Craig DiLouie’s My Ex, the Antichrist, continues his trend of injecting horror into a form of popular media. This time it is rock music, the last two were horror films and reality television, respectively. It also happens to be the third horror novel in a short span of time I read that mingles horror and rock music.
Love can be hell…
When a rock musician learns her ex-boyfriend is the Biblical Antichrist, she must find a way to stop him before he grows powerful enough to end the world. Daisy Jones And The Six meets The Omen in this novel about music, free will, and the apocalypse.
“It’s a familiar story: the starry rise and tragic fall of a rock band. This is not that story. This is one you haven’t heard—a tale of divine prophecy and a breakup. Oh, and the apocalypse…”
1998: Lily Lawlor and Drake Morgan form a punk band. Drake inspires faith in some. Fear in others. Lily is a believer.
2010: At the height of her stardom, Lily walks into a police station and confesses to a murder.
Now: The band has refused to talk to the press about their riotous past, Lily’s confession, or anything else. It’s been over a decade, but Lily has finally agreed to an interview. And the band is following her lead.
What follows is a story of prophecy, death, and apocalypse. A story about love found and love lost. A story about the antichrist. Maybe it’s all true. Maybe none if it is.
Either way, this is their story. And they’re sticking to it.
Told as if we are reading the transcript of an interview of the band the Shivers, DiLouie mixes the biblical apocalypse with hard rock/punk music. Lily Lawless is the guitar, Ramona, the drummer; Eric the keyboard player; and Malcom the bassist and manager of the band. Leading the band is Lily’s lover/boyfriend, the charismatic and persuasive Drake. The band doesn’t know each other before their first band meeting, but the find something strong in their music together. Drake is who holds them together, the driving force. Or so they think.
The shows the Shivers play in small local venues often end in chaos, with concert patrons in a trance and injured. When Lily starts to not like who she is with Drake, his affect on crowds and that he might be the antichrist (he is), their relationship ends. The rest of the band convinces Lily that she should take over the lead singer role. Drake eventually finds another band; his band and The Shivers are on a collision course for Armageddon, a battle of the bands. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the novel is set in and near Bethlehem, PA. Points to Dilouie on the research because I’m fairly close to Bethlehem, PA and the little bit I know of the area and its history felt pretty accurate.
The Shivers were enormously popular in the late 90s early 2000s, thanks to the Armageddon Battle of the Bands. From there, their course was set. What I found interesting is how DiLouie largely glossed over the stardom portion of the Shivers history.
The gut of the novel is who the band was before they became popular and how Lily really grew into an incredible lead singer. Each band member felt genuine, unique, and very real. While Lily was definitely the lead character, because of the interview style, they rest of the band didn’t feel like just supporting members of the band. To a pretty significant degree, they felt as if they were the protagonist of their own stories. Seeing where they ended up after their time with the band was very rewarding in each of their own rights. For anybody who remembers the old VH1 docuseries “Behind the Music,” a lot of the novel will resonate, especially when the unnamed interview talks with former club owners, rock journalists, and other bands who crossed paths with the Shivers.
As a fan of hard rock / heavy metal music, you might say that My Ex, the Antichrist definitely struck a chord with me.
The biblical apocalypse is waiting to happen, though. Drake is indeed the antichrist and Lily seems to be the only one who can potentially turn him from that endgame. Where DiLouie takes this story is fun, fascinating, and an absolute blast. With three of Dilouie’s novels on my bookshelves, he’s become a writer who I can trust to tell an entertaining and uniquely horrific tale.
My Ex, the Antichrist is the first (or at least one of the first) title(s) in Orbit / Hachette’s “Run for It” Horror imprint. In trusting this launch to a writer like DiLouie, the publisher has shown a lot of trust in DiLouie. I’d heartily say that trust is earned with this novel.
Highly Recommended \m/ \m/
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | July 2025
https://craigdilouie.com/
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/orbit-books/excerpt-my-ex-the-antichrist-by-craid-dilouie/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Orbit / Run For It
