Is she delusional and just seeing things she wants to see, or is there really a violent killer on the loose?Īfter an intense opening chapter where very bad, very scary things happen to a young tourist couple from the Netherlands out on the town’s lake, the book downshifts and turns into the slowest of slow burns to acclimate readers to Jade’s life and mindset. A half-Indian 17-year-old girl named Jade is so obsessed with slasher movies that she’s convinced the plot of one is emerging in real life in her small Idaho town. I can honestly say I’ve never read a novel like this one. Tolerance of extreme gore - animal (elk) and human.

My Heart is a Chainsaw is a book that takes an awful lot from its readers.Īn in-depth knowledge of slasher films and pop culture references. Like people, there are books that give and books that take. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges… a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies… especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for

My heart is chainsaw