My Best Friend's Exorcism

An unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist that blends teen angst, adolescent drama, unspeakable horrors, and a mix of ’80s pop songs into a pulse-pounding supernatural thriller The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act…different. She’s moody. She’s irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she’s nearby. Abby’s investigation leads her to some startling discoveries--and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

“National treasure Grady Hendrix follows his classic account of a haunted IKEA-like furniture showroom, Horrorstor (2014), with a nostalgia-soaked ghost story, *My Best Friend’s Exorcism.”—The Wall Street Journal

• “Take The Exorcist, add some hair spray and wine coolers, and enroll it in high school in 1988 — that’ll give you My Best Friend’s Exorcism...Campy. Heartfelt. Horrifying.”—Minnesota Public Radio
   
  “Clever, heartfelt, and get-under-your-skin unnerving.”—*Fangoria 
• “A touching story of high school friendship and, well, demonic possession.”—Bloody Disgusting
   
  “Terrific...Sharply written...[My Best Friend’s Exorcism] makes a convincing case for [Hendrix’s] powers as a sharp observer of human behavior, filtered through a fun genre conceit that doesn’t skimp on the spooky—or the bodily fluids.”—The A.V. Club
   
  “Think Mean Girls with demonic possession, set in 1988 Charleston. It’s funny, it’s heart-wrenching, it’s even a little spiritual, in a very strange way.”—*Southern Living *magazine
   
  “The perfect mix of '80s nostalgia and scares.”—POPSUGAR

“This book packs all the magic of a summer horror flick.”—*Bustle

• “The rare exorcism book that will make you cry, My Best Friend’s Exorcism is both a truly scary tale and a loving tribute to high school friendship.”—Hypable 
   *
  “If you’re looking for a good summer book, something for the beach or the back porch that won’t insult your intelligence, one that’s tense and sometimes scary and sometimes funny, with characters you may even come to like and admire as they come of age, keep *My Best Friend’s Exorcism in mind.”—*SFFWorld
• More praise for Grady Hendrix:
  “Pure, demented delight.”—The New York Times Book Review, on Paperbacks from Hell

“Horrorstör delivers a crisp terror-tale...[and] Hendrix strikes a nice balance between comedy and horror.”—The Washington Post, on Horrorstör

“Hendrix’s darkest novel yet will leave readers begging for an encore.”—Booklist, starred review, on We Sold Our Souls

“A true appreciation of the genre.”—Los Angeles Times, on Paperbacks from Hell

“An inventive, hilarious haunted house tale.”—Bustle, on Horrorstör
 
“A good, creepy, music-tinged thriller.”—CNET, on We Sold Our Souls

Autorentext

Grady Hendrix is an award-winning and New York Times best-selling novelist and screenwriter living in New York City. He is the author of Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism (which is being adapted into a feature film by Amazon Studios), We Sold Our Souls, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, and The Final Girl Support Group. Grady also authored the Bram Stoker Award–winning nonfiction book Paperbacks from Hell and These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World.

Klappentext

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires comes an unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist that blends teen angst, adolescent drama, unspeakable horrors, and a mix of '80s pop songs into a pulse-pounding supernatural thriller.

The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act…different. She's moody. She's irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she's nearby. Abby's investigation leads her to some startling discoveries-and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

Zusammenfassung
A heartwarming story of friendship and demonic possession.

Leseprobe
The exorcist is dead.
     Abby sits in her office and stares at the email, then clicks the blue link. It takes her to the homepage of the paper she still thinks of as the News and Courier, even though it changed its name fifteen years ago. There’s the exorcist floating in the middle of her screen, balding and with a ponytail, smiling at the camera in a blurry headshot the size of a postage stamp. Abby’s jaw aches and her throat gets tight. She doesn’t realize she’s stopped breathing.
     The exorcist was driving some lumber up to Lakewood and stopped on I-95 to help a tourist change his tire. He was tightening the lug nuts when a Dodge Caravan swerved onto the shoulder and hit him full-on. He died before the ambulance arrived. The woman driving the minivan had three different painkillers in her system—four if you included Bud Light. She was charged with driving under the influence.
     “Highways or dieways,” Abby thinks. “The choice is yours.”
     It pops into her head, a catchphrase she doesn’t even remember she remembered, but in that instant she doesn’t know how she ever forgot. Those highway safety billboards covered South Carolina when she was in high school; and in that instant, her office, the conference call she has at eleven, her apartment, her mortgage, her divorce, her daughter—none of it matters.
     It’s twenty years ago and she’s bombing over the old bridge in a crapped-out Volkswagen Rabbit, windows down, radio blasting UB40, the air sweet and salty in her face. She turns her head to the right and sees Gretchen riding shotgun, the wind tossing her blond hair, shoes off, sitting Indian style on the seat, and they’re singing along to the radio at the top of their tuneless lungs. It’s April 1988 and the world belongs to them.
     For Abby, “friend” is a word whose sharp corners have been worn smooth by overuse. “I’m friends with the guys in IT,” she might say, or “I’m meeting some friends after work.”
     But she remembers when the word “friend” could draw blood. She and Gretchen spent hours ranking their friendships, trying to determine who was a best friend and who was an everyday friend, debating whether anyone could have two best friends at the same time, writing each other’s names over and over in purple ink, buzzed on the dopamine high of belonging to someone else, having a total stranger choose you, someone who wanted t…