First of all, can we talk about fun this retro cover is?! 😍

I was sold on this book by the cover alone, but damn it was wonderfully macabre.

It’s relatively short, clocking in at 122 pages, but it’s jam-packed with blood, teenage angst and twisted emotions. 

I don’t want to give too much away as this story is best explored with a cosy blanket and hot drink; all I will say is that maybe that creepy neighbour living at the end of the road has more going on than you might think! 

Dorrie is a traumatized and troubled teen. She has done some violent and cruel things and felt no remorse for her actions. Her neighbor Mr. Frank, who all the neighborhood children are afraid of and suspect the worst about, has been watching her a lot. Dorrie assumes the worst as well, especially when he abducts her. However, when he reveals that he figured out she is possessed with a hitchhiker (how demons are referred in this novella), she learns that the rumors about him are false, and that he intends to help free her from the hitchhiker.

The novella switches a few times from 1985 from when Dorrie is 14, to 2019 when she is in her late forties. In the present day narrative she joins churches and watches the children with troubled backgrounds, as they're most at risk of becoming possesed, and does her best to help them.

This has become one of my favorite horror books about possession along with Come Closer by Sara Gran, Girl That You Fear by Azzurra Nox, My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix, and Goddess of Filth by V. Castro. Ali Seay is also now another of my favorite writers and I'll always be excited to read anything she writes. I'm super grateful to Grindhouse Press for publishing this and her novella Hysteria. 🖤