My Best Friend's Exorcism

It is true that teenage girls are awful. I can say that with assurance as I once was one. To this day I still remember hurtful things that were said to me in high school. And no one can cut you down harder than your best friends. Because of this, this story had resonance for me. I also loved that every chapter was titled after an 80's song.

I did start reading this book and

The Dead Girls Club

at the same time and although the stories could not be more dissimilar, in the beginning there were enough similarities, that I had to put one down and focus on only one book at a time because I started getting confused on which characters belonged to which book.

For the record, I was a borderline child of the 80's. I was born in the mid-seventies, so I was too young to experience much of the glories of the 80's, but I did get some. I don't really remember the Satanic Panic years this book was set in. I remember hearing about it in relation to Tipper Gore and the senate hearings on heavy metal music and thinking that Dee Snyder was the coolest person I had ever seen in my life. Thank you Tipper Gore, you sparked my love of heavy metal music in general and Twisted Sister specifically. When I went to college, I do know that one of my sociology professor's son was accused of being in a satanic cult and wrote

Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend

as an answer. I have never read the book, but probably will now that the memory has been dredged up...... Or maybe not. I just looked it up and it is not in digital print and used copy is going for over $30.00!

So that last rambling paragraph was a long winded attempt to say, I experienced memories of my junior high school days while reading this book. But I liked the book not only for the nostalgia aspect but this was a good, well-paced book. The characters felt very real to me and the storyline was engaging enough for me to keep eagerly turning the pages.

I'm going to do something that I normally do not do and that is place a spoiler warning in this review, but I really want to talk about an aspect of the ending that made me love this book and tipped over the edge from a 4.5 star to a 5 star book.

This is probably my second favorite Grady Hendrix book I have read so far, closely behind Horrorstör, which still wears the crown for me.