*SOME SPOILERS*
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Jade as our main protagonist is very interesting. She very much pulls you into this world of slashers and she is the kind of character that you can form a bond for pretty quickly. There’s a sense of mystery surrounding her and her circumstances about why she chose to try to commit suicide right at the start of the book and her obsession with slashers. Her relationship with her father and mother were also an interesting aspect of the story and even though it isn’t fully explored we definitely get a sense of what went on earlier in Jade’s life.
I understand how her essay’s to Mr Harvey that are inserted are a way to give us more context as to Jade’s frame of mind and just how ingrained these movies are into her psyche but they pulled me out of the story. I skimmed through the majority of them simply because after the first two or three I wasn’t interested in what she was saying. I was kind of bored and wanted to get back to the actual plot and figuring out who this killer was.
Even though the other characters are the main protagonists in Jade’s slasher plot she keeps a majority of them at a distance so we don’t get to know a lot of them in depth. I didn’t feel connected to any of them and when the killings actually started I wasn’t all that horrified that these people had died. Sure their injuries were gruesome and the descriptions certainly didn’t shy away from all the nitty gritty but because the connection wasn’t there the stakes were low.
I don’t know whether it’s Stephen Graham Jones’ writing style or just Jade’s perspective in particular but I was confused as to what was happening for the majority of the story. Where she was and what she was doing and also who she was talking to, it was framed in a way that was a bit too chaotic for me. She was kind of devolving slowly but also as people kept dying she was become more assured of her predictions. It was very much a stream of consciousness style of writing and I couldn’t really follow along and appreciate it as much as others seem to.
⭐️2/5 stars Just not for me…
Amy Leigh Reads 