Book Review: I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

Mogsy’s Rating: 2 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Saga Press (July 16, 2024)

Length: 384 pages

Author Information: Website

Ooooof! How could this happen, you ask? I’m still trying to figure that myself. How coming off from the brilliant Indian Lake trilogy, Stephen Graham Jones could follow it up with another horror novel that just crashed and burned so hard for me?

I do have some guesses, but first, a brief rundown of the plot of I Was a Teenage Slasher. Basically, the story features the memoir of a seventeen-year-old who looks back upon his past experiences, reflecting on how they started him on his path of becoming the quintessential teen horror movie killer. Tolly Driver was not what you would call popular, existing on the fringes of high school social circles. Yet he was still just your average kid in the summer of 1989 when he and his friend Amber decide to drop in on a wild house party. Things take a dark turn when Tolly falls victim to a cruel prank and ends up almost dying when someone slips a peanut into his drink, triggering a severe allergic reaction.

The experience is lifechanging, but in the most unexpected way. Tolly wakes up the next day to a new reality, one in which he has become the antagonist of a modern slasher flick, complete with a revenge plot. The stage is set, the outsider has been cast as the hunter, and once this train is set in motion, there’s no stopping it. As Tolly begins his bloody murder spree, his horror-geek friend Amber has to explain to him the ins-and-outs of a teenage slasher movie and help him understand why he has been suddenly overcome with the urge to kill.

Clearly, horror films are a passion for the author, as evidenced by the numerous nods and references to the genre in his Indian Lake trilogy. That said, what worked well there kind of fell flat here. For one, the satirical take and attempts to create nostalgia felt overdone and somewhat forced. While I loved the uniqueness of the idea, which was presumably intended to make us feel sympathy for the murderous Tolly and his fatalistic urges, I found myself numb to his character’s plight. Unfortunately, there was a lack of substance to him in part due to the book’s concept since he was supposed to feel more like a caricature than a real person, but even the story’s subplot involving his crush on Amber and the backstory involving his father (which the cynic in me thinks was built up as a push to add more depth to Tolly’s character) did not help.

But the kicker was the narrative style. Tolly’s incessant stream-of-consciousness narration was more than I could take, often leaving me with a headache and a growing resentment for the character. If you have read SGJ’s Night of the Mannequins you might recognize the very similar narrative style characterized by an unreliable flood of memories, thoughts, and observations, but once more, a device which seemed entirely appropriate for that book felt more like a misstep here. Whereas Night of the Mannequins was a shorter book where the narrative style was a jarring but curious affectation, here it was simply exhausting. Perhaps I would I been more patient if this had been a novella.

All in all, as much as it breaks my heart to say, I Was a Teenage Slasher was just not my cup of tea. In fact, if it hadn’t been by Stephen Graham Jones, who I count among my favorite horror writers, it probably would have been a DNF. However, given the author’s penchant for creative stories and the fascination I held for this novel’s premise, I knew I had to see it through, though ultimately, not even the high points and interesting ideas scattered throughout could compensate for the bigger overarching issues I had with the book.