Horrorstör

Grady Hendrix, the author of Horrorstör, is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. The books I have read thus far, We Sold Our Souls, and now Horrorstör are a combination of the ridiculous, the scary, a hell of a lot of fun.

As someone who worked retail in and outside of IKEA, I felt this book on a deeply visceral level. I feel like Hendrix wrote this for my poor bedraggled retail battered soul. And, even though IKEA as a company is better than others, it can get a bit Stepford Wives in upper management. IKEA has inane terms and culture; there is constant upselling and forced smiles and a vast rat-maze-like store trying to funnel you as much as possible. If you have been told that your presentation is not IKEA, you don't have that coworker attitude; your feet hurt constantly, you have been called names by customers, yelled at for policies, and must do it all again with a smile, this story is for you. I think I am channeling some inner past trauma here.

“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 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?”
― Grady Hendrix, Horrorstör

The book is set up as an IKEA catalog, same size, and same general heft. Every few chapters, there is an advertisement for a piece of furniture that is bound to make your life better and more ORSK. ORSK being the fictional lifestyle and furniture company that is a direct knock off of IKEA and the setting for the much of the story. Amy, the main protagonist, is a struggling 20+ associate that is on the fetid hamster wheel of life. The harder she struggles, the further she gets behind. Amy is about to lose her home due to late rent and is feeling the desperation of not having anywhere to go. Plus, she feels her boss Basil (I have never read a more perfect name for a character) is about to fire her for not being ORSK enough. Amy has put in her transfer, all she has to do is stay away from Basil for the next three days, and she is free of this ORSK store. One problem though, Basil would like to do some special one on one coaching. This is usually shorthand for firing. But, instead of firing Basil as an offer: stay overnight and patrol the store. See what is going on, stop whoever is shitting on the couches at night, and vandalizing the bathrooms. In exchange, Basil will grant her transfer request and give her 200 dollars cash. She thinks that this might save her, but things get a whole lot more complicated overnight and chockful of horrors instead.

“Here was the other option: the tranquilizing chair. It was always waiting for her. It always wanted her back. It always wanted her to quit again, to sit down and never get back up. In the end, Amy thought, everything always comes down to those two choices: stay down or stand up.”
― Grady Hendrix, Horrorstör

ORSK is described as a beautiful piece of fruit with worms inside. We occasionally see a colossal rat scurrying about. Or, there is a general feeling of unease when you walk the beautifully lit and European-esque halls lined with furniture. Could it be that this building this built on the ruins of an insane asylum with a mad doctor who tortured and killed his patients? It sounds like a crazy plot jump, but trust me, Hendrix makes it work.

“I know this is your religion, but for me, it's just a job.”
― Grady Hendrix, Horrorstör

I loved this book, as I said, Hendrix is becoming one of my favorites. It is a perfect mix of horror, current events, with just the right touch of the insane to keep me turning page after page. Check it out, and next time you are at IKEA, remember this book.

This is a pretty enjoyable book. It's very different from anything I've read before, though, so if you often read (or watch) contemporary horror, this review probably won't give you much useful info.

The presentation is great. I listened to the audiobook (via my library's Hoopla service, which is a great way to venture outside of my usual genres with no risk), but I also bought the ebook because it was on sale. It has illustrations in the form of maps and catalog descriptions for some of the furniture items and (once the plot gets rolling) torture devices. In the audiobook, the brief catalog and employee manual parts are narrated by Bronson Pinchot, who did a great job of making even ordinary descriptions sound creepy; the main audiobook narrator, Tai Simmons, was new to me, and I really loved her performance. I'll definitely be seeking her out again.

Overall, this book feels like the author had a clever idea and worked really hard to bring it to life, and he mostly succeeded, in my opinion. This book covers a lot of the unsettling qualities that IKEA has in reality; the maze-like structure is a recurring theme. Even the proprietary Allen-wrench-like things make an important appearance.

The characterizations are especially good. I don't believe I've read a book with a PoV character quite like Amy. She's young and misanthropic, she does not want to be working in retail, and she doesn't know how she's ever going to get ahead in life. She doesn't really solve any of those problems, either, although she does find a purpose. She's not sexualized in any way; in fact, her sexual orientation never comes up, and she has no romance plot. I really appreciated that neither Amy nor any of the other characters face the threat of sexual violence at any point in this book.

There are two other interesting female characters, too, who start out as stock characters but gain some depth over the course of the story. I did not really like or sympathize with the way Amy saw them. I'd like to be seen the way people see Ruth Anne, and I didn't like Amy's belief that Trinity was an airhead rebelling against her family, which especially grated with me when it was hinted that Trinity was bisexual. But I didn't feel the author was asking me to agree with Amy's dark view of the world. She also had nasty thoughts about Basil, comparing him to Steve Urkel, which seemed a little racist to me. But the way Basil was actually written most reminded me of Dwight from The Office (with a love for Doctor Who instead of BSG), although he's definitely also an original character. Matt was the least interesting character, a bland young hetero white guy, but it's much more common for a mainstream story to make someone like him a PoV character. I was glad he did not feature too prominently in this book.

I noticed a handful of PoV errors which a good editor should have caught; Amy is the only PoV character, but sometimes the reader is told how someone else is feeling. I also noticed epithets when Amy was alone with Ruth Anne or Trinity, because of the difficulty of not repeating pronouns & names when both characters are of the same gender. But these are very minor complaints.

