Will I love Horrorstör?

This horror mystery is in the form of an Ikea (sorry, Orsk) catalogue. I mean, it shouldn't work, but it does! The narrative is interspersed with pictures and descriptions of furniture, which are always relevant to the story and become more and more disturbing as the night wears on. Full marks for concept! And the story itself is tense and scary, too. Funny, horrifying and so original!

This horror novel about a haunted IKEA-like store is playful and fun in every way—from its inventive narrative structure to the book’s mimicry of an IKEA catalogue, complete with a store map and advertisements for furniture that become increasingly deranged.

During daylight, Orsk is a regular furniture store in the suburbs of Cleveland, but when several employees attempt to stay overnight to find out why products keep getting damaged, the building’s dark history begins to bleed into the present. This book perfectly captures the uncanny way nighttime makes familiar landscapes, such as stores and schools, seem entirely unfamiliar, a phenomenon… show more.

Grady Hendrix crafts a unique world—not only in this story, but for the pantheon of horrors he has built throughout his novels. Set amidst the winding paths of ORSK (an IKEA-like store), the reader is introduced to strange happenings already in progress. As the store itself changes and incidents become more sinister and paranormal, so does the presentation of the book itself. Designed to parody an IKEA catalog, illustrations of ORSK products become more menacing as the story progresses, inviting the reader to progress deeper into a world of danger and terror. Hendrix has a way of crafting… show more.

Is it weird to call a creepy horror tale hilarious? Because it kind of is. A clever and fast-paced read unraveling the mystery of the three employees who volunteer to work a dusk to dawn shift and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.  Basically, it’s like if Ikea was haunted during a lock-in. And Grady Hendrix does horror in such an amazing way it’s a gateway to his other books, like The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, which is also very good.

You think your job is terrible? As terrible as working in a giant IKEA-like furniture store with its own weird company philosophy and product names you can’t pronounce? And what if a strange malevolent presence haunts the place every night, soiling furniture, and leaving cryptic horrid messages? This very much tongue-in-cheek story follows a band of employees who have the deeply unenviable job of guarding the store overnight. What happens is a mind-bending dimension-hopping lesson in why minimum wage is never enough.