Jade Daniels, reporting for duty.
This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year but that final page was something I’ve dreaded for so long that I got to a point where I didn’t even know if I could open the book. For months, every time I thought about saying goodbye to Jade Daniels, my skank station eyeliner would run. I’m not usually a crier so this is saying a lot.
Jade did something that’s rare for me in horror reads. She got under my skin, without using a knife. I thought about her when I wasn’t with her. I wondered what she was up to.
Over the past couple of years she’s taken on a significance that reached well beyond the pages. I took her with me when I needed to channel some badassery. I believed I could survive my Proofrock because Jade showed me it was possible.
She became more than a character to me. I don’t think my Sharona was expecting to become so well versed in why Jade is my final girl when she met me but, well, here we are. I consider it a very good use of our time.
This book was chaos. It was “ghosts and swings and baking goods”. It was insides becoming your outsides.
“That’s probably not jelly, is it.”
It was the past refusing to stay there. It was trauma and running for your life. It’s Jade Daniels … in heels?
It upped the ante when it was already maxed out. It was emotional, so emotional. My first on page tears happened during the dedication and my tissue count wound up rivalling the book’s body count.
I’ll never be ready to say goodbye to Jade Daniels so I’ve decided I’m not going to. This trilogy may have reached its bloody conclusion but I want a HEA for Jade. I’m imagining she’s living in a rom-com now. She finds that just as amusing as I do but she’s loved and learning to love (and trust) in return.
Of course, even though her walls are lowered somewhat now, there’s a part of her that will remain ready to put her movie knowledge and lived experience into action. They don’t always stay dead, you know.
“Was the shark cool, at least?”
Once Upon a Blurb
It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront … until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.
New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma from the Indigenous to the townies rooted in the mountains of Idaho. It is a story of the American west written in blood.
Schizanthus Nerd 