MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW by Stephen Graham Jones

MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW is a love letter to slasher movies, but so much more than gore. It follows Jade, an angry, Native American outcast who seeks refuge in horror movies, especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. 

As strange disappearances and deaths emerge in her remote small town, Jade uses her encyclopedic knowledge of slashers to predict what will happen next, including a focused attempt to prepare the “Last Girl” who she believes will be standing at the end. But when she witnesses real blood spilling in the waters of Indian Lake, Jade starts to doubt whether she wants to live inside a horror movie after all.

Author Stephen Graham Jones is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow & winner of the Ray Bradbury Prize—and in the vein of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, this story is both entertaining and thought provoking. A biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, it’s a fast-paced read from which you can't look away. I recommend reading it over Halloween weekend… with all your lights turned on.

— Recommended by Tess