Release Date: September 23rd 2014
Publisher: Quirk Books
Pages: 248
Find it on: Goodreads. BookDepository. Waterstones.
Source: I ordered a copy of this from Book Depository.
Rating: 4/5 stars

Synopsis

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

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.

A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, Horrorstör delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve.

Review

Horrorstör is a book that caught my eye online and as soon as I read the synopsis I knew I had to order a copy. A haunted house story set in an Ikea type store? Where do I sign up? I expected this to be a fun, entertaining read but what I didn’t expect was for it to be genuinely quite creepy and spine tingling. Horrorstör is a gripping and compelling read, and one I absolutely did not want to look away from.

I absolutely love the concept of this book. It’s laid out like an Ikea catalogue, with a map of the store and diagrams of the furniture on sale – that became increasingly more menacing as the story progresses. It’s clever and well executed and definitely made me intrigued to read more from Grady Hendrix.

The story itself is quite a straight forward one. Amy is an employee of Orsk, a cheap knock off of Ikea. The store has been getting vandalised at night and when her boss Basil asks Amy and another employee to work an overnight shift in attempt to find out who’s causing the trouble, Amy needs the money desperately enough that she agrees. What they find in the store is a lot darker than they expected and not everyone will survive the night.

The story is a really addictive one and I absolutely raced through it. It’s fast paced and full of atmosphere and I really liked the characters Hendrix has created. We don’t get to learn too much about them apart from Amy but I liked them all. Parts of the story are pretty funny, particularly as Amy goes through her day as a retail employee. Overall I really enjoyed this one, it was plenty of fun and incredibly creepy. If you’re looking for a unique and engaging book to devour in a weekend, this is definitely it.