Reviews with content warning for Murder - Horrorstor

This book is amazing. I absolutely love the attention to detail that went into making it look like a catalogue, including the furniture chapter titles that slowly devolved into

torture devices

. The characters were funny, the spooks were spooky, and the story kept me hooked. Even if the plot is a little weaker relying on the novelty of the book itself, I still highly recommend this book for a spooky creepy satire that you get through fast. Definitely check content warnings because it gets a little graphic.

Content Warnings

davidrb's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

You can tell this was one of his earlier works, but even then, he's still such a talented horror writer. His character writing suffers a little here, and that's my main complaint. Amy is still fantastic, though! Great, creative book.

Content Warnings

hayleyw's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

theidlereader's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Content Warnings

writtenontheflyleaves's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix 🛋️
🌟🌟🌟🌟

🛋️ The plot: Amy hates her job at Orsk, an Ikea rip-off whose disorientating layout lulls shoppers into handing over handfuls of cash for cheap furniture. She hates it even more when strange things start happening at the store and her manager asks her and a few others to stay inside overnight to catch the culprit. Little do they suspect that there is a more sinister - and less human - reason for the disturbance...

After also loving My Best Friend's Exorcism, this book has really sealed Grady Hendrix as an auto-buy author for me. This was such a quick and compulsive read and much less gimmicky than I expected - especially as the book itself is designed to look like an Ikea catalogue. Even though the final third was a bit of a letdown (a lot of tension is built up that then kind of peters out anticlimactically) and it could have done with being a bit longer, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I love the horror genre because it's a study in what we fear, and what we fear greatly depends on what we believe. Hendrix is fascinated by where we find meaning in our lives outside of the structure of religion and he uses horror to explore the double edge of that belief, the fact that it can put us in danger as well as rescue us from it. In MBFE, he looked at friendship and the emotional danger that trust can put us in - and how necessary that is. In Horrorstör, he looks at work: why we do it, and whether cynical corporate slogans about "home" and "responsibility" can have sincere meaning in the lives of workers. Both of these books offer genuinely interesting questions about the nature of modern life - as well as some honestly sickening horror scenes 💀

🛋️ Read it if you like horror comedy films, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, or any novel that looks at modern work through a skewed lens.

🚫 Avoid it if you hate horror (obviously), or if you're feeling depressed about your job as it probably won't help. There's also more gore in this than in MBFE so tread lightly if you have a weak stomach!

Content Warnings

battletoasters's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Hey. Hey. Why is this book so good? I asked friends for recs for books in 2022, and my girlfriend was like "hey read this one." And I thought it would be a GREAT chill out book after work because haha, funny, IKEA horror story. This is gonna be a laugh, right?

WRONG. So wrong. This book was genuinely scary. I regularly play horror games, watch horror movies, read horror stories. This is the one that broke me. I had nightmares all night after getting about halfway through. I don't think I'll ever sleep peacefully again after reading some of these passages.

10/10 Phenomenal experience.

Content Warnings

12dejamoo's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I will say one thing for this book, it is certainly gripping. I kept going back to it as soon as I'd managed to put it down. There was a lot about this I really liked - the concept in general is just wonderful, and the fact that the book is laid out like a catalogue is just so fun but also adds to the creepy atmosphere. This book reminded me strongly of the IKEA documentary, which can only be a good thing. Also it was just really funny at times. However, I kind of expected to be scared when reading this and I was until after the seance where it becomes too large-scale and too unbelievable. I'm easy to scare and I kind of expected to come out of this always slightly creeped out when I went into an IKEA, but the whole thing just became too unbelievable to be that monster that's lurking just around the dark corner. I guess that's because it's Horrorstör and not Thrillerstör but yeah I was disappointed in that (although maybe I would feel differently if I had actually been scared and then had to go to sleep tonight).

I will say, if you're icked out by body horror-type stuff, or rats, maybe don't read this. The worst parts were the parts where Amy couldn't properly breathe because then as you're reading you feel like you can't properly breathe.

Content Warnings

littlelionslibrary's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

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