I won’t lie, it took me a while to completely get into the story, much like the main character I was attempting to use my knowledge of slashers to figure out what was going on, while also trying to rationalize that the story was set in the ‘real world.’

But when things really started to go down, I got into it in a big way.

Riffing on the slasher sub-genre of horror, Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart is a Chainsaw, follows Jade, a Native girl living in Proofrock, a small mountain town. She’s close to graduation, but is constantly in trouble, knows the horror genre, hates her dad, and changes her hair color almost on the daily.

When there’s a sudden rash of strange deaths, even murder, Jade begins to believe she’s witnessing the beginning of a slasher cycle, though evidence suggests more banal, if still dangerous possibilities. But is Jade right?

It took me a bit to get into Jones’ writing style, it feels very stream-of-consciousness and it’s filled with lots of pop culture references, which I really vibed with. And once we race to the final third of the book, when the body dump and the reveals begin coming fast and furious, the story kicks into high gear and there are enough bloody descriptions to satisfy any gorehound who idolizes Savini.

The book plays with expectations, knows the genre that it’s honouring, lays enough groundwork and provides enough background for both the town and the golden age of slashers that when things go really sideways, you can buy into everything you are reading. It’s fun, but there’s also a huge emotional story that gets to payoff by story’s end.

Jade isn’t perfect, she’s not the Final Girl of any slasher, something she sees in one of the new students in town, Letha. She’s hurt, arguably broken, and despite being a bit of an outcast, partially by choice, she wants a bit of belonging but chafes against those who are invested in her well-being.

There are some painful revelations that the reader has to confront through Jade, even as she confronts the horrible things that are beginning to occur in her small town.

I quite liked how Jones doles out his story, the way he builds the narrative, toys with the reader and the genre, subverting expectations, and watching how it all plays out in a gruesome, bloody climax that will see the entire town in danger.

There’s an abandoned summer camp, town history that lends to ghost stories, a rogue bear, and a list of suspects that makes Jade’s paranoia seep off the page and into the reader. Who will survive, and what will be the cost to Jade?

This one was an enjoyable read, and the way it was super-saturated in pop culture and horror trivia made this one perfect for me. There are two sequels that I’ll have to dig into. Collectively known as The Indian Lake Trilogy, the entire series is available now from Simon & Schuster Canada.