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A review by marleyrollins
My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
3.0
I went into this SO excited. I love horror films. I love spooky books. I love badass female characters. But this just fell really flat for me, no matter how much I wanted to love it.
The main issue for me was how long this book is- even though it’s around 430 pages, it feels so much longer. The book is so incredibly slow paced, and basically very little happens for the first 80% of this book, with all the important action coming in this confused rush right at the end of the book, and this coupled with Graham Jones’ eccentric writing style made it difficult to fully appreciate what was going on or make sense of the ending. In my opinion, you could have easily truncated this book into around 300 pages and given the ending a lot more time to really build. Because of this, I feel like the pacing of the novel is just super iffy, and you never really sufficiently build up a sense of unease or intrigue, because either nothing is happening, or everything happens quickly and is over with without that much reflection.
I also found that because Graham Jones’ writing style is quite sparse, sometimes I couldn’t always grasp what was being described properly or what he’s trying to communicate. For example, the ending of the book devolves into horrendous, slasher chaos, but I found it hard to picture what was happening and felt like I was losing track of the action without a good enough description to guide me.
Another issue I had with this book is nothing felt natural- I know this is the style of the novel, but it was super grating. Jade for me wasn’t a likeable character- she talks solely in these weird movie quotes, like she’s always trying to be cool and quotable, so all the dialogue had this weird stilted feel to it. Because she’s constantly trying to adhere to slasher rules, she also just does a ton of stuff that makes no sense, so I just really struggled to root for her.
Also, no spoilers, but the ending of this book is SO disappointing. We get no explanation or reasoning for the town becoming a slasher film. No reflecting moment really that looks back on the action. It also weirdly ends a chapter too late- it could have ended right after the juicy action, but there’s an added chapter that feels like a boring anticlimax, and it’s really confusing too.
Overall, I think if you’re into really slow burning books, or you too have a encyclopaedic knowledge of horror films (if you don’t, 80% ish of the references will be lost on you) then you might like this. However, I would say avoid it if you’re looking for an edge of your seat, creepy horror with tightly plotted action.
Giving this 3 stars- I know everybody else seems to love it, but it just didn’t do it for me.
The main issue for me was how long this book is- even though it’s around 430 pages, it feels so much longer. The book is so incredibly slow paced, and basically very little happens for the first 80% of this book, with all the important action coming in this confused rush right at the end of the book, and this coupled with Graham Jones’ eccentric writing style made it difficult to fully appreciate what was going on or make sense of the ending. In my opinion, you could have easily truncated this book into around 300 pages and given the ending a lot more time to really build. Because of this, I feel like the pacing of the novel is just super iffy, and you never really sufficiently build up a sense of unease or intrigue, because either nothing is happening, or everything happens quickly and is over with without that much reflection.
I also found that because Graham Jones’ writing style is quite sparse, sometimes I couldn’t always grasp what was being described properly or what he’s trying to communicate. For example, the ending of the book devolves into horrendous, slasher chaos, but I found it hard to picture what was happening and felt like I was losing track of the action without a good enough description to guide me.
Another issue I had with this book is nothing felt natural- I know this is the style of the novel, but it was super grating. Jade for me wasn’t a likeable character- she talks solely in these weird movie quotes, like she’s always trying to be cool and quotable, so all the dialogue had this weird stilted feel to it. Because she’s constantly trying to adhere to slasher rules, she also just does a ton of stuff that makes no sense, so I just really struggled to root for her.
Also, no spoilers, but the ending of this book is SO disappointing. We get no explanation or reasoning for the town becoming a slasher film. No reflecting moment really that looks back on the action. It also weirdly ends a chapter too late- it could have ended right after the juicy action, but there’s an added chapter that feels like a boring anticlimax, and it’s really confusing too.
Overall, I think if you’re into really slow burning books, or you too have a encyclopaedic knowledge of horror films (if you don’t, 80% ish of the references will be lost on you) then you might like this. However, I would say avoid it if you’re looking for an edge of your seat, creepy horror with tightly plotted action.
Giving this 3 stars- I know everybody else seems to love it, but it just didn’t do it for me.