Book Review: My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

My Best Friend’s Exorcism
by Grady Hendrix (Hendrix)

My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a story about teen best friends in the 1980s when Satanic cult panics were in full swing. I was in elementary school at the time but I remember the detailed, horrible stories that ran through school about possession and human sacrifices in the wooded areas nearby. Plus, of course, the cautionary tales about Halloween candy and drugs. Here, there’s some truth to the panic. Like the show Stranger Things, this book is filled up with pop culture nostalgia, including chapter titles taken from popular songs of the time.

 

Four girls spending a night in the woods, taking something they think is LSD. One missing for hours and when she comes back something is wrong. Yes, demons are real but it’s fair to say this books takes a more broad view of religion than the film The Exorcist, which of course these girls have all seen. Prepare to be grossed out and appalled. Nearly every possible trigger warning applies here, including sexual violence and a family pet being harmed. But it’s not a downer story. It’s about courage and loyalty and standing up to adults more concerned about social standing than doing the right thing.

 

One of the best features of the book are the more-than-text extras and goodies: newspaper clippings, product posters, religious tracts, etc. I read it on a Kindle so I really had to squint to make out the details on these parts. Though marketed as an adult book, My Best Friend’s Exorcism would work very well as a high school aged young adult novel. Recommend it to the teens in your life who at risk of Satanic involvement and…scare them straight!…as many characters in this book would say.

[If you enjoy this, Rona Jaffe’s book Mazes and Monsters and the Tom Hanks movie based on it cover similar ground with Dungeons and Dragons scares, though the book–at least–takes this seriously. I also recommend reading some of Jack Chick’s religious tracts to set the mood; these are available online at his website. If you’re not familiar, these are also meant to be serious and involve things like kids playing heavy metal music, dying in a car accident, and going straight to Hell. To be clear, I’m not recommending for or against Mr. Chick’s religious views or the views of real-life Satanists.

For more lighthearted film takes on teens and pulp Satanism, I recommend Jennifer’s Body (2009) and The Babysitter (2017).]

 

[ official My Best Friend’s Exorcism page on the official Grady Hendrix web site ]

 

Recommended by Garren H.
Bennett Martin Public Library – Public Service

 

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