My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix - A Review

Title: My Best Friends Exorcism

Author: Grady Hendrix

Publisher: Quirk Books

Pages: 337

Released: 27 May 2016

Oh, the 1980’s – what good times they were. I have very happy memories of the music, the styles (not that I ever had any of THAT!) and, most of all, discovering the joy of horror movies. So, when ‘My Best Friend’s Exorcism’ came through my letter box it didn’t take me long to realise I was going to be in for a treat.

The story is a fairly straight forward 80’s style horror – a group of girlfriends hang around together, try some acid, one goes missing and is not found until the next morning, and she is ……….not the person she was.

Is she possessed by The Devil?

Can her friends, especially her Best Friend save her?

Is everything really all it seems?

Will things ever be the same again?

In the blurb the book is described as “an unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist” and, to be fair, that just about sums it up. I guess I would just throw the word ‘addictive’ in there as well because, well because it was. The various twists make it very much a ‘one more chapter’ book.

As for the actual physical book itself – well, that is a thing of loveliness, to be honest. A couple of years ago Grady Hendrix put out a book, Horrorstor, (spelt in a Swedish style but I can’t work out how to do that on my laptop, sorry) – a horror tale set (I believe, I haven’t read it yet although it is on my TBR pile) around a certain style of flat pack furniture store. That book was made to look like it could be a catalogue for said FPF store, and very impressive it looked too. Well, with ‘My Best Friend’s Exorcism’ the author and publisher have gone for something ‘stand out’ again. MBFE is produced in the style of a high school year book, complete with scrawled messages in the front and rear covers, some of which will give you ‘ah, I get it now’ moments when the story is complete.

Also, the chapter headings are all songs from the era (Like A Prayer, Broken Wings, She Blinded Me With Science and so on) which kind of gave the novel a soundtrack of my youth – wonderful stuff.

If I did find a downside to MBFE it was just that there were some terms I didn’t get but that was probably just the way Kids In America (sorry, couldn’t resist that), or maybe just in Charleston, South Carolina spoke at the time.

My final words on ‘My Best Friend’s Exorcism’ – well, I guess it’s a plea to the entertainment industry gods really – Please, somebody make a movie of this.