Okay so here's the thing. Everyone told me this was a horror masterpiece, a love letter to slasher films, the next great thing from Stephen Graham Jones. And they're not wrong, exactly. But nobody warned me that this book would require the kind of focused attention I literally do not have. I started this during Sophie's nap time and within twenty minutes I was lost in a thicket of horror movie references I couldn't keep straight while also listening for the sound of tiny feet hitting the floor upstairs.
This is not a multitasking book. I need you to hear me on that.
Jade Daniels Deserved Better Than My Divided Attention
Here's what I genuinely loved: Jade. This girl - half-Indian, angry, abused, obsessed with slasher movies to the point where she literally narrates her own small-town life like it's a Friday the 13th sequel - she's one of the most heartbreaking characters I've encountered in a long time. She writes these long, rambling extra-credit papers for her history teacher that are basically unhinged slasher film analyses applied to the gentrification happening in Proofrock, and they're simultaneously hilarious and devastating. That same thing happens in Firekeeper's Daughter — a young Indigenous woman using specialized knowledge as both shield and identity in a world that keeps trying to erase her. You realize pretty quickly that her encyclopedic horror knowledge isn't a quirk. It's armor. It's how she survives an abusive father, an absent mother, and a town that treats her like she's invisible.
And when the blood actually starts flowing into Indian Lake? When Jade's slasher-movie framework starts mapping onto real violence? That's when the book gets genuinely unsettling in a way that goes way beyond jump scares.
But - and this is a big but - the middle of this book nearly lost me. There's a stretch where Jade's horror movie references pile up so thick and so fast that if you don't have a working knowledge of about 47 different slasher franchises, you're just nodding along and hoping context clues save you. I know my way around a Scream movie, but when she's deep-cutting references to films I've never heard of, it felt like being at a party where everyone's laughing at an inside joke. The pacing sags there. Hard. I paused, came back, paused again, and honestly lost the thread a couple of times.
Cara Gee Made Jade Sound Fifteen (And I'm Not Sure That's Wrong)
So the narrator situation is interesting. Cara Gee voices Jade with this slightly younger, breathier quality that - based on what I've seen - bugs some people. Jade is supposed to be a high school senior, roughly 17-18, and Gee makes her sound maybe 15. At first it threw me. But the longer I listened, the more it kind of worked? Jade IS emotionally younger than her age in a lot of ways. She's been so damaged that there's this arrested-development quality to her, and Gee's voice captures that vulnerability underneath all the tough-girl horror-nerd bravado.
Where Gee really shines is in the emotional moments. There's a scene late in the book where Jade is overwhelmed by someone showing her basic human kindness, and Gee's delivery just cracked something open. Made me cry at school pickup. Worth it though.
The weakness: when the timeline shifts between past and present, Gee's pacing doesn't always signal the transition clearly enough. She talks fast - like, noticeably fast - and when you're pausing every few minutes because someone needs a snack or can't find their shoe, those quick timeline jumps become genuinely confusing. I actually dropped my speed to 1.0x for parts of this, which I never do.
Not My Usual Comfort Read (Not Even Close)
I need to be honest about something. This book has content warnings that would fill a page. Violence, gore, child sexual assault, self-harm, suicide attempt, alcoholism, parental abuse. It's heavy. It's the opposite of my usual "predictable happy ending, no ugly crying" vibe. I picked it up because I wanted to stretch beyond my comfort zone, and it definitely did that.
The payoff - that violent, cathartic denouement where all of Jade's slasher predictions finally collide with reality - is genuinely satisfying if you've stuck with it through the slower middle. Jones is doing something smart here, using horror-movie tropes to talk about colonialism and Indigenous displacement and how America literally builds vacation homes on top of the people it displaced. That stuff hit harder than I expected.
But this isn't a book you casually listen to while folding laundry. It demands focus. It demands patience through the saggy middle. And it demands a stronger stomach than mine for some of the gore.
Car Time? Only If You're Parked For Good
Who should listen: horror fans, slasher-movie nerds, anyone who loved The Only Good Indians and wants more Stephen Graham Jones. If you have dedicated listening time - like actual uninterrupted hours - this will reward you.
Who should skip: If you're a pause-47-times listener like me, this one's going to fight you. If horror movie deep cuts aren't your thing, you'll feel left out of the conversation. And if you need content-warning-free listening, this is absolutely not it.
I'm glad I listened. I'm glad I met Jade. But I can't pretend this was easy listening in any sense of the word. Survived 47 pauses and... barely made sense, honestly. I think I need to relisten to the middle third someday. Someday when all three kids are in college.
