Horrorstor: A Novel

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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. 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?

From the awesome graphic illustrations before each chapter and the whole story being around a retail furniture store, this book really hit home with me. I spent over 15 years working in retail electronics (Best Buy) and let me tell you, Hendrix hit the nail right on the head with how everything works behind the scenes. Even with the usual characters you’d find in retail, he did a fantastic job getting everything eerily accurate to what it’s like working in retail and the people/customers you deal with on a daily basis.

And the merchandise is not really cheap and of higher quality than you might expect, perhaps even an experience that will last more than 30 seconds. (I'm paraphrasing, of course). From the New York Timesbest-selling authorof The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampirescomes a hilarious and terrifying haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting: a furniture superstore. The humor was also spot on for me. The satirical nature of the entire story, plus the witty banter between the characters, made this an absolute delight from beginning to end. My husband and I have been to IKEA several times, like every time we move. Most notably the last time was when we outfitted our camping trailer. It was a weekend. We wound our way through the entire Showroom and it was, quite literally, a Horrorstor!

Twenty-something Amy works at a cheap furniture store called Orsk. She gets roped into doing a dusk-til-dawn shift with her middle-aged co-worker Ruth Anne and highly motivated manager Basil (who’s also younger than she is). They’re on the lookout for whoever’s been wiping the display furniture with poo and scrawling graffiti across the walls after-hours. Also, someone is texting “help” to everyone with a store mobile. But they gotta catch whoever’s doing it soon because corporate’s coming down for an inspection, first thing in the morning! National treasure Grady Hendrix follows his classic account of a haunted IKEA-like furniture showroom, Horrorstor (2014), with a nostalgia-soaked ghost story, My Best Friend’s Exorcism.” The ONLY part that wasn't working for me was the 3 or 4 times Hendrix uses rats as his scare/creep factor. I am just not scared of rats. So those parts were just me being all, "Whatever. Chill out, people. They're just rats." But since Hendrix primarily focuses on actually creepy stuff, this didn't end up to be too annoying, and only took me out of the horror of the story once or twice. Over on the wall was a large banner that read: "The hard work makes Orsk a family, and the hard work is free." the completely fake, slightly stilted Euro-phrasing was part of Orsk's fake Ikea act, and Amy couldn't decide if it was slightly annoying or totally offensive. In her opinion, nothing was worse than a store that pretended to be something it was not. Also, this book is relevant to the Bitchery in another way – see the shelving unit aptly named Kjërring? Yes, that’s mashup, oddly spelled/umlauted ScandiNordic for bitch. (Bonus fact: the ‘stör’ in ‘Horrorstör’ means ‘disturb’, so the title is essentially Horrordisturb.)At this point, I've read a lot of Hendrix's books and I can say without a doubt that this one is my favorite. The first half of the book was great,a little slow,but still good,and you are introduced to the characters,which to be honest,are some of the most natural and real characters I have ever read about.They seemed to me so random,yet so unique.You happen to meet Amy,a girl who is not really happy with her job,she works at Orsk,which is a furniture shop.There also is a hipster with the beard,Matt.Basil,the boss who is always complaining.So you get the idea.