Eight year old Kay Washington loves her best friend Eddie Video, the imaginary companion who lives inside her tablet. At first, he’s completely harmless, helping Kay deal with her crippling loneliness and her fear of “the quiet”. However, as Eddie starts to make more demands of Kay, her own life, and the lives of her loved ones, are in danger.

Mid-forties Ivan spends his days working gigs to make ends meet. If he isn’t sprinting across Portland with meals for Door Dash customers, he’s fielding queries for a Craig’s List ad he had posted claiming to be able to kill the remaining childhood imaginary friends of adults. You see, Ivan has a secret. He can see your imaginary friend. The bad news? If they see him, they immediately want to kill him.

He just has one rule about offing imaginary friends: no kids. They need their companions.

However, all rules are made to be bent, or broken. And Kay’s mother? Well she wants Eddie Video gone for good.

They say not to judge a book by its cover, but I was immediately reeled in by both the cover and the title of Robert Brockway’s novel I WILL KILL YOUR IMAGINARY FRIEND FOR $200. Does that make me easily susceptible to a clever name and concept? Probably. But I never claimed to be above that anyway.

A former staff writer for the popular 2000s website Cracked, Brockway has been writing horror comedies for a few years now with his Vicious Circuit series receiving critical acclaim. In 2026, he returned with a standalone story about what happens when we grow up and the comforts of our childhood refuse to allow us to grow as adults.

I absolutely loved this book. It’s funny, twisted, and deeply relatable. If you’re an adult in 2026 and you’re not a mess of emotions, insecurities and anxiety, I’d love to know your secret for pure bliss. Brockway’s Ivan is such an engaging and empathetic character; same goes for Kay, the novel’s impacted child. There are some scenes near the novel’s climax where I would say it got a bit dusty in the room as I was racing toward the conclusion. Damn the innocence of childhood!

What a fun ride. I can’t wait to read more of Brockway’s stuff.