Okay, now that you've read it: WHAT WAS UP WITH LETHA'S DAD AND THE NAILGUN? I did figure out from rereading bits and pieces that some of the other things that didn't seem to fit were (very well done) misdirection - like, kid!Hardy DID actually see Stacy Graves killing the girl at summer camp, he was just fed a different narrative by adults (that it was another girl at the camp who also had long dark hair) and rearranged his memories to comply; this confused me utterly when I'd just finished the book, but was perfectly clear when I reread Hardy's interview.
So maybe I'm missing something really obvious with the entire nailgun/construction worker massacre/dead elk sequence. But even in retrospect I can't figure it out - did Theo really kill the construction workers and build a dead elk maze, and if it wasn't him, what was happening? Why was Letha so evasive when Jade asked her how she got out of the elk pile? So much of the rest of it fits together elegantly - especially all the foreshadowing about Jade's dad; the entire book is absolutely FULL of clues now that I'm looking for them, from the revenge focus of Jade's first slasher paper to all her fantasies about killing her dad specifically, and the reason why she focuses so heavily on Theo as the killer and wanting to protect Letha from him.
The Only Good Indians is what Jones does with supernatural front and center, and it's fantastic.
I definitely need to read that next! I feel like this book really couldn't have leaned into the supernatural horror much harder than it does, with Jade being so wrong for most of the book about what's happening. But it's just such a gloriously horrifying image (the jawless little girl scampering about on the surface of the lake! The patter of little feet as the last thing you hear when she comes up behind you!) and I would like to see what he does when he really pushes the buildup for that, rather than having her offstage for 90% of the book.
Anyway, though, I did feel like Jade's absolute fixation on slasher movies as her frame story for her life worked better for me once I'd had some time to think about it. I still feel like it went a little too far towards Jade genuinely believing in the reality of some tropes more than I would expect for someone her age, but it's also pretty clear *why* she wants to believe that everything makes sense and why it matters to her so much that people in slasher movies die for a reason.
And I ended up being incredibly touched by Jade's relationship with her teacher; he was such a wonderful weirdo and his death was by far the worst gut-punch in the book. Her interactions with the sheriff were also great - I love how obvious it was that they were both trying to help her, while Jade herself was in absolute denial about either that or the fact that she cared about them at all. (I'm about 50% sure that he isn't dead, considering how often characters turn out *not* to be dead if we didn't actually see them dead and floating.)
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So maybe I'm missing something really obvious with the entire nailgun/construction worker massacre/dead elk sequence. But even in retrospect I can't figure it out - did Theo really kill the construction workers and build a dead elk maze, and if it wasn't him, what was happening? Why was Letha so evasive when Jade asked her how she got out of the elk pile? So much of the rest of it fits together elegantly - especially all the foreshadowing about Jade's dad; the entire book is absolutely FULL of clues now that I'm looking for them, from the revenge focus of Jade's first slasher paper to all her fantasies about killing her dad specifically, and the reason why she focuses so heavily on Theo as the killer and wanting to protect Letha from him.
The Only Good Indians is what Jones does with supernatural front and center, and it's fantastic.
I definitely need to read that next! I feel like this book really couldn't have leaned into the supernatural horror much harder than it does, with Jade being so wrong for most of the book about what's happening. But it's just such a gloriously horrifying image (the jawless little girl scampering about on the surface of the lake! The patter of little feet as the last thing you hear when she comes up behind you!) and I would like to see what he does when he really pushes the buildup for that, rather than having her offstage for 90% of the book.
Anyway, though, I did feel like Jade's absolute fixation on slasher movies as her frame story for her life worked better for me once I'd had some time to think about it. I still feel like it went a little too far towards Jade genuinely believing in the reality of some tropes more than I would expect for someone her age, but it's also pretty clear *why* she wants to believe that everything makes sense and why it matters to her so much that people in slasher movies die for a reason.
And I ended up being incredibly touched by Jade's relationship with her teacher; he was such a wonderful weirdo and his death was by far the worst gut-punch in the book. Her interactions with the sheriff were also great - I love how obvious it was that they were both trying to help her, while Jade herself was in absolute denial about either that or the fact that she cared about them at all. (I'm about 50% sure that he isn't dead, considering how often characters turn out *not* to be dead if we didn't actually see them dead and floating.)