Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

I was a huge fan of Stephen Graham Jones' Only Good Indians, and so I was beyond excited to have the opportunity to read this ARC. It did not disappoint. A gory and complex tribute to slashers, My Heart Is a Chainsaw is the story of Jade, slasher fan and NOT final girl material. But that's alright. Because no matter how much she might try to frame it as such, her life is not a slasher film: it's something darker and more complicated, and not everything follows the rules that she's so familiar with.
To ensure that the reader is familiar with slashers, SGJ uses a framing device that I always love and presents us with Jade's "extra credit" history project: A history and explanation of the slasher and its many complicated tropes and character beats. I'm a huge slasher fan, but even so, Jade's voice was a welcome lens through which my own personal knowledge was reframed and structured. There is also something else hiding in those excerpts, a horror that is more Jaws than Halloween, with the monster and the horror of it all staying almost out of sight for most of the book. There is not a lot I can say about this book without spoiling all of its twists and turns: SGJ keeps you guessing about what *type* of slasher this is going to be until the very end, pulling rabbits out of his hat like a magician and carrying you along on a wild, bloody, horrifying ride.
The only reason this is not a five star is because I found it a little slow to start, and some of the emotional beats did not quite grip me in the same way that TOGI did last year. However, this is nothing short of a brilliant horror novel and one that I imagine will be better upon a reread, just like Friday the 13th or Scream is better the second time you watch it.