My Best Friend's Exorcism is a 2016 Teen Horror Comedy novel by Grady Hendrix.
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?
It was adapted into a film in 2022 by Amazon Studios, starring Elsie Fisher, Amiah Miller, Cathy Ang, and Rachel Ogechi Kanu.
My Best Friend's Exorcism contains examples of:
- The '80s: The setting for almost all of the novel and a major part of its appeal. The story touches upon both the fun and the not-so-fun parts of this time period, with the latter being amplified by how this takes place in the arch-conservative Bible Belt with the main characters attending a Christian private school.
- Abusive Parents: Gretchen's parents only treat her as an accessory to enhance their image. When Abby tells them that she thinks that Gretchen was raped they're more concerned about that she was doing drugs and accuse Abby of slander. Her father also slaps her when he's angry at her.
- Adults Are Useless: Nearly every adult that Abby turns to. Gretchen's parents are staunch religious conservatives more concerned with their daughter's sexual purity than her mental well-being. The faculty at their fancy private school see Abby as a white trash troublemaker and barely hide their desire to expel her for even the most minor infraction to protect the school's reputation. Even Abby's mother - who intially seems to subvert this when she gives the principal a well-deserved verbal castration about how he's been treating her daughter - is entirely unsympathetic to her and Gretchen's plight, only caring that she had to miss work.
- Zigzagged with Brother Lemon. He at first seems like the only adult who not only believes Abby about Gretchen's possession, but is completely onboard with helping her. However, he flees when the demon inside Gretchen proves to be too powerful for him, leaving Abby alone to fend for herself. Then, when the demon is exorcised and Abby is in danger of having to take the fall for everything that happened, Brother Lemon comes forward and takes the blame himself, claiming that he kidnapped Gretchen and Abby and forced them to do all the horrible things they're being accused of.
- Aerith and Bob: Absolutely classic 1980s names (Abby, Margaret), but... Glee? Also, Mr. Lang's given name is apparently... Pony.
- All for Nothing: Abby taking the heat for Margaret over who provided the LSD at the sleepover while trying to come clean to Gretchen's parents. The Langs exile her from their household and have her labeled as a dangerous, drug-dealing delinquent, which alone nearly gets her expelled from Albemarle, and things get progressively worse from there. Meanwhile, Margaret ditches Abby a short while later for daring to accuse her sleazy boyfriend of assaulting Gretchen — with Glee following — while Gretchen herself doesn't take kindly to Abby "talking about her" behind her back. Abby doesn't accomplish anything except winding up completely alone, until she meets Brother Lemon.
- Alpha Bitch:
- Margaret has been one since they were ten, when she intentionally planned for her much fancier party to be on the same day as Abby's so no one would go.
- Gretchen's possession also manifests in a marked increase in bitchy behavior.
- Arc Words: "DBNQ", "dearly but not queerly".
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the ending Brother Lemon (falsely) confesses to abducting Gretchen, forcing Abby to steal a dead fetus from a morgue, shooting a dog, and buying alcohol for minors.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: While possessed, Gretchen shoots and kills her dog for fun.
- Break the Haughty:
- Margaret is sort of a mean friend, although Gretchen and Abby still like her. She is completely destroyed by the demon inside Gretchen feeding her a tapeworm, which results in her nearly starving to death.
- Brother Lemon is The Fundamentalist, but he is broken when he sees how truly horrible an exorcism is.
- Possessed Gretchen, who is an absolute asshole (although it does go along with demonic possession) and is broken by the end of the exorcism.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Margaret, who suffers with Weight Woe nonetheless, and the demon gets her by getting her to eat a tapeworm that cause her to lose weight far, far too fast.
- Crying at Your Birthday Party: Abby runs away and cries at her birthday party after she gets stood up by everyone for Margaret's horse riding excursion...and then Gretchen shows up and gifts her a Children's Bible. This is the final straw for Abby and makes her cry (in the bathroom), until Gretchen comes to her, and reassures Abby that she didn't want to go to Margaret's birthday party, and she doesn't think Margaret is a nice person anyway.
- Deep South: The book takes place in South Carolina in The '80s. Margaret is a Southern Belle who comes from a wealthy plantation family, and the protagonists attend a Christian private school (which, in many parts of the South, were used
by white parents to get around the desegregation of the public schools) whose Spirit Week has a day themed after slavery. - Deliberate Values Dissonance: Again, the book doesn't shy away with the bad parts of growing up in South Carolina in the 1980s.
- Gretchen's parents make her go to a doctor who checks to see if she's a virgin because they hear sexual noises coming form her room at night, an illusion the demon created.
- Abstinence-only sex education is thoroughly panned by the book.
- Their school had a slave-themed day for Spirit Week.
- The Satanic Panic is brought up more than once.
- When Abby and Gretchen were in middle school, the class had a concert based on the "We Are The World" music video, playing various celebrities…including Abby having to wear blackface as Quincy Jones.
