Review: My Best Friend's Exorcism

3/5 stars

My Best Friend's Exorcism, by Grady Hendrix (2016)

TW: The one part I actually had to skip was the torture of a dog. You can fully skip over those pages and not miss anything. The second there's a dog in a bathroom - flip forward a few pages!

"Like Beaches meets The Exorcist, only it's set in the Eighties."

This book was recommended to me by a local librarian, and I had a lot of fun reading it. It's a quick read. Kind of spoofy and silly with a dark sense of humor. The best part is definitely all of the '80s references - music, TV, clothing, fads, etc.

The story revolves around the friendship of two high school students, Abby and Gretchen, who have been best friends since grade school. That all begins to fall apart after one night when they take 'shrooms with their friends. Gretchen goes missing in the woods for the entire night, and when they find her the next day, her personality has changed. She's mean to Abby and manipulative of the friend group. For a while, it seems like she's "losing time" when these things occur - like it's not really her, and she doesn't know what's happened while she was "out." But after a while, the new Gretchen stays for longer and longer periods of time, and starts to inflict real harm on some of their friends, all while finding ways to blame the harm on Abby.

Abby begins to realize that it's not just mood swings or regular teenage-girl angst - her best friend is possessed by a demon. But who would believe that? Only one person - a local evangelist. Abby is determined to save Gretchen from the monster within, so she enlists his help to perform an exorcism.

Honestly, this was the point at which the book started to lose me a bit, because of all the religious rhetoric that goes along with banishing a demon from a body! I also thought the ending was ridiculous (I mean, in the grand scheme of how the whole premise is ridiculous - but assuming one could be possessed, and that everything that happened from that point on actually happened, then the ending was unrealistic).

All in all, a quick and easy read that's good for a.) the Halloween season, and b.) anyone who grew up in the '80's! Don't think too hard about it. Just enjoy the goofy, nostalgic ride.

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UP NEXT: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab