Horrorstor: A Novel

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The first half of the book was great,a little slow,but still good,and you are introduced to the characters,which to be honest,are some of the most natural and real characters I have ever read about.They seemed to me so random,yet so unique.You happen to meet Amy,a girl who is not really happy with her job,she works at Orsk,which is a furniture shop.There also is a hipster with the beard,Matt.Basil,the boss who is always complaining.So you get the idea. Hendrix did a great job with lots of little references that made me smile from mentioning Best Buy, Lorraine Warren (I’m a huge fan of The Conjuring series), and capturing the essence of an IKEA store. LoL I’ve only shopped there twice in my life and let me tell you, that place has to be terrifying late at night in complete darkness. I listened to the audiobook with voicing and narration by Tai Sammons. Bronson Pinchot narrated the creepy chapter introductions with bizarre aloofness and believability!

this book is set up like an IKEA catalog, and walks that line between humor and horror without ever putting a ring on either one. Brown, Todd (August 5, 2015). "Charlie Kaufman To Exec Produce TV Adaptation Of Grady Hendrix's HORRORSTOR". Screen Anarchy . Retrieved January 29, 2020. At this point, I've read a lot of Hendrix's books and I can say without a doubt that this one is my favorite.Wildly inventive…Hendrix delivers both a palm-sweating horror story and a laugh-out-loud satire of retail.”— Esquire Also, this book is relevant to the Bitchery in another way – see the shelving unit aptly named Kjërring? Yes, that’s mashup, oddly spelled/umlauted ScandiNordic for bitch. (Bonus fact: the ‘stör’ in ‘Horrorstör’ means ‘disturb’, so the title is essentially Horrordisturb.) For the most part, Horrorstör is an entertaining, awesome, and gruesome read. I thought it was a very unique look at what happens when a retail store closes at night and you’re dealt with scary events and situations. The atmospheric horror was brilliant and the only thing I didn’t like was the ending. Again, no spoilers here but I wanted things wrapped up for a perfect read from beginning to end. It left me wanting more as I wish things were settled, closed up, and one way or the other, complete. This is one of the worst books I've read this year tied with The Snow Child and I'm just mad that I let myself, on both occasions, be fooled by the book design. I think it's going to be a long time before I dare touch the horror genre again.

With 5 very different characters, their only common thing is working retail, But their personalities variety.. The 'Not my business type, The faithfully faithful whose faith is the job , The married to the work, and another regular two' Over on the wall was a large banner that read: "The hard work makes Orsk a family, and the hard work is free." the completely fake, slightly stilted Euro-phrasing was part of Orsk's fake Ikea act, and Amy couldn't decide if it was slightly annoying or totally offensive. In her opinion, nothing was worse than a store that pretended to be something it was not. Hendrix’s darkest novel yet will leave readers begging for an encore.”— Booklist, starred review, on We Sold Our Souls

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Fellow reviewer Amanda also liked the book, but she didn’t find it particularly scary: “It’s a little gross but it’s got a nice blend of horror and humor, which is usually how I prefer it.” The two women begrudgingly agree and return to the store at the designated hour. Their plan is to patrol the showroom floor, every hour, over the course of the night to see if they can solve the mystery. I enjoyed all the characters, especially Amy, as she was totally relatable. I’ve met countless people working in retail and have known co-workers dealing with everything she does which made it feel so authentic. I had a lot of empathy with her and this made me connect with her character and why she did the things that she did.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination. So book industry, I'm looking at you. Who let this get published? Whose fault is this? Why are we okay with lazy unfinished writing? Horrorstör is basically a novel about a haunted IKEA. There’s no romance in it, but it’s relevant to the interests of the Bitchery in the sense that it’s about a haunted IKEA, a concept that should strike mingled dread and delight in the soul of anyone who has ever actually been to IKEA. What a refreshing book, both funny, horrific and hugely captivating. You can just disengage your brain and go along for the ride. I almost felt like I were in an Orsk store at times. So the first half of the book is a big piss take of IKEA or any other ‘big box’ store which is quite amusing but then suddenly things gets scary as the creepy stuff starts to happen and the monsters come out 😱. You see there is a reason this particular ORSK store is haunted... No, no, no I’m not going there. You’ll have to read the book for yourselves. Go on - I dare you!But every morning, five days a week (seven during the holidays), they dragged themselves here, to the one thing in their lives that never changed, the one thing they could count on come rain, or shine, or dead pets, or divorce: work. His plan is to spend the night in the building with a strategic strike team that will be ready to catch these neer-do-wells in the act! But since he doesn't have access to any professionals, he's willing to go in with two of his employees, Amy and Ruth Anne. Neither of them is at all qualified to do anything other than point and scream if they were to run across someone messing up the store in the middle of the night. The more Amy struggled, the faster she sank. Every month she shuffled around less and less money to cover the same number of bills. The hamster wheel kept spinning and spinning. Sometimes she wanted to let go and find out exactly how far she'd fall if she just stopped fighting.She didn't expect life to be fair, but did it have to be so relentless?"

There’s more stumbling around in the dark, some characters die, and it’s over. I was very disappointed/sleepy and not at all scared. As I was reading this, it was very easy to picture it as a horror movie in my mind. This would look great on-screen and would make an excellent film. I love the concept of this book. It is so unique – I’ve never read a book like it and believe I’m unlikely to stumble upon another. I feel it’s pretty much what you would expect from a novel pitched as a horror parody of IKEA. I’m a hoe for that Swedish furniture store and the story fed my home décor-loving heart.If you’ve ever been frustrated trying to put together furniture from IKEA, you’ll get a laugh out of Hendrix’s spoof mystery.”— New York Post It was worth every single great review that it got. This was a horror story that took you in and threw you into a maelstrom of madness – it got my heart rate up more than once. Can you think of anything scarier than an asylum with torture devices that would have made the Inquisition jealous? No, I’m not giving too much away, you will still need to take the journey yourself to find out. The sorts of things people do, the way they act, and the messes they leave for someone else to clean up when they enter stores are really a sight to behold. Dante himself couldn't have come up with a better punishment for past sins than having to deal with the general public on a daily basis for peasant wages. If you see me in the wild and I'm reading a book that was written by Grady Hendrix, interrupt me at your own peril.”