I Was a Teenage Slasher

Starred review from May 15, 2024
Hot on the heels of his Indian Lake Trilogy (beginning with My Heart Is a Chainsaw, 2021), which introduced the twenty-first century's final girl, Jade Daniels, Jones is back with Tolly Driver, the yin to Jade's yang. Narrating from 17 years in the future, Tolly recounts, in an engaging and brutally honest voice, the summer of 1989 in Lamesa, Texas, when he was 17, when he killed 6 (or 12 or 14) of his high-school classmates. Beginning with the fateful night he and his best friend, Amber, attend a house party and leading readers through Tolly's transformation from skinny kid with a peanut allergy to inevitable killer, this novel lays down new ground rules for the Slasher, deeply rooted in its established tropes while moving it in a new direction, but still making novices feel welcome. Readers will watch something original emerge before their eyes, realizing why everyone needs to be as obsessed with the Slasher as Jones is himself. Suggest to every reader who loves a perfectly rendered time and place or just wants a chilling, captivating, and thought-provoking story where every detail matters and every page is worth their time, but especially those who recently enjoyed Paul Tremblay's The Pallbearers Club (2022) and Monika Kim's The Eyes Are the Best Part (2024) or have missed Jeff Lindsay's seminal sympathetic killer, Dexter.

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May 20, 2024
Bestseller Jones (the Indian Lake trilogy) again riffs on 1980s slasher movies in this indulgent bloodbath. Tolly Driver witnesses a massacre at a high school party at the hands of Justin Jones, an undead classmate who died during a vicious prank gone awry. Having gotten infected with a couple drops of Justin’s blood, and reeling from a near-death experience stemming from his peanut allergy, Tolly finds himself driven by the urge to go on a murder spree of his own. He dons a mask and slashes his way through his small Texas town. Only his childhood friend, final girl Amber Dennison, serves as a tether to the scared and fragile kid he was before the killing began. Will she be able to stop the slaughter once and for all? The story has a clear love for the splashy slasher films that inspired it, and Jones does a great job of landing the plot’s gorier excesses as the bodies pile up. Unfortunately, chaotic plotting undercuts the story’s tension and narrator Tolly’s many tangents make the pacing somewhat start-and-stop. Still, fans of meta horror will find a lot to love as Jones remixes well-worn tropes with glee. Agent: BJ Robbins, BJ Robbins Literary.

Starred review from July 1, 2024

Tolly Driver is 17, lives in Lamesa, TX, and is a slasher who has committed multiple murders. Awkward and already an outsider, Tolly faced challenges, including bullies and the death of his father, before transforming into the titular killer. This novel in the style of an autobiography pays homage to the slasher flicks of the 1980s and '90s while creating something entirely new. Fans of Bram Stoker Award winner Jones's other books about growing up in West Texas (like Not for Nothing) will find the same rich detail and sense of place. Grimly humorous and filled with surprising turns, this novel is poised to become a summer-reading hit and a book club favorite. VERDICT Even those well versed in slashers and their tropes will be surprised by the directions Jones takes. Readable both as representative of slasher films and book and as an exploration of the rules of the genre, this novel will have wide appeal to readers who are new to Jones's work as well as established fans. Recommended as a contrast for fans of recent "final girl" books like the ones by Grady Hendrix and Riley Sager and readers who enjoyed The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay.--Lila Denning

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