I go back and forth on Stephen Graham Jones as an author and sadly, this was one of the misses for me. I am giving it 3 stars because I think a lot of the reasons it wasn't for me are just personal, and I definitely urge you to give it a try if you like his other work.
My Heart is a Chainsaw is the story of Jade, a teenage girl obsessed with horror films. When a new girl arrives at her school, Jade dubs her 'a Final Girl' and becomes excited that a real-life slasher event is about to begin. The story mostly focuses on Jade trying to determine the nature of the slasher she's in while she copes with finishing school and other aspects of her unhappy home life.
I got about 40% of the way through this book before giving up and skipping to the last 20%. I enjoyed it immensely at first, but there was just too much unfocused rambling and not enough plot happening for me. Normally I love character-focused books (especially with horror) but the writing style made it hard to tell what was going on, something I've struggled with from this author in the past. I liked the elements of horror tropes that were brought up and discussed, but I think the interesting parts did get bogged down by the writing.
Overall, I think if you've enjoyed other stuff by this author then this is definitely worth a try. I loved The Only Good Indians but I think I will stick to trying the shorter works from now on. For me, this book had some great ideas and a lot of promise in the plot, I just sadly didn't gel with the execution.
Overall Rating:
No comments:
Post a Comment