Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Horrorstör
by Grady Hendrix

This is a quirky horror novel that came out in 2014. in a Orsk store (a marvelous parody of Ikea stores) in central Ohio, employees arrive each morning to find destroyed merchandise throughout the store. Security cameras don’t capture anything happening, so a trio of store employees agrees to work an overnight overtime shift to stay in the store and figure out what’s happening.

What starts as a humorous diatribe about the reality of working in a retail store environment, and the sometimes strained relationships between co-workers, employees-and-supervisors, and retail employees and customers, takes a sharp turn half-way through and becomes a slightly non-traditional haunted house book. The format of the book adds to the enjoyment of the read — it is designed to look like an “Ikea” catalog, with product descriptions and illustrations, which become darker and more distressing the farther into the plot you go. Characters that you initially may dislike will grow on you. Overall, a very entertaining read, with some serious chills in the latter half of the story. My only complaint is that the first half of the book incorporated a lot of humor, in both dialog and character relationships, and that seemed to get sacrificed to the horror elements of the plot too quickly. It would have been more enjoyable if the group of disparate characters had maintained a “Buffy the Vampire Killer”-like sense of humor about their situation. Still, creative and different. If you like horror, I’d recommend giving this a try.

[ official Horrorstör Video Trailer ] | [ publisher’s official Horrorstör web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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