I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
🔪 I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones — A Bloody Love Letter to Final Girls
⭐️⭐️⭐️½ (3.5 out of 5, but nearly a 4)
Genre: Horror / Coming-of-Age / Slasher with Feelings
📢 Warning: Full spoilers ahead, including body counts, tropes, and peanut butter trauma.
🧠 I Don’t Do Horror… But I Did This, And I Liked It
Okay, confession time:
I don't read a ton of horror.
I definitely don’t watch horror movies (unless I want to sleep with the lights on for a week).
But this book? This bloody, chaotic, weirdly touching slasher story?
Yeah, I kinda loved it.
Think: classic slasher tropes meets coming-of-age grief spiral, dipped in nostalgia, then stabbed repeatedly in the feels.
👦 Tolly Driver: The Slasher Nobody Asked For
Meet Tolly Driver, a teenage social outcast growing up in the small (and rough-around-the-edges) town of Lamesa, Texas.
His best friend—and basically his only friend—is Amber, who’s the ride-or-die type and also has a peanut butter jar on her at all times (trust me, this becomes relevant).
Tolly tells us this whole story in the style of a memoir, written years later. The vibe is clear: he’s looking back on the moment everything changed. And spoiler alert: he dies in the end. 🥜💀
🩸 The Party That Changed Everything (Like, Literally Everything)
The year is 1989. Tolly is 17 and doing what all insecure teens do at a party: drinking too much and cannonballing into a pool. Unfortunately, he soaks Mel, a baton twirler with a mean streak, and the band kids decide to haze him—hard.
They tie him up and force-feed him peanuts, which is a huge problem, because, yep—peanut allergy. It’s gross and scary. Tolly nearly dies, until Stace (his crush) and Amber save him with an EpiPen.
AND THEN… in full slasher fashion…
Justin Joss, a kid who died in a brutal hazing ritual years earlier, shows up with a giant drill bit where his arm used to be and goes full murder-mode.
He kills Deek and his friends—marching band bullies, the whole lot.
Stace is left barely alive.
Blood. Chaos. Slasher movie 101.
🧬 Slasher By Infection?
Some of Justin’s blood ends up on Tolly’s forehead—and into a cut.
(You can see where this is going, right?)
Suddenly, Tolly has… slasher powers. He:
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Sees in the dark
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Heals quickly
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Can’t touch knives without dramatic music playing in his head
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Starts, um, murdering people
He kills two band kids next—Lesley and Shannon, who were hooking up in the woods. Amber thinks he's joking, especially since Lesley is gay. But then the sheriff confirms they’re missing.
Amber does what any horror movie nerd would do: she tests Tolly like a lab rat. His speed, his reflexes, his aim. He’s clearly turning into a real-life horror movie slasher.
🏃♀️ The Kill Count Rises (And So Do the Tropes)
Amber becomes Tolly’s reluctant slasher analyst, trying to figure out who he’ll kill next.
She guesses Mel is the Final Girl—you know, the last one left in every slasher movie who lives to tell the tale. But before that, Tolly murders Wes, Jenna, and accidentally kills Janice, thinking she’s Mel. Oops.
On the way to turn himself in, Tolly saves Amber from a car crash using his powers, which is equal parts sweet and terrifying. Then, naturally, he kills Mel.
So… why isn’t the slasher curse broken?
🧈 Peanut Butter Saves the Day
Because plot twist: Mel wasn’t the Final Girl.
Amber is.
She touches Tolly’s arm and the horror-movie rules kick in. She has to survive the “tunnel of love”—a gory trail past the bodies of Tolly’s victims, leading to a showdown.
She reaches him in time and does the one thing no horror movie has tried before:
She smears peanut butter on his face and gives him mouth-to-mouth.
(Amber deserves a medal and a therapist.)
He lives. He runs. He hides.
And 17 years later, he’s living quietly in Colorado, working in a junkyard, still haunted.
💔 The Memoir Ends Where It Began
Amber shows up at the junkyard one day—with her son.
Tolly doesn’t say hi.
Instead, he leaves his memoir in her truck, printing the final pages… and then kills himself by peanut butter.
It’s tragic. It’s poetic. It’s wildly original.
You come for the blood, but you stay for the heartbreak.
📚 Final Thoughts: A Love Story in a Slasher Mask
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Did it scare me? A little.
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Was I emotionally ruined by the ending? Yes.
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Would I recommend it? Definitely—if you like your horror with brains and heart.
3.5 out of 5 stars, but it’s really close to a 4. The ending elevated the entire story.
🛒 Buy I Was a Teenage Slasher Now
👉 Buy the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
🔪 More Horror-Tinged Heartbreak to Read:
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The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones – modern Native horror with major emotional punch (personally my least favorite)
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My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones – personally my favorite
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The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay – unsettling, claustrophobic, and emotionally messy
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Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare – more popcorn horror with heart
🧠 Let’s Chat
Are you a horror wimp like me who accidentally loved this book?
Are you Team Amber Forever?
And do you think peanut butter is the most underutilized horror weapon of all time?
Tell me in the comments—let’s scream together.
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