Most Likely to Summon Nyhiloteph
Madison McSweeney
Little Ghosts Books, 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7389097-4-2
Ebook, 264 ppg.
The first thing I did before I started reading this book was try to figure out how to pronounce "Nyhiloteph." The second thing I did was ask myself, Who the heck is Nyhiloteph? Too lazy to do a Google search or bug the author with my inquiry, I instead dove into this story to find out. If experience has taught me anything, it’s that the best way to learn something about a character in a story is to keep reading. Or, rather, start reading.
Most Likely to Summon Nyhiloteph by Madison McSweeney is a story told from the POV of Lucy, a girl who is dead. She died in a car accident and is now hanging around her friends in the afterlife. Much to her dismay, one of her friends gets the grand idea of bringing her back from the dead, and on top of her wanting to stop them, there’s a demon named Nyhiloteph who not only encourages this train of thought, but wants to beat her to the punch in taking over a person’s body and pretending to be her.
That’s the gist of the story, and that’s where we get started on the path to finding out who this demon is and what he wants.
OK, but can we talk about how, when your teenager starts acting weird and out-of-character, more parents need to start thinking that perhaps their kid has been possessed? I know, the teen years are crazy, unpredictable and horrifying. What exactly IS weird, anyway? And they ARE prone to mood swings. But that’s not what we’ve got here in the story. The possessed teen goes beyond just acting out-of-character. I mean, they seem to relish being evil. But, ah, never mind.
Moving on, we should wonder about how Lucy’s friend, Jackson, seems to be going along with the whole “back-from-the-dead” thing. Yeah, I know that this is what he wanted, but he seems so chill about it. And seems to take all of the weirdness going on post-possession with some kind of acceptance. Even his friends are questioning how he just goes along with it.
And Lucy may be a ghost, but she is still a teenager with memories of her life before – even as a “teen ghost,” as it were. I noticed how she shares things about people she knew in high school, how some of the kids treated her, and lamentations of what might have been with certain other students or classes. I could almost hear her speaking in a sarcastic tone when she says, over two other students getting in trouble with the principle over saying something insensitive, “I found myself wishing he’d been the one handling my bullies, back when I had human enemies.” (Page 125) I have always felt frustration over people who idolize the dead and/or seem to care more about someone AFTER they are dead, when they never even noticed that person while they were alive. This continues to happen with everyone. I know part of it is driven by guilt over not caring about that person enough when they were alive or not spending enough time with that person when they were alive. And then there are the families who try to cash in on a person’s death, pretending they CARED. SO. MUCH. about this person that they are outraged over how they died and want to sue someone for wrongful death or something like that.
I mean, where were these people when that person was ALIVE? When that person was homeless, on the street, and had no one to help them??
It’s ridiculous. It really is.
This is especially highlighted with the Grad Committee that Adrienne is on, where some of the members of the group all of a sudden act like they cared so much about Lucy that they want to honor her in some way. I loved how Adrienne/Nyhiloteph calls them out on how badly they treated Lucy when she was alive.
And that’s one big part of the story which I saw happening a lot. How Lucy was VERY AWARE of her life and how everyone treated her when she was alive, how everyone acted around her when they were in it during her lifetime. There is the same teenage perception of the other students at her school as well as her friends. But there is also the frustration over how some people show So Much Love towards their memory of her when they wouldn’t have given her the time of day when she had been alive.
There’s also the fleeting message in this story of saying goodbye to everything that COULD have happened but never will, what MIGHT have happened but never did, after life comes to an end. We often come across the message to live our lives to the fullest while we are alive because we never know when our lives will end. We may never get the chance to do things we want to do if we keep putting them off. It should not have to take a brush with death or a teenager’s life cut short to be reminded of this message. It is one we need to make a part of our lives every day right now, while we are still alive to do all of those things we want to do.
This story tackles a lot of the issues related to a teenager’s tragic death: What might have been, what death is like in the afterlife, how we perceive life and death, the attachments we still have, the thoughts and memories we carry with us after we die as well as a need in the people still alive hoping to bring back the person that died for just one more chance, one more hug, one more last great thing to do. This novel also explores the paranormal aspect of the afterlife, like what ghosts are limited to, what they’re like and ghostly communication. Of course, this being a novel, you can’t really take everything covered in it about the paranormal as gospel. We, the living, can only guess and assume. That plays well here in this story, and I appreciated how the author made it all work.
Most Likely to Summon Nyhiloteph is the kind of YA story that will make a lot of readers think, but also create in readers who are actually YA enjoy this fresh perspective on the individuality of a teenager. This story definitely serves as a wake up call to get the most out of life while you still can, because no matter how old you are when you die, there is still the feeling of not wanting to leave this world, and the people we knew and loved, behind. That we just didn’t get to have enough time to live the life we were meant to. Filled with teen angst, hilarity, tender moments and suspense, this novel is an intriguing tale of one teen ghost’s quest to set things right after the friends she leaves behind make everything go wrong. It just goes to show that our friends will always be there for us, even after they are no longer a part of the earthly plane.
Five stars
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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