Horrorstor: A Novel by Grady Hendrix

About the book:

Amy works at her local Orsk store. An Ikea-like furniture superstore, Orsk boasts the same huge warehouse/maze feel that an Ikea store has and all of the employees are like family. Something strange is happening at the Orsk store though. Furniture is mysteriously broken and vandalized when the employees come to work in the morning. With a visit from corporate arriving soon Amy's boss Basil is determined that nothing is going to happen to taint his name or position. He asks two of his employees, Amy and Ruth-Ann to stay overnight to find the culprits and end the destruction. What transpires during their evening at Orsk changes their lives forever.



My Thoughts: 

First, I love the way the book is packaged. It is designed to look like a store catalog! How cool is that? And seriously, besides loving a good horror story, the design is what piqued my interest and had me saying "yes" to reviewing it. Each chapter begins with a description of some piece of furniture that Orsk sells. They are very creative and interesting. About halfway through the book when the "haunting" actually starts the descriptions of the furniture changes into descriptions of torture devices that were used by the warden in the prison that used to sit on the Orsk property.

Amy is really not a very likeable character at first. Well, for me even at the end she still kind of got on my nerves. But at least she sort of matured through her night at Orsk. Basil was a real pain in the butt, but at least he had a sense of responsibility to the company and the employees. The other 3 employees that also spent the night had their issues as well.

The "Rah Rah, we are a family, take pride in your work etc." that Basil kept preaching to Amy made me laugh at times because I have been in those meetings and found my attitude to be like Amy's. The impromptu seance' at one point in the evening was a bit much for me in the fact that I think the author became a bit preachy trying to educate the reader in there being nothing wrong with calling up the dead.

As for the horror story I did find some of the more grisly scenes hard to get through, but the whole premise of the store being on a haunted prison site and an insane warden out to teach the employees(or prisoners) a lesson was interesting and helped the characters develop.  Did it make me never want to go into an Ikea store again? Naw, but you won't ever find me there at night!!

*Warning: Some language and violence along with evil supernatural characters may offend some readers.

I received my copy of the book from Quirk books in return for my honest review. All thoughts are my own.