- Margaret’s older brother has a reputation for drugging girls with alcohol and raping them. When he’s caught, he gets a slap on the wrist because he has "a bright future", not caring about the girls he destroyed. In addition, when discussing a date rape drug at a school assembly, the staff only talk to the girls about being Defiled Forever, not even saying a word to the boys.
- Distant Finale: Revealing that, even though Gretchen and Abby lost touch over the years, they were always there for each other in their respective darkest hours, and Gretchen cared for Abby as she died. They didn't make it long enough to see Halley's Comet again, but they were together.
- Divinely Appearing Demons: A variant. Gretchen is mentioned over and over again to be very pretty, but she goes way past The Ophelia when she's trying to fight off the demon, refusing to sleep or shower, which causes her to appear hideous. The Wham Shot that reveals she gave in is that Gretchen has regained her angelic appearance and then some.
- Don't Go Into the Woods: Surprisingly subverted. All the way through the novel, it appears that Gretchen has either been possessed or attacked in the woods while tripping on LSD. However, right at the end, it turns out that Gretchen was probably possessed during summer camp and the LSD trip in the woods was just the most obvious example of it becoming clear to Abby.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Glee tosses "Father Morgan's" love letters from the top of the school's bell tower and then tries to take the plunge herself after she's tricked into confessing her feelings for him — which, of course, aren't reciprocated. She's narrowly rescued from her fate and then hastily swept out of town by her family afterward.
- Gretchen contemplates swallowing her parents' gun while trying to cope with the traumatic aftermath of her possession, but doesn't go through with it because she knows Abby would just blame herself if she did.
- Drugs Are Bad: Played with, and firmly believed by every adult in the story. Gretchen's parents instantly refuse to believe Abby and slander her as a drug dealer when she admits that she first noticed Gretchen acting weird after they tried LSD.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: When Gretchen is still attempting to fight off her possession, she looks (and smells) like an absolute wreck and everybody says so. However, the minute she gives in, she looks even more beautiful than ever and nobody accepts that there's anything wrong with her. Except Abby.
- Fair-Weather Friend: Despite being touted as two of their best friends, Margaret and Glee are both pretty quick to turn against Abby and Gretchen in their times of need.
- Margaret is more overtly concerned about landing in hot water than she is about Gretchen's safety when she gets lost in the woods overnight. She abandons Gretchen when it's clear that something is seriously wrong with her, but is suddenly her BFF again when Gretchen comes back to school more beautiful and popular than ever.
- Glee chooses to go gallivanting off on Margaret's boat with her instead of helping Abby check on Gretchen when the latter repeatedly fails to come to school. She then flat-out betrays Abby, despite promising not to, when she calls up Glee to confide her suspicions about Wallace being a rapist — leading to Abby becoming a total outcast. Despite all of this, Glee has no problems calling Abby in tears to exonerate herself just before she and her family are forced to flee town.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Abby and Gretchen, adorably. Gretchen is the only person who doesn't go to the more popular girl', Margaret's, party and so the only person who shows up to Abby's. Even better, she does what nobody else will and tells Abby that she, and not the other girl, was right.
- Foregone Conclusion: Played with. The prologue only reveals that Abby and the Exorcist make it out of the experience alive and that Abby will eventually land an office job.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Brother Lemon redeems himself for abandoning Abby during the exorcism by exonerating Abby and pretending he kidnapped Gretchen.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: A classic example between Gretchen and Abby when Abby realizes the exorcism isn't working. She saves her best friend through the "power of Phil Collins, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Seventeen".
- The Ingenue: Gretchen starts out as a successful update of this Gothic Horror trope in the context of the Eighties: very pretty, golden-haired, virginal, deeply religious, sheltered, cares for the environment. Needless to say, not unlike some ingenues in the novels of old, out of all her friends, she is the one to get "ruined" - in our case, possessed.
- It's All My Fault: Discussed. Gretchen is prepared to commit suicide after the trauma of her possession, exorcism, Abby's trial and their separation. She stops only because she realises that Abby would blame herself, because that's what she always does.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Most of the people possessed!Gretchen ruins did not deserve what they got. Wallace did. He's immediately shown to be an unfaithful boyfriend and punched Abby when she accuses him of rape. Gretchen gets him drunk at a championship game, he collapses and starts vomiting in the middle of the field, and he becomes a social pariah afterwards.
- Played with in the book's opening. Margaret tried to sabotage Abby's birthday by having her fancier party on the same day, but Abby has a close encounter with a popular upperclassman at the roller skating rink where her party happened, and he winds up coming into class to check on her in school. Since Margaret had accused Abby of lying, she winds up looking like an idiot.
- Manipulative Bastard: The demon possessing Gretchen—Andras—is a consummate manipulator, tricking Margaret into drinking tapeworm eggs through a weight loss shake, to making Glee believe Father Morgan was in love with her by forging letters to her from him. Brother Lemon mentions how Andras does this frequently, as he also had a hand in the Red Scare.
