Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - My Heart Is a Chainsaw

I spent more time frustratedly talking to others about this book than I did reading it. I've never DNF'd a book but this is the closest I'd ever been

From the absolutely infuriating main character, incredibly slow moving plot, messy finale, and a bordering obscene amount of referencial head-nodding that makes Ernest Cline's Oasis/Wade Watts series look timid.

I struggled with every aspect of this book, and it's genuinely a shock considering how this book has almost everything i love.
Horror, non-white protagonists who must personally grow in spite of trauma, small town secrets, potential Queer storyline.

Instead i have.... whatever thiw was. An insufferable lead, about 200 unnecessary pages and a lot of loose threads that were "Yada-Yada"'d through at the end. How can i be bored when there's MURDER happening? And yet. The "sisterly" relationship between our main and another character just came across like "historians will say they were friends" energy.

Also TW/Spoiler warning

did not enjoy whole scenes of our protagonist being effectively deadnamed and outed as a child victim whilst 4 other characters try and force them to confront/confess allegations against their parent.

I must also add that i never EVER feel comfortable about men writing from the perspective of young women/female children who have been S/A'd or R****d.

Whilst not all of the topics i've put in the content warning are Graphic, they are all frequent and i do emplore anyone considering reading this book to consider if they will be affected by these topics, and to avoid if that is the case.

In a summary, i think the book is about 50% too long and i was disappointed by about 150 pages in, but continued on. The ending was VERY disappointing. I only said "medium paced" because 300 pages are slow and 150 aren't but there is no "inconsistently paced" option.

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robinsong's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

If I knew anything about horror movies this probably would be 5 stars lol

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rachelunabridged's review

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.0

I just could not get into this read, unfortunately. For something that is a homage to slashers, it was incredibly slow, and I found myself literally falling asleep as I tried to read it. Ultimately, I had to borrow the book in audiobook format just to finish it.

The main reason this ended up being such a slog fest is the POV character, Jade. So much of this read is bloated by her inner monologue where she explains to the reader all of the slasher tropes happening around her. In addition to her constant chattering, every other chapter is a selection of her history class papers that also explain how slashers work. This felt like overkill to me because it slowed the action of the book soooo much.

Additionally, I don't understand the constant holding of the reader's hand through the whole thing. Is this book written for people who are fans of slasher horror or no? If it's for people who already into slashers, the genre doesn't need to be explained to them, however, if it's not for people who already enjoy slashers, who is all the nostalgia for?

By the end, I felt like all of the interesting subtext and commentary was completely overshadowed by the nostalgia mining. I finished this read feeling like it suffers from the same issues that a lot of nostalgia-driven media has: the author leaned so hard on it that they forgot to write a proper story.

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saintyeehaw's review

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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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