I read the majority of Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstör at Bryce Canyon National Park.
Bryce Canyon National Park is awesome, but I was much younger than the rest of the people in my party by 30-40 years, and even though I descended down the Navajo Loop Trail and the others went off somewhere else on a less strenuous path, I still got back to the meeting point way faster than anyone else.
Usually I bring books with me but due to the nature of the trip – hiking around Utah – I didn’t want to bring anything with me that wasn’t my camera, food, or water. SOOO the books stayed at the hotel. I parked myself on a bench under a tram stop – stretched out, because it was rainy and not many people were there – and, in addition to listening to middle aged people compare quality of life in Texas vs. California, downloaded and read Horrorstör on my phone.
Like Hallowe’en Party, this was read in the spirit of Halloween, which greatly influenced the choice. I’m not sure how I came about it – it may have been an Amazon monthly deal – but it fit the Halloween theme of October, and since it was relatively short, I figured it was a good book to read on my phone (which I hate doing).
Horrorstör takes place in a large IKEA like boxstore of home furniture, called Orsk. This Orsk store is a relatively new location, where protagonist Amy is living paycheck to paycheck, and regretting most of her life choices. Some strange incidents have started happening in the store, such as vandalism to merchandise overnight when nobody is there without evidence of a break in, and a number of characters experience the feeling of getting helplessly and hopelessly lost in a store where things that shouldn’t be moving around (such as entire departments shifting locations) are moving around. Amy is asked to do an overnight shift by her nemesis, manager Basil, along with a number of other “loyal” employees to help catch the perpetrator.
This story, in spite of being a horror story, can be wildly funny. Everything about it, from the idiot teenagers who want the night to be a paranormal activity film, to Ruth Anne, who has no family and has made her Orsk coworkers her family is, in some way another, funny.
The explanation of the mysterious happenings is something we’ve all heard before, and for me, that isn’t surprising even if it is a little disappointing. Horror story motifs are motifs for a reason.
Some of the reviews on Amazon mention that the physical book is laid out like an Orsk catalog. I can’t swear to this, as I read the digital book on my phone, but I’ve read uniquely formatted books before an the formatting typically ads to the experience.
So! In spite of the cliche explanation for such happenings, this story was inventive, funny, and a pretty creepy story, that I really enjoyed and would recommend if horror stories are your thing.
words in scarlet ink 