Horrorstör

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.