My Heart Is a Chainsaw: A Love Letter Written in Blood

Jade Daniels is one of the most memorable protagonists in recent horror fiction. A high schooler who uses encyclopedic knowledge of slasher movies to make sense of a world that has consistently failed her, she's brilliant, damaged, unreliable, and completely compelling. Stephen Graham Jones has created a character you root for even when—especially when—she's clearly spiraling.

The novel works on multiple levels simultaneously. It's a love letter to slasher films, stuffed with references and analysis that horror fans will devour. It's a coming-of-age story about a girl using genre frameworks to process real trauma. It's a thriller that builds to a genuinely shocking third act. And it's a subtle but powerful commentary on class, colonialism, and the violence embedded in American small towns.

Jones's prose is propulsive and immediate, often mimicking Jade's breathless interior monologue. The slasher movie essays she writes throughout the novel are themselves mini-masterpieces of genre criticism. And when the blood finally starts flowing, Jones proves he can deliver the goods—the climactic massacre is as brutal as anything in the films Jade loves.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw launched what would become the Indian Lake Trilogy, and it's a remarkable achievement—literary horror that never forgets to be scary, a genre deconstruction that never becomes smug, and a character study that breaks your heart.