RIP Challenge | Book Chatter

My Heart is a Chainsaw
By Stephen Graham Jones
Gallery / Saga Press, 9781982137632, August 2021, 416pp.

The Short of It:

Dark. An homage to slasher films of the 80s.

The Rest of It:

Jade Daniels is an angry young woman living in the small town of Proofrock. Forced to live with her abusive father, she takes comfort in the form of slasher films, especially ones where the killer deals out revenge for something, think Jason from Friday the 13th. Her knowledge of such films is extensive. So much so that it spills into her schoolwork. As the story unfolds, some of it is told through the term paper she is about to submit. Slasher 101.

Something is amiss in Proofrock though. Two young people were ripped to shreds by something while out on the lake. The town calls it a bear attack. Jade sees it for what it is, the beginning of all slasher films and immediately acts to find the killer.

This was a very strange read. It reminded me a lot of American Horror Story: 1984, which brought up the concept of “the final girl”. You know the girl. The one that lives at the end of the killing spree. Jade pieces things together but in doing so, has to also find the final girl. It can’t be her. She is not final girl material. When she finds her, the action quickly ramps up and it’s hard to keep track of who is alive and who is dead. It’s a crazy ride.

I’m not sure this book is for everyone. Yes, horror fans will enjoy it to a degree but it’s very surreal in the telling. By the end of the book, I was fully into the characters but also felt like I had been taken for a wild ride. It is very different. I anxiously waited for this book to come in for the RIP Challenge but although it totally fits the challenge, it wasn’t the atmospheric read I was hoping for.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

The Family Plot
By Megan Collins
Atria Books, 9781982163846, August 2021, 320pp.

The Short of It:

The Family Plot is one of those “treat” reads. One that makes you love reading all over again.

The Rest of It:

At twenty-six, Dahlia Lighthouse is haunted by her upbringing. Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, she is unable to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother, Andy, when they were sixteen.

After several years away and following her father’s death, Dahlia returns to the house, where the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father’s plot is another body—Andy’s, his skull split open with an ax. ~ Indiebound

Let’s just say that discovering her missing brother’s body in her own backyard is enough to make Dahlia lose all hope in her true-crime obsessed family. Andy was her twin, but he was also everything to her. Basically, the other half of who she was. Losing her brother at the age of sixteen, with his “goodbye” note the only thing left behind, meant that she saw him every time she turned a corner, searched endlessly online for him, and basically lost touch with her two other siblings because they didn’t seem to understand the depth of her loss. They had each other, and she had no one.

When their father dies and they all return home it’s not a happy homecoming at all. Too many memories buried in that house. They were raised by parents who were obsessed with true crime, specifically the local murders which involved many young women, and the killer was never found. Their walls covered with the news of those murders, gruesome pictures and even dioramas that Dahlia’s sister constructed as a way to work through the horror.

When Andy’s body is discovered in their own backyard, Dahlia cannot make sense of it. He’s been gone all this time and yet, he was right there. How did he end up there? Who killed him? Is it related to the other killings on the island?

This was a marvelous read. Fun, twisty, not that predictable. I enjoyed spending time with this quirky family and I could not turn the pages fast enough. I was hoping it would be good but it will probably end up on my fave list at the end of the year. I was happily surprised by how much I loved this one.

Recommend.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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