Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

7 reviews

squisheebee_'s review

challenging dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I absolutely loved the narration of this book. Jade stole my heart & maybe it biased my rating.🤷🏽‍♀️ 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Alcoholism, Addiction, Body horror, Blood, Classism, and Mental illness

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gore, Animal death, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Suicide, and Self harm

Minor: Rape, Confinement, Sexual assault, Car accident, Fire/Fire injury, and Panic attacks/disorders

chloseencounter's review

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

An ode to the slasher, this novel really stole my heart pretty quickly. I enjoyed the MC (and maybe related to her a little too much…) The reason this isn’t a 4⭐️ for me is that the first 100 pages and last 100 pages where so fun but in between it was rather dense. As someone who has loved the slasher genre ever since Scream graced my eyeholes for the first time, I really enjoyed exploring the mind of the MC and all the slasher input she had on the genre, but I think this could be a harder read for most general audiences. The second book in the trilogy comes out this month and I’ll be excited to see how the story continues. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Grief, Adult/minor relationship, Death, Death of parent, Murder, Rape, Cultural appropriation, Abandonment, Confinement, Abortion, Blood, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Suicide attempt, Animal death, Self harm, Violence, Vomit, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, and Misogyny

lee_brahms's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Suicide attempt, Gore, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Cursing, Rape, Sexual assault, Child abuse, Incest, Animal death, Pedophilia, Alcoholism, Blood, Murder, and Self harm

Minor: Confinement, Vomit, Colonisation, and Fire/Fire injury

saintyeehaw's review

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I loved the premise of this book going in but found the writing style difficult to enjoy--just not my cup of tea. It was also hard to feel any positive feelings while reading because everything just seems to go so unfairly wrong for Jade. This kept me from getting overly invested because it was just too painful to read about her continued misfortune at the hands of willful misunderstandings.

I also really did not appreciate Mr. Holmes being framed so endearingly--this is a man who withheld graduation from a student for missing homework due to her SUICIDE ATTEMPT.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Child death, Classism, Gun violence, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Pedophilia, Rape, Alcoholism, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Mental illness, Murder, Racism, Religious bigotry, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Violence

Minor: Medical content, Bullying, Car accident, Cultural appropriation, Hate crime, Pregnancy, and Vomit

abbie_'s review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

3.75

Far and away the most brutal book I may have ever read?! Definitely has the highest body count! Please check the content warnings before deciding to embark on this bloodthirsty book, honestly brutal doesn’t begin to cover it. 

My Heart is a Chainsaw is a love letter to slasher movies, and since I have not seen even a single slasher, I’m as surprised as you are that I enjoyed this book this much. Jade even made me slightly want to watch a slasher but given that I live alone, I shall not be doing that. 

A lot of the readers who didn’t enjoy this one felt they couldn’t click with Jade’s stream-of-consciousness narration, which is pretty slippery at first. But I love a good stream of consciousness narrative, so that part worked well for me! There are also lots of good scares in here, even a jump scare - how does a book have a jump scare? I don’t know but SGJ managed it!

Super creepy, super bloody, super tragic

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Blood, Confinement, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Animal death, Gore, Rape, Suicide attempt, Violence, Vomit, and Fire/Fire injury

seawarrior's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I found this book difficult to read for a variety of reasons, Jade sometimes sounds nonsensical, her thinly hidden history of surviving incestuous rape is harrowing, and the gore she describes witnessing is revolting. Yet I poured over her story within the span of a night, rapidly turning the pages as their mystery unraveled. The most striking element of My Heart Is a Chainsaw is unarguably Jade's voice. Jade is a pathological believer in the structure of slashers, and though her first person monologues are repetitive, winding, and hiding a deeper wound, her admiration for the mythology of these movies and determination to sway others to her perspectives of them are unwavering. Jones maintains Jade's authentic voice through emotional and physical tortures alike, even providing a number of essays on slasher lore written by our scarily knowledgeable protagonist. Each of these essays sheds light onto Jade's opinions, but also the situations that led to their development. Every word within them is written with the impatient excitement of a teenager who is immensely passionate about her material, but not for the formalized essay form she's meant to present it in.

I felt the most gratifying piece of this story was the slow reveal as to why Jade loves slasher movies so much in the first place. She devotes her life to analyzing them from a lens that provides her the emotional catharsis she desperately needs and has long been going without from other avenues. Jade is far from the only mistreated and lonely kid to find kinship in endlessly vengeful monsters, the girls who survive them, or both symbols at the same time, which is part of why she was such a believable protagonist to me. Her story in this first book concluded abruptly, but on a resounding note, and it will be difficult to wait until next year for it to continue. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death of parent, Gore, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Violence, and Vomit

Moderate: Child abuse, Incest, Rape, and Sexual violence

sarah984's review against another edition

dark funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This book was so good, but also very hard to describe. It's probably 60% character study and 40% balls-to-the-wall gorefest slasher, but every element just builds on what came before in a way that wraps up so perfectly. The main character has a great voice, and her essays about slasher films sprinkled through the book were a highlight. I will be thinking about that ending for the rest of my life. Amazing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Gore, Self harm, Suicide attempt, and Violence

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Rape, and Vomit

Minor: Cannibalism, Car accident, Colonisation, and Racial slurs