I got a copy of this book through Quirk Books in exchange for an honest review. This was a hilarious and terrifying book that I enjoyed reading. It starts off very campy and ends up as a fairly classic gory type of vengeful ghost story.

Orsk furniture store is the lesser known and cheaper version of an Ikea furniture store. Amy works in Orsk, she has an attitude problem and has no ambition. Amy also hates her manager and is sure he is all set to fire her when she (and another employee) are called to the manager’s office. However Amy is taken by surprise at her manager’s request. Orsk has had a series vandalism incidents at night. Amy’s manager would like her and one other employee to work overnight in an effort to figure out why these things are happening and who is making them happen. At first it seems like a simple broken lock, but then things start to get really really weird.

You know right away that this is going to be an interesting read. Orsk is set up just like Ikea and from the first scene (with hordes of coffee deprived employees staggering into work like zombies) you know this is going to be a very tongue in cheek type of story. It ended up being a strangely engaging mix of corporate humor and disturbing ghostly medical experiments.

Really the story starts out as hilarious. You have over eager shoppers, employees so set in doing their one job they can’t do anything else, and a manager that is very concerned about what corporate thinks about it all. Even though the beginning is funny, it is itself a bit creepy in its corporate eagerness. As things continue the story loses some of its bubbly irony and ends up super creepy and gory…more like a typical horror story. I enjoyed the luducisnous of the story and the quiet decent into madness. Although I will be honest, I am easily scared by horror stories and the end part of this book freaked me out.

I loved how each chapter starts with a type of furniture and the types of furniture get more and more sinister. The first few chapters all start with things very similar to what you might see at Ikea. The mid-chapters have things like treadmills of questionable virtue that could either be real or made up (wait are there hand restraints on that treadmill?!)… The end chapters have devices that are down right tortuous (for your own good of course).

Amy and co-workers are all given decent backgrounds and personalities but this isn’t really a character driven story. The whole thing is driven by the sordid history of the location Orsk is built on. As the story and characters degenerate into madness things go to pure “scrap your nails off your fingers on the wall” type of terror. Again this part wasn’t really my thing, it was definitely icky and creepy and all in all terrifying.

However, for those who can brave the terrors of Orsk between the hours of two AM and dawn, you will find that the horrors don’t stop with the hauntings. Your friendly corporate entity will be there at the end to make things even more horrifying in an oh so civilized way.

Overall a very hilarious and terrifying story of a Ikea style furniture sore where things go horribly horribly wrong. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It was a fun read and I really enjoyed the creativity with which the whole thing was put together. Recommended to those who love quirky horror stories.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge

Early Review – Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix (4/5 stars)

Like this:

Related

Follow Hidden in Pages

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Follow Hidden in Pages