exhaustin 's review for:

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
3.5
challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-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

A slasher with real character development, emotional stakes and complicated themes? Yes please. Not that it wasn't a challenge to read at times, because it absolutely was. SGJ's amorphous stream of consciousness remains intact here and it's both a perfect fit for this subgenre and also one that requires a lot of patience and trust from the reader. If you can provide all that though, you're in for an all-timer of a "third reel body dump", as Jade Daniels would put it. Absolutely electric finale and one of the best endings to a horror story I've ever come across. One of the rare slashers that I'll be turning over in my head for quite a while.