Don’t Fear the Reaper

Rating: 3.5/5 

Note: Do not read this review if you haven’t read My Heart is a Chainsaw. There will be spoilers. 

Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones is the sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw. It picks up a few years after the eventful Fourth of July that shook Proofrock. Readers get to follow Jade Daniels as she tackles a new monster: a serial killer named Dark Mill South.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw was remarkable because it had so much heart. Jones explores Jade’s life, her trauma, and how it shaped her worldview. Throughout the book, readers have a raw and up-close look at how Jade managed to deal with horrors she’d experienced. Unfortunately, Don’t Fear the Reaper does not have the same heart as its predecessor.

Part of this is because the perspective shifts throughout the novel. By the time readers start to like a character, that person is killed off. (Don’t be surprised by that…it’s a slasher!) And because of the numerous perspective shifts, it is hard to get into a character’s psyche. It also is difficult to root for characters when we don’t get to spend much time with them.

Final girls are powerful because we can see their mistakes and their near misses. We get a taste of their raw desire to live and ability to fight. But when the story shifts away from the final girl for significant amounts of time, we lose the joy and investment in her.

That said, the parts of the book that focused on Jade were fantastic. In addition to fighting Dark Mill South, Jade is also fighting herself. (In fact, she’d like to be called Jennifer now, not Jade.) But she has to grapple with the fact that Jennifer is Jade, and the ugly parts of her life ultimately led her to become who she is now. It would have been great to have more of the book focus on the battle of Jade vs. herself.

The friendship between Jade and Leetha Mondragon is one of the more compelling and heartwarming aspects of this story. In My Heart Is a Chainsaw, we see the beginnings of friendship between the popular girl and the outcast. This book furthers their friendship, and we see Jade come to terms with the fact that she can’t survive without some help.

It would be worthwhile to reread My Heart Is a Chainsaw before picking up this book. I had forgotten some parts of book one of this trilogy. (Yes, there’s a third one coming!) That said, Jones does a great job of giving context so you won’t be totally lost. I would not recommend reading this if you haven’t read the first book in the series.

Even though I preferred the first book in this series more than Don’t Fear the Reaper, Jade Daniels is still my final girl.