Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

44 reviews

kellyofcali's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

It was fine, entertaining enough, but kind of felt sometimes run of the mill horror and sometime gratuitous violence. I guess it was kind of a slasher novel, but then tried to be more sometimes? I did enjoy the design of the book, like an IKEA catalogue!
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ricksilva's review

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dark emotional funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A solid four-star horror story that gains a star for it's ridiculous (in the best possibly way) design/layout and it's total dedication to sticking to it's gimmick.

Strange things are afoot at the local Orsk, a big-box retailer of Swedish-style furniture that is absolutely not just a knockoff of it's better-known competitor, Ikea.

Amy, an employee stuck in the retail grind, is offered double-overtime for an overnight shift with her manager, Basil, and longtime cashier Ruth Anne. It seems there has been a series of vandalism incidents overnight, and Basil has a team from corporate showing up the next morning expecting answers.

No problem, just a night in a giant maze-like furniture store full of doors to nowhere and stocked with the latest in fashionable home design. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything does, of course. The story hits a bunch of standard horror beats while never losing its central metaphor of retail work as prison. The characters have enough complexity to each pull off a few surprises, and the author does a nice job mixing the creepiness and overall absurdity of the setting.

The book is laid out like a furniture catalogue, and it's done with delightful attention to detail (why yes, I did notice that every furniture piece has 666 somewhere in its item number). The Orsk corporate-speak and slogans, lovingly quoted by Basil, get more and more disturbing as the story moves on. And I particularly loved how all of the characters referred to the furniture pieces by their Swedish names no matter how stressful the situation was.

This is a harrowing story (avoid if you're bothered by claustrophobia, bondage, and/or drowning) that is loaded with dark humor in a wonderfully absurd package.
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maddiearthur's review

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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justwordsandink's review

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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thee_eclectic_eccentric's review

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-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? It's complicated

2.0

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lottieingham's review

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adventurous dark lighthearted 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

4.5

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milly_gm01's review

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challenging dark funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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embee007's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

"It was the kind of repetitive labor that killed your soul."

Quick, fun read. The joys of working in a very strict retail place,
compared to a jail, when it's is haunted by one.


“Orsk: Our Home Is Forever”

This very quickly goes from light, sarcastic, & easy going, to very dark, & traumatic (for our MCs).

"The only thing it didn’t offer was coffins. Yet."

“There was a prison here, and we built a new prison on its ruins, and all the old prisoners came out to give it a try.”
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katlam_24's review

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-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

5.0

I just finished this, and it’s the first horror book I’ve read in a while. I really really hated and loved this book so much. I don’t ever want to read it again, but I will talk about it for years to come. It was so unique right off the bat. I expected this to be a dumb and silly little haunted IKEA, which it was initially and drew me in. The characters felt real but I didn’t realize how much I liked them until I wasn’t sure they’d make it out. Once it got ugly, it got UGLY. There were a handful of times I physically squirmed and had to put the book down because I could FEEL the disgusting gory bits in my mind. I usually read romance and fantasy books and they tend to feel repetitive after a while so I like to throw in a book like this to shake things up. This one for sure did the trick. I want to crawl under the covers and read sweet books until the urge to shake things up grips me again. I highly recommend reading this book if you want suspense, gore, disgust, humor, and just overall a terrifying good bad time
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pkc's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I stuck this one in just before Halloween came to a reluctant end and it was TERRIFYING. Definitely the most out and out scary of Hendrix’s books that I’ve read and so tense. I tore through it all the same. This has the Hendrix balance of scary monster plot mixed with more human elements and I ate it up. Amy was a great protagonist whose journey from reluctant participant to leader (both in life and in her situation) was fully realised in the relatively short story. Also, kudos to the ingenious design of this book. It’s very much a play on Ikea and capitalistic/homemaker philosophies but Hendrix (and I’m sure, the publishers) want you to know that Orsk is DEFINITELY NOT Ikea in any way.
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