For a breakdown of my rating criteria, check out My Review & Rating System

Premise

Jade Daniels is angry, and she has every right to be. Her rural lake town is quickly gentrifying, doing nothing to improve her life as a “half-Indian” (indigenous person) with an alcoholic for a father and an absentee mother. Jade relishes her outcast status, most comfortable disappearing into slasher flicks. Marked by an almost stream-of-consciousness style, we follow Jade’s inner journey as she discovers that a real life Slasher has come to town. Armed with her encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, Jade sets out to ensure the story enfolds as it should, identifying her Final Girl and going to great lengths to convince her of her role. But can she succeed at such a big task in such a short time? After all, two people are already dead…

Full Review (SPOILERS)

The Killer

Stacey Graves is a great villain. Like most urban legends, she comes with a sympathetic backstory and some seriously spooky supernatural abilities. What’s not to love… and fear?

In this case, the Killer represents systemic racism (as a half-Indian, like Jade), the dark side of gentrification, and revenge, specifically in the form one of society’s deepest fears: a dead child wreaking havoc on the society that let her die, both in real life, and in their collective memory (Jade even notes that Stacey being indigenous is not common knowledge, but would be if we talked to the right people–SNAP!).

But like any good whodunnit slasher, the reveal that Stacey Graves has in fact risen is saved for the climax. Up until then, Jade is still convinced that the Slasher walks among them, and the reader is invited to play her grisly guessing game alongside her.

The Terrible Place

Proofrock, Terra Nova, Camp Blood, and the tissue that connects them all, Indian Lake, all have a significant role to play when it comes to the Terrible Place trope. I will be upfront and say I had never heard of Prurock, Idaho before this book, and I have no idea if or to what degree it was drawn upon and/or fictionalized for the story.

That said, the town, from Jones’s description, is one hell of a character. It’s an immersive setting, and having multiple interconnected locales to play with and in added to both the somewhat chaotic style of the book and the tension. The climax taking place in the actual lake made for a unique experience, though to be honest, I think I only managed to follow about 75% of what was going on. Have I used the word chaotic, yet? It felt chaotic… but in a (mostly) good way.

Weapons/Shock Value

This is a difficult section for me to tackle, since (as aforementioned), I found the climax so intense that I may have only followed about 3/4 of what was happening. And I read it twice.

That said, the opening scene, in which the Danish couple are essentially sucked into the lake: brilliant. To return to the lake for the climax: also brilliant. Jade, wielding a machete, unintentionally delivering the final blow to Tab (her father and her abuser), who is then swallowed up by that same lake: beyond brilliant. Tab is the TRUE villain of this story, and though Letha (our supposed Final Girl) attempted to kill him for Jade, it had to be Jade, and it had to be the lake.

The violence in the book, and particularly of Tab’s two deaths, was more than appropriate in this story. Nothing felt gratuitous or voyeuristic/sexist. Everything felt like a troubled girl witnessing chaos, trying to understand it through a familiar lens: the slasher. I’m also pleased that in the end there was a supernatural underpinning. It worked very well for this narrative.

The Victims

Unlike the typical slasher that slices and dices its way through a group of teenagers (emphasizing, or at least lingering on, the young women, especially), this one takes down mostly adults. The people in town who Jade and the other kids should have been able to trust to keep them safe. But in a slasher, adults are useless at that. Usually, they’re just conspicuously absent, which made their slaughter here a unique twist.

While I myself had no special place in my heart for Jade’s history teacher (I actually found him rather off-putting, though I don’t think that’s what Jones was going for), his death had a huge impact on Jade, and therefore a huge impact on me. Jade confessing her secret to him just before he passed was a gut-wrenching scene, and I needed to put the book down for a couple hours after that one!

The Final Girl

If there’s one cringey truth about Final Girls, it’s that they’re designed to be “not like the other girls.” We can’t all live, after all. And in the world of slashers, we don’t all “deserve” to. Jade has taken this–again, very CRINGEY–trope to heart. So much so, that she truly believes that she could never be a Final Girl. That she is too broken. That her trauma defines her so.

Heartbreaking does not even begin to describe all the feels I felt while reading this one. Jones does an AMAZING job at flipping the Final Girl archetype on its head by giving us Jade. She feels so real, so multi-layered, so raw, and so strong. Her journey, and the moment she realizes she isn’t only capable of being a Final Girl, but that she is one, is so beautiful and powerful.

Was it hard to be in Jade’s head? Yes. She is an unreliable narrator and Jones uses an almost stream-of-consciousness writing style to convey that, which makes it a very challenging read. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Even when I wasn’t quite sure I was fully following the plot correctly.

Final Thoughts

This was a challenging, heartbreaking, and beautiful book. Jade is the best representation of a Final Girl I have ever encountered, and her story will stick with me for a very long time. Admittedly, the climax was tough to follow in places, but it didn’t matter, because the heart of the book is Jade, and I love her. I will definitely be grabbing book 2 soon!

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Read this one? Share your own thoughts in the comments!

And for more bloody good fun, join my Final Girl Bookclub on Fable to read along with me. See you in the threads!