This is a book written by - and starring - a person with an encyclopaedic love of slasher films. Now, I like slasher films. I like horror in general, and I like it a lot. But I'm forced to admit that slasher films, to me, are some of the least interesting forms of horror. I recognise a great deal of the references here, because I keep watching slasher films so that I keep increasing my knowledge of the horror genre in general, but I don't love them. Not like Jones does, and not like Jade. That's Jade's obsession with slashers becomes, through the book, an obvious means of navigating her own trauma is enormously sympathetic, even if the resulting monomania is sometimes a little difficult to credit. That said, the trauma she's hiding from is so immense, and so treacherous, that one can hardly blame a kid of finding any possible way to cope. By the time she's seventeen, this means of coping has become so embedded that Jade interprets the entire world through a slasher lens, which is occasionally frustrating but also, well, accurate. Something dreadful is going on at the lake, and Jade's predictions, her interpretations, are uncannily accurate. 

I kind of wish there'd been a more solid conclusion, but I understand that this is the first book in a trilogy, so perhaps ending on the emotional note of the bear, which was admittedly one of the most effective of the entire story, was the right choice. I only hope that, in the time between this book and the next, Jade broadens her viewing habits. Just a little...