My Best Friend’s Exorcism: Review

My Best Friend's Exorcism Published by Quirk Books by Grady Hendrix
on May 17, 2016
Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Paranormal, Supernatural, Thriller, YA
Pages: 337
Source: Borrowed, Libby
Format: eBook
Find the Author: Website, Twitter, Goodreads
Also by this author: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Find the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Rating:

Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fifth grade, when they bonded over a shared love of E.T., roller-skating parties, and scratch-and-sniff stickers. But when they arrive at high school, things change. Gretchen begins to act….different. And as the strange coincidences and bizarre behavior start to pile up, Abby realizes there’s only one possible explanation: Gretchen, her favorite person in the world, has a demon living inside her. And Abby is not about to let anyone or anything come between her and her best friend. With help from some unlikely allies, Abby embarks on a quest to save Gretchen. But is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

This is the one that I picked up right after reading The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampire Slaying. I was hoping for something similar to that and this one sounded so promising!

Let me tell you–It was probably BETTER!

What I loved so much about this story is that, at its core, it’s a story of two girls who become friends at a young age and stick together through high school; when boys, other mean girls, and hormones usually separate friends. But Abby’s and Gretchen’s friendship is one that cannot be shaken. Born of loneliness and their shared strangeness, this friendship will take something huge to bring it down.

The question being; can a possession be that huge thing?

The girls, along with two of their friends, decide to experiment with drugs one night. And all it takes is a moment and Gretchen goes missing in the woods. It isn’t until they find her the next day next to a very creeping abandoned house, that things start to get sketchy.

Gretchen starts acting weird. The girls attribute it, at first, to a bad trip. But, is that why Gretchen is hearing voices? And is that why Gretchen cannot sleep?

After some time, Abby is the only one who seems to notice that Gretchen would never be doing some of the things that she’s doing. And let. me. tell. you. Possessed Gretchen performs some seriously depraved acts.

But, in the same vein, as Southern Book Club, this book’s almost-more horrifying aspect is the fact that Abby’s voice–her concern for her friend–are drowned out and not heard. The adults in this story are a mess of collective creatures with their heads in the sand.

And what’s a girl to do when no one will help her save her friend? She has to sacrifice and risk herself.

Again, this story is a tale of friendship and the lengths you’d go to to save that one person who is nearest and dearest to you. And Abby proves her love time and time again.

Written in the same amazing style that I’ve now come to expect from Grady Hendrix, this story was also chalk full of ’80s references, as that is when the story takes place. It was enough to drag me back to parts of my childhood and help me connect with these characters on an even deeper level.

This story just solidified for me why Grady Hendrix is a master of horror–because the real horror lies, not in the monsters, but in the people around who just make matters worse.

 

 

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