Daddy's Back!: A Story of the Supernatural

Gemma Files is a Toronto-based freelance writer.

Amanda, a naive young Newfoundland university co-ed, is thrilled when
she starts getting messages from her beloved father—who seems to have
returned from the dead. Soon enough, however, she’s showing all the
classic signs of Fundamentalist possession—chucking her rosaries in
the trash, finding lost objects, and contemplating “reunion” through
suicide with the demon pretending to be her daddy.

Unfortunately, even given this pratfall-rich premise, Daddy’s Back!
still falls somewhere between an excruciatingly boring, run-of-the mill
psycho-thriller and a feature-length Chick tract (complete with a
lecture about how playing fortune-teller for fun invites the loss of
your immortal soul). First-time author Lane has a very clear agenda at
work here, which could be excused if she only had the skill to make it
palatable (or at least interesting). Instead, we’re left with no
flash—and not nearly enough trash—to entice either the eye or the
imagination.