I'm very wimpy about horror, although I think I'm slowly wearing down my defenses. But nothing in this book actually scared me. The plot was definitely creepy, but it also didn't feel totally real to me. But it developed slowly, and I don't want to spoil the mystery by talking about it too explicitly in my review. It is supernatural, though. There's some mild body horror, but nothing too disturbing. The book is more action-oriented, really, despite the title. I also didn't find anything laugh-out-loud funny, but I'm not sure if the author was going for comedy or not.

The ending really impressed me, and it made me a little emotional, too. I would read this author again. Perhaps my highest praise is that I know I'll be thinking about this book from now on, every time I'm in a big-box store.

The hook for this book is its spot-on mimicry of IKEA catalogs and its setting in an satirically IKEA-like store. But the story is actually well-written and engaging. I think it would be particularly affecting for readers who have had to rely on retail work for survival.

This was a lot of fun, though it does get pretty dark and verges on a kind of “Saw” vibe at times later in the story. I don't usually go in for that type of torture/sadism horror, but it wasn't overwhelming and was set into a larger scary story in a way that worked fine for me.

It's worth noting that there is an audiobook of this, and while it can't quite achieve the charm of the physical book, with its blueprint-style product illustrations and occasional store document images, it does employ Bronson Pinchot as a special narrator who comes in, accompanied by sparkling harp riffs, to read the silly product names and gushing catalog descriptions that open each chapter.

The presentation and concept (a spooky Ikea knock-off, product descriptions, and other cool design touches) was enough to get me interested, but there's a genuinely enjoyable and creepy horror story in here. There's even some satire, played mostly for comedy in the beginning, but eventually tying into the plot. Good stuff.

I will probably continue to scream literally and figuratively over this book both because I want everyone to read it AND because I remain completely terrified.
It is on one level the best horror novel I've ever read. A truly amazing contribution to both the world of bizarre cosmic horror and to haunting stories.
On another level it is a genius commentary on capitalism.
The characters are brilliant and the setting is unforgettable! If you are ready for a proper fright, I can't recommend this enough. Now excuse me while I go read everything this man has ever written

2.75?? 2.5? 3 feels way too generous but 2 feels too harsh.

This was a really fun concept and there was a lot that I was ready to like, but it mostly felt like wasted potential. I loved the product guides at each chapter and the little clues/jokes/nods in those moments, but otherwise it just fell flat. There's a whole commentary on capitalism here that just.... Never materializes, despite Orsk/IKEA literally being a prison. In some moments it seemed to go in the opposite direction, framing it as “thank god IKEA is here because otherwise my life would be so sad”. Also couldn't help but notice how the Black and Asian characters are specifically called out as such, but no one else is. There's a way to demonstrate a characters race/ethnicity without resorting to stuff like “she just had to act like a Japanese school girl to make the guys like her”

There was so much I did not expect about this book! I had heard great things about Grady Hendrix, but this was my first novel of his I read. I expected the formatting to play into the book more, but in the end, I think there was the right balance between looking like a magazine and being a book to read. I expected it to be funnier than it was, but again I felt there was the right balance between humor and horror. Also the horror was better than I expected. I tend to avoid gory horror books and I don't often get creeped out by other kinds of horror. So I can be hard to please with horror novels. This was a good balance of creepy, gory, and a little bit of ‘can't read this in the dark.' I will be reading more Grady Hendrix novels.

“She didn't expect life to be fair, but did it have to be so relentless?”

Something sinister was happening at Orsk, so the m,anager decided to get 2 of his employees to work after hours so that they could check if someone is breaking in at the store at night. Turns out, it's something supernatural.

When I was a child, I would have fantasies of hiding somewhere inside the mall so I could stay out of hours so yeah, this sounded really interesting to me. Anyone else did that?

This book gave me Scary Movie vibes. It's a horror book that's not too creepy and it's sometimes funny. I didn't really feel frightened while I was reading this. It didn't feel atmospheric enough for me, maybe the scene setting was not as dramatic. 

I liked the ending, it didn't have proper closure but it's fine. If there was a book 2, I might pick it up because I want to know what will happen next. 

BTW, I also loved the book itself! It's unique and creative. It looked like an Ikea catalogue!

I loved the beginning of this book and the epilogue. I loved poking fun at the retail world and the setting of Orsk. It felt so real and close to home, like it was written for me. Once the horror parts started I did not like it. I felt very confused as to what was happening and even though it was all in Orsk, I was taken out of the setting i loved at the beginning. 

One star for the good writing, one star for the 15% of the book I enjoyed. This story was like stranger things, saw, and ghost busters thrown into one to describe capitalism which yah I agree. The characters were bland and even though they went through hell, I didn't care for them. I ended up skipping through the last 25% of the book because the ending kept DRAGGING on and I wanted to know what the resolution would be.

Horrorstor was an unexpectedly traditional horror story wrapped in a fun, quirky exterior. Amy, the protagonist, works at a new branch of Orsk, a giant, trendy furniture store that is a spot-on parody of Ikea. Despite the upbeat culture and the vibrant interior, this branch is riddled with problems. Vandalism is occurring during non-store hours, employees are receiving disturbing but untraceable text messages, and corporate is starting to become concerned. Amy's store manager assembles a small team of staff, Amy included, to stay after closing and help investigate. Much hilarity - and terror - ensues.

The book itself is fun, dressed to look like a store catalog. Each chapter heading includes a product description and image of the item. The parody of Ikea is spot on, from the jokes about missing parts and flat packs, to the “bright and shining” path running through the store for customers to follow. The fun, parodic exterior, however, should not lead a reader to believe that the horror is also fun. The story quickly takes a turn with a seance that doesn't go quite as planned, and the team of employees find themselves in a battle for survival as they try to escape.