I was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

 I was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones, 373 pages, ⭐⭐⭐

Lamesa, Texas, July 1989

It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA – they don’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s recent death.

This is all about to change.

Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

This is Stephen Graham Jones x-raying the slasher genre, interrogating its motivations over the shoulder and in the voice of the killer itself – from a town he did some growing up in, in a year he was also seventeen.

The kills will be poignant, the jokes will hurt, and the violence will be endearing. Everything’s turned around for Tolly, for Amber – for all of Lamesa, Texas.

2.5 rounded up

I am soooooo torn on this review because on one hand I thought that the plot was very fun and unique but on the other hand the writing style was just abysmal. I felt like I took double the time it would normally take to finish a book of this length solely because I was getting lost in the writing (in a bad way). There is so much rambling. I know Stephen King is the go to when someone talks about rambling authors but he has nothing on this SGJ book. I've read The Only Good Indians and I didn't find this problem so I'm not sure if it was a creative decision for this specific narrator?

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones, 135 pages

After a prank gone horribly wrong, Sawyer's friend group starts dying one by one. Only Sawyer seems to realize the truth, and the more he digs, the more he oncovers about the horrors awaiting him. 

Jones' writing style straight up sucked me in. He built the tension perfectly, and the pacing was perfect. He plays fair as a writer, dropping hints of what's to come. I loved it. 

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

 My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones-416 pages

Jennifer "Jade" Daniels is seventeen and the half-Indian weird slasher chick in the small town of Proofrock, Idaho. Her childhood was traumatic and she lives with her Blackfoot dad, who contributed to that trauma. Her father is a drunk and lives out his high school days with his old high school buddies. Jade really, really wants a slasher cycle to come to Proofrock (or so she thinks, at least). Jade wrote papers on slasher history for her history teacher, Mr. Holmes, all throughout high school. Jade attempts suicide in Indian Lake, where local legend says Stacey Graves, the Lake Witch, resides. Stacey Graves died decades ago, but supposedly still haunts Indian Lake, where she died as an 8-year-old. When people start turning up dead, Jade thinks a slasher cycle is finally happening in Proofrock. She meets a new girl from Terra Nova, the new rich town on the other side of Indian Lake, named Letha Mondragon. Jade thinks Letha is the final girl of this supposed slasher. However, when more and more bodies start to pile up and Jade and Letha are in the middle of it, Jade realizes real life is starkly different from a slasher film. She realizes maybe she didn't want a slasher in Proofrock, after all. Will Jade survive the slasher and what about Letha? Is she really the final girl as Jade believes? Who is the killer? Is it really the Lake Witch or is it someone like Theo Mondragon (or someone else)? This one starts out slow, but the last 100 or so pages kept me on the edge of my seat. I liked this one, overall, and would recommend it to horror enthusiasts.