Review of Horrorstor

Blurb: 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.

Review: Amy works mind-numbing retail in the Ikea knock-off store of Orsk in Cleveland, Ohio. Yet something strange is happening at night. Stranger than the weird customers they get. Basil, the manager, recruits Amy and another employee to stay overnight and help solve the mystery. Yet will they live to see the morning?

I saw quite a few other reviewers state this would make a better movie than a book, and I totally agree. It would work great for the retail jokes and horror visual effects. There is a lot that just seemed tedious in the story which, if seen on a screen, it would come off better. I really liked the product summaries at the beginning of each chapter and the fun names.

While it had great presentation, it had no surprises or deep characterization. The point of the story was to poke fun at working in retail, and it did its job, but it was a stereotypical haunted house story. The store was built on the remains of an old prison where hundreds of people died, and there was a scary warden who is the main antagonist. I never grew to like Amy nor any of the characters, so I wasn't rooting for them. It started off light and funny, but suddenly did a switch to gory horror, and thus felt like two different stories.

It's a quick read if you're looking for something making fun of working retail, but nowhere near the best horror story I've read this year.

You can find Grady Hendrix on his site and buy the book here.