- Mercy Kill: Brother Lemon thinks of exorcisms that result in death as this, as dying is preferable to being driven mad by a demon. Ultimately subverted as Abby manages to get him away from Gretchen and complete the exorcism without killing her.
- Nice Guy:
- Father Morgan, just about the only well-adjusted deeply religious person in the book. He reject's Glee's advances and manages to stop her from killing herself. His only real fault is that he falls for Possessed!Gretchen's ruse and thus unintentionally gaslights Abby when trying to give her good advice.
- Double subverted with Brother Lemon, who goes from the only person who believes Abby to another fanatically religious Christian and a coward who nearly kills Gretchen and abandons Abby when the exorcism doesn't seem to work. He redeems himself in the end when he sacrifices his reputation to keep Abby out of prison. He turns himself in for her crimes, and makes Abby out to be the hero who only listened to him to save Gretchen.
- Nothing Is Scarier: How the demon possess Gretchen. She describes feeling someone - and she doesn't know what - touch her neck all night.
- The Power of Love: The power of Christ does not compel anything, because Brother Lemon isn't as strong in his faith as he thinks he is and Abby's not a true believer. The only thing that works is Abby invoking the touchstones of their friendship and telling Gretchen she loves her.
- Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Abby and Gretchen, of course. The only thing that takes them out of the Platonic Life-Partners is when Abby, in the denouement, tells Gretchen, "I love you dearly ''and'' I love you queerly." (They always said that they loved each other "dearly but not queerly.")
- Red Herring:
- The LSD trip. Hendrix implies throughout that this caused Gretchen's possession, but it seems that the demon probably possessed her far earlier, during the summer camp trip.
- Gretchen's parents (probably). Abby asks them to their faces if Gretchen's father raped her and caused her freakout. However, while Gretchen's parents are domineeringly religious and often physically abusive, there is no indication that this in particular led to her possession.
- Satanic Panic: Set in the 1980s and features a great deal of (real and not real) Satanic Panic-related leaflets, television specials, and other media. Ironically, Gretchen, the "best friend" in question, is possessed, but the panic is absolutely useless in telling Abby how to deal with it.
- Sexy Priest: Father Morgan. It doesn't end well for Glee.
- Spiritual Antithesis: To Jennifer's Body. Both are Horror Comedies about teenage girls whose Demonic Possessions manifest in them turning into Alpha Bitches, and their relationships with their best friends are dripping in Homoerotic Subtext. But while Jennifer's Body is a fairly grim Black Comedy filled with gory deaths that ends with Needy forced to kill Jennifer after their friendship is destroyed, this book is substantially Lighter and Softer and ends with Abby saving Gretchen with The Power of Friendship.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Abby's monologue during the exorcism about all the things she and Gretchen love, their hobbies, and memories. Amazingly, it works.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Invoked by the demon. It exploits Glee's crush on Father Morgan to hurt her by writing a series of fake love notes heavily involving Bible verses, the obvious implication being that they're from him. When Glee discovers it's all a ruse, she tries to kill herself.
- Those Wacky Nazis: A blink-and-you'll-miss it example, but also kind of an important one: at the very end of the successful exorcism, this happens: "Abby felt a storm of evil ideas rush through her: hollow-eyed men standing behind wire, human lampshades..."
- Uninvited to the Party: Margaret does a particularly extreme example when she invites everyone except Abby to a party she's having the same day as Abby's birthday... so that Abby will not only be left out of Margaret's party (it's implied), but also so that Abby will be left out of her own birthday celebration.
- Weight Loss Horror: Despite being a Big Beautiful Woman, Margaret is nevertheless unhappy, and allows possessed Gretchen to convince her to try a new weight loss treatment that causes her to lose so much weight that she is skeletal, bed-bound, and near-death within a few months. That's because Gretchen gave her diet supplements that were in fact tapeworm eggs.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- Subverted for the most part. Gretchen's parents are abusive and, at best, completely unhelpful when their fears of demons actually come true, and the Catholic school is mostly only interested in kicking Abby out and/or making her face drug charges.
- However, Abby and Brother Lemon both qualify. Abby goes along with the exorcism, despite Gretchen's pleading and the physical pain she's in, to free her from the devil, which is thoroughly justified by the end of the novel.
- Brother Lemon does scare the shit out of Abby by kidnapping and repeatedly violently attacking Gretchen, and then, even worse, he abandons Abby with the possessed Gretchen mid-exorcism. However, he redeems himself and shows himself to be one of these when he returns and takes the rap for Abby.
- Wham Line: Abby finally calls Gretchen's "boyfriend" from camp and discovers that, although Gretchen has apparently been speaking to him on the phone for months, he hasn't heard from her since summer. Who has she been talking to?
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Wallace is briefly mentioned, but never seen again after he's shunned by his peers for blowing the big football game, leaving his fate (and whether Margaret is even still dating him) unknown.
