Hello everyone! I hope you are all living your best lives and find yourselves curled up with a good book more often than not. I am trying to get through as many horror novels as I can by the end of this month. I am incredibly excited because I have so many good recommendations that I’m hoping to get to before the end of the year. I also rearranged my bookshelves recently to make room for even more books! Now, let’s add another to the shelf and talk about My Heart is a Chainsaw.

Trigger Warning: Graphic Violence, Blood and Gore, Self – Harm, Discussions of Sexual Assault

Jade Daniels has always turned to the slasher movies of the 1980s to escape her rather bleak existence. She is an outsider in her small hometown of Proofrock, which is home to Camp Blood, the site of a massacre that happened fifty years ago, and Terra Nova, a development for the Uber-rich and mildly famous. When the bodies of a teen couple turn up by Indian Lake, Jade knows in her heart that this is the start of a slasher. There are patterns that these movies follow and Jade has the encyclopedic knowledge to help her survive whatever or whoever is piling up bodies. She takes it upon herself to train the final girl to survive what may come and finds herself taking a much bigger role in this would – be slasher flick.

Though I am not a fan of slasher films, I can appreciate the thought and care that Stephen Graham Jones put into this novel. Within My Heart is a Chainsaw is a pretty interesting analysis of the slasher movie and why the structures are so important to the genre. This is wrapped up in a gory and fast-paced story about a misunderstood girl just trying to find some semblance of control in her life. This was certainly unique compared to other horror novels I have read recently. You don’t have to be a fan of slasher movies to appreciate this film, but if you are a fan of bloody, gory horror, then this is certainly the novel for you this spot season.