasher film lore into his novel, punctuating the text with short term papers written by Jade on the history and functions of the genre. Meanwhile, the tension builds to a graphic finale perfectly appropriate for the novel’s cinematic scope. Horror fans won’t need to have seen all of the films referenced to be blown away by this audacious extravaganza. Agent: B.J. Robbins, B.J. Robbins Literary. (Aug.)
