6.79k reviews for:

My Heart Is a Chainsaw

Stephen Graham Jones

3.62 AVERAGE

lilllyytapppii's review

1.0

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I didn’t get interested until about 70% of the way through, and saying I was interested is being generous. The main girl and her final girl were literally getting hunted down by the apparent murderer but I was still bored. I felt it could have been better. The ending with the bomb dropping of her dad assaulting her as a kid and going to the doctor to see if she was pregnant was strangely underwhelming? I felt this trauma could have been more explicitly explored at a deeper level that was integrated throughout the book. Also, why did the mom not have custody if this was the situation? He's a drunk and she's apparently a troubled child so why was she still with the dad? The writing felt messy, which I wanted to believe was because we were in the mind of a troubled 16 year old but there was no break from her messy train of thought. Maybe people love this if they love slashers, and as someone with minimal knowledge of them, it didn't make me want to indulge in them any more than I already did.

m3greads's review

DID NOT FINISH: 46%

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I don’t have time to be reading mid books rn

alainaaam's review

3.0

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i enjoyed reading this book once i really got into it. sometimes it felt a bit slow but really picked up in the second half

jmacclure's review against another edition

2.0

slow-paced

sladew's review

4.25

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

pechothedeer's review against another edition

3.0

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Well that was definitely a book... I feel like I enjoyed the middle bit (and REALLY enjoyed the opening chapter), but the ending was... so confusing? And not in a good way. Like I don't understand the motivation of any of the characters. And then it just ended? Which I guess makes some sort of sense because it's a trilogy apparently. Don't think I'll be reading the rest of the books though unfortunately.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Rape, Suicide attempt, Murder

gannetsneverdie's review

4.0

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(3.75) i have a few mixed thoughts about some parts of this, some to do with the manner in which the final plot was resolved (and what parts of it maybe..weren't?) and some to do with the writing style itself (because it took a while for me to get back into the rhythm whenever i'd come back to it, with the sort of run-off thoughts that gallop in different directions and can sometimes make you doubt if you're following if you're not paying enough attention). not to say i didn't enjoy it because i really did!! it takes a lot of work to so precisely build the texture of how it feels to be inside someone's head and it was done beautifully here with jade, whom i also loved. the structure, with the interspersed essays on the formal elements of the slasher, was really interesting to see side by side, and honestly i'd have even loved to see some more of them, to establish even more meta throughlines, because those are of course my favourite thing, to see even more of the outside world brought to life through the eyes of these learned patterns and learned expectations from different people. i think when i come back to the sequel a lot of thoughts about this book will also get a bit more sorted out, because there's been a lot of momentum built through this character, and that is always so interesting in horror.

ndiganci's review

2.5

dark tense slow-paced

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I really wanted to love this book. I've heard such good things about Stephen Graham Jones I was excited to start reading. 

But. Through the first several, several pages, I HATED Jade. She was annoying and so hyper-focused on slashers I thought, there's no way I can read 400 pages of her as the main character. She DID get better the longer I read, but her obsession with slashers and with turning Letha Mondragon into The Final Girl still grated. And it took SO LONG for anything to really start happening. The first 70% of the book was a complete SLOG to get through. I have no problem DNF'ing books, but I did want to finish this one, see if Jade's slasher prep paid off. 

Then stuff started happening, and the story started to get interesting -- people are dying! Jade keeps finding all these dead bodies and she keeps pushing Letha to research final girls and her place in whatever is happening in Proofrock.

Then we get to the actual reveal of the killer, and though it was staring us in the face the whole time, I was supremely disappointed to find out the killer was the local ghost story, Stacey Graves, and NOT a human antagonist. This reveal took what could have been a real-life horror story and flipped it into a supernatural one, and I did NOT like it. I love supernatural horror, but generally you realize that's what it is right near the beginning and not 80% of the way through.

Not sure if I'll continue on to the next one, since I know this is a trilogy. Haven't ruled out Graham Jones yet - I'll give another one of his books a chance before deciding if I like him as an author or not.

sieger_aardweg's review

3.25

dark emotional fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

briarcole's review

4.25

adventurous dark medium-paced

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes