A review by newton
My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Okay. I'm conflicted on this book. It was a slow start, and for most of it I was just confused as to where we were and what was happening. My number one criticism was a lack of atmospheric detail, there were so many points where I knew vaguely the location Jade was in but was left with little idea of what that place looked like. I don't know if it's a flaw of the writing or just me not reading closely enough (or, most likely, a mix) but it seriously impacted how I was able to enjoy this book. I'm still lost on a lot of the plot and details, and it was just a bit of a drudge until things picked up around the end.
On to the positives, though. Jade. Jade my love. I really liked the idea of a genre-savvy slasher character, and while it was often hard to parse when serious drama was actually going down because of how slasher-focused her narration was, overall I absolutely adored her character. She deserved to go apeshit and
kill her piece of shit father
. I also found Letha to be a fantastic character
(though, again, Jade's narration made it a bit hard to really trust her – I was waiting for a twist with her that never came).
Rooting for them to fall in love in books 2 or 3.
And the GORE!! I love to feel violently sick after reading a book – it's a lot harder for gore to get to me when I'm not watching it on screen. The gore in The Only Good Indians was probably my favorite part of the book, and I was glad to see SGJ keeps up the horrifying grossness in his other work.
The part where Letha and Jade are hiding in the cave of elk corpses was so disgusting and evocative, and of course the jaw dismemberment and bodies flying in the yacht and lake massacres were delightfully horrifying.

I'll probably read at least book 2 in this trilogy, and maybe reread this one just to fill in the details of what I missed in my first read. All in all, it was enjoyable, and by the time it picked up, I couldn't put it down. I just wish the first part hadn't been so slow and that we had been able to get more details and atmosphere/mood through Jade's consistently slasher-focused narration. 
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