Jones’s My Heart Is a Chainsaw is such an accomplishment; it makes me want to watch all the horror. This novel is a paean to slasher films, a devotional about an acolyte written by an obsessive. And it’s a lot of fun ... Jade’s awkwardness and insecurities, her intractable obstinacy, her refusal to behave in a socially acceptable manner, all make her a believable nuisance to the adults in her life...She’s respectful and patient, with an irrepressible sense of humor to balance our her sense of horror. We’re so much on her side we find ourselves hoping for the worst ... When things get going, they really go gonzo, and we’re scrabbling to hang on by our fingernails throughout the climax. Everything promised in the first act is gleefully delivered in the third with comedy, pathos and a machete clutched in the hands of an unforgettable character.

Ultimately, Jones utilizes Jade as a tool to produce a loving, critical, and tender send-up of the slasher, and the novel becomes a refreshing horror narrative which finally names Native peoples as an avid audience of the slasher genre ... the figure of the Final Girl looms large over the narrative, and Jade, unlike the reader, never manages to consciously comprehend how the archetype’s repressive and at times unattainable standards can do more harm than good to young women ... Jade is a character that’s easy to fall in love with, but Jones plays upon this likability to build on the mystery of her past. The great magic trick of the novel that Jones executes is that he exploits our tendency to identify with the Final Girl to lead us astray. It is in this way that the novel shines as both a celebration of Finals Girls and a cautionary critique of unwavering fanaticism.

... the apocalypse is so inevitable, and so obviously Jade’s wish fulfillment, that it lacks a certain conviction. With perhaps one or two exceptions, Jade doesn’t actually want to see everyone die. But more than that, all the references to fictional slasher bloodbaths can’t help but remind readers that this slasher bloodbath is, well, fictional. In real life, Jade can’t drown her tormentors in the lake. She can’t summon Jason from the depths to smite the iniquitous. The whole book has been telling you, over and over, that the moral order of a slasher is just a compensating story Jade tells herself. As a result, the novel feels more metafictional than real ... Jason isn’t there killing anyone. But Dad is, and maybe sometimes he does. Jones’ accomplishment lies in showing that that’s what slashers were saying all along.

... clever ... this novel is nothing if not a web of allusions to other works. My own horror fandom doesn’t typically extend to slashers, which have always seemed overly predictable and rigid to me, fueled by an inchoate teenage rage too far back in my own past to feel immediate. But Jones makes the case for the slasher as the sestina of adolescent fury; the very inflexibility of the form at once both weirdly comforting and a daunting challenge to anyone seeking to do anything original with it ... Literary novels—which is what My Heart Is a Chainsaw, for all its reveling in trashy pop culture, really is—care as much about character as plot, so the mystery here is equal parts 'Who is the slasher?' and 'Why is Jade so angry and sad?' Over and over again, just when I thought I knew what Jones was up to, he ingeniously anticipated and shot down my suspicions. Meanwhile, the novel stretches the boundaries of the horror genre, its whole first half a slow burn that tricks the reader into investing deeply in Jade herself ... If My Heart Is a Chainsaw has a weakness, it’s that Jones peels off so many layers of assumption and cliché that by the time the bloody bill of the slasher plot comes due, as it must, the climax feels a bit rushed ... Jones brings the novel to a close with a reveal that knits his themes together beautifully, but perhaps he underestimates how much readers will have invested in Jade and the people he’s surrounded her with, as well as how deeply the slasher’s blows cut when they finally come.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is Stephen Graham Jones’ big wet literary kiss to the splatter film ... Jones provides a guidebook in the form of a coming-of-age story merged with a cinematic history lesson that works quite well, even if it takes a while for the engine to warm up ... Fans of horror cinema will find much to love here ... That said, there is plenty here to hold your interest. It is one of those books that, with a bit of selective editing, would work really well as a streaming service movie, and I mean that as a high compliment.

Background tension in Jones’s latest thrums from the start—tension between Indigenous people and white colonizers, between longtime residents and incomers, between haves and have-nots—even before the meticulously crafted horror plot unfolds. Readers will be thinking about Jade long after they hurtle toward the book’s vivid, moving, gory end. Aspiring writers will especially appreciate the author’s acknowledgements, in which Jones shares the many changes the story went through over the course of years before its publication ... This extraordinary novel is an essential purchase.

Readers will be drawn in by the effortless storytelling and Jade’s unique cadence. This is a methodically paced story where every detail both entertains and matters, and the expertly rendered setting explodes with violent action. This brilliantly crafted, heartbreakingly beautiful slasher presents a new type of authentic 'final girl,' one that isn’t 'pure' and may not be totally innocent, yet can still be a vessel for hope.

Jones expertly mixes the frightening and the funny in this no-holds-barred homage to classic horror tropes written under the heady influence of splatter films ... Jones weaves an astonishing amount of slasher film lore into his novel, punctuating the text with short term papers written by Jade on the history and functions of the genre. Meanwhile, the tension builds to a graphic finale perfectly appropriate for the novel’s cinematic scope. Horror fans won’t need to have seen all of the films referenced to be blown away by this audacious extravaganza.