My Heart Is a Chainsaw

March 1, 2021

In Adams's debut, teenage library worker Aleisha shares The Reading List she's found (all scrunched up) with a widower trying to relate to his book-obsessed granddaughter (75,000-copy first printing). Alderson's Sisters in Arms tells the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black battalion of the Women's Army Corps during World War II (150,000-copy first printing). Buxton's Feral Creatures reintroduces us to S.T., the fabulously cheeky crow who starred in the multi-best-booked Hollow Kingdom. Ferguson, the Duchess of York, tells the Victorian-era story of Lady Margaret Montagu Scott in Her Heart for a Compass (150,000-copy first printing). Second in a spin-off from Hearne's New York Times best-selling "Iron Druid Chronicles" series, Paper & Blood features wily Scottish detective Al MacBharrais. In Jio's latest, Seattle-based librarian Valentina Baker receives news sent With Love from London that she's inherited an apartment and bookshop from the mother who abandoned her. Wealthy newcomers wreak havoc to the point of horror in a lakeside rural town in Bram Stoker Award winner Jones's My Heart Is a Chainsaw (100,000-copy first printing). New York Times best-selling Kadrey wraps up his iconic "Sandman Slim" series with the Shoggot gang, led by King Bullet, overrunning a virus-undone Los Angeles (75,000-copy first printing). Debuter Lange's We Are the Brennans features almost-30 Sunday Brennan returning from Los Angeles to New York to explain to both family and ex-fianc� why she left them five years ago (100,000-copy first printing). Author of the LJ best-booked Mexican Gothic, Moreno-Garcia returns with Velvet Was the Night, featuring a romance magazine-reading secretary in 1970s Mexico City obsessed with the disappearance of her beautiful next-door neighbor. Switching from big-hit dystopias, Mott sends his Black protagonist on one Hell of a Book tour in which he confronts police violence. In Pearce's Yours Cheerfully, first in a new series, advice columnist Emmeline Lake helps keep World War II London safe A(150,000-copy first printing). "Bridgerton" series author Quinn joins forces with her illustrator sister to create a graphic novel telling the story of Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron, first hinted at in the seventh book in the series (50,000-copy first printing). After a four-year renovation, Paris's glamorous Hotel Louis XVI reopens, with Steel allowing Complications to erupt.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2021

Jade Daniels is an outcast in the quickly gentrifying Idaho lake town she's always called home. When a Dutch teenager is found dead, Jade takes morbid delight in the fact that this is surely the first victim in a horror film come to life. Everyone in town is a suspect, and beautiful new classmate Letha Mondragon is the perfect Final Girl-the genre's famous lone survivor. If Jade's obsession with slasher movies is the center of this novel, issues of class, power, and addiction are the spokes that connect the wheel. Content warnings include sexual abuse and suicide, as the protagonist lives in poverty with an abusive father and attempts to take her own life. Jade's family belongs to the Blackfeet tribe, and Jones (Blackfeet) authentically conveys feeling unwelcome in one's own home. Tropes from horror movies play a big role in the novel. The omniscient narration tracks Jade's obsession with these films, a hyper focus that frustrates the few reliable adults in her life as she struggles to communicate in any way other than through the lens of slasher movies. Readers can't help but root for her and implore other characters to heed her warnings, especially in the last third of the book, when the pace sharply quickens. VERDICT A horror novel not dissimilar to slasher movies. Recommended for mature teens.-Lindsay Jensen, Nashville Public Lib.

Copyright 2021 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

A Catcher in the Rye meets Friday the 13th in the latest slasher novel from thriller aficionado Jones. Jade Daniels is the local weird girl in her small town of Proofrock, Idaho. After a suicide attempt cements her status as a pariah, Jade retreats into her encyclopedic knowledge of the slasher genre as a way to make sense of her troubled world. Jones presents a deep character study that explores all the typical terrain of both an angst-y teen coming-of-age story and a campy slasher film, but with a protagonist so invested in her slasher world that it takes on a fresh presentation, not to mention a fair bit of humor. Rather than doing two things poorly, Jones is able to leverage the strengths of each genre to complement the other. Jade's capacity to examine her own trauma, heartache, and desire to belong is repeatedly fashioned through the slasher lens with surprisingly satisfying results. When local events begin to more and more resemble the conventions of her particular obsession, Jade finds herself in a unique position to witness the story unfold in real time. Despite the inclusion of some coming-of-age story stereotypes, like the absent mother and deadbeat father, Jade's earnestness grounds the novel with a clear protagonist and stakes. Jones' invocation and subversion of slasher tropes and traditions are delivered masterfully in this love letter to the genre, where newcomer and entrenched fan alike will feel rewarded. In no small way, Jones demonstrates the heights to which the slasher genre can aspire. A magnum opus that has the power to send readers scrambling for more.

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Starred review from March 26, 2021

Jade Daniels, a teen of Blackfeet and white descent, has always believed that her town, Proofrock, ID, was ripe for a slasher. As a dedicated horror fan, she knows the lore (local Lake Witch legend: check!) and the signs (unexplained mass elk deaths: check!). And she knows a final girl when she sees one, which is why she focuses on beautiful, kind Letha Mondragon when Letha's family moves to the new luxury development across the lake. Jade predicts that Proofrock's annual Fourth of July celebration is going to turn into a bloodbath, and it's her job to prepare Letha for her role--a job that Jade takes very seriously. Background tension in Jones's (The Only Good Indians) 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. VERDICT This extraordinary novel is an essential purchase.--Stephanie Klose, Library Journal

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2021
Following the success of The Only Good Indians (2020), Jones returns with a love letter to the slasher film. Jade, half-Indian, poor, and motherless, finds her only solace in the slasher movies of the 1980s and the extra-credit essays she writes for her history teacher explaining the genre's themes. A group of rich investors "discovers" beautiful and secluded Proofrock, Idaho, despite its troubling history of mass murders and lake witches. Issues of class and privilege collide with the threat of a Fourth of July massacre, though no one takes Jade's warnings seriously. She pins all hope for survival on the new girl--the rich and beautiful Letha, the perfect ""final girl."" 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. Pair this with thought-provoking, trauma-themed horror such as Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) or Victor LaValle's The Changeling (2017).

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