Book review: Horrorstör

I decided not to make official New Year's Resolutions this year. I find that generally if I make them, I break them. It's the pressure. Like trying to answer 3 in 10 on Popmaster. I crumble under the trivia presh. The pressure is too much and I collapse. The one resolution I have ever kept, was to read a book a month. Personally, I think 2021 is going to be tough to handle without any pressure to do anything else, so I am just making an effort to read more. No pressure, just chill.

One of my good friends runs an awesome Bookstagram account (Instagram account focused solely on books and reading) - she's @joannereadsbooks. Me and her are very similar, so when I spotted a book she recommended, I made a mental note to get it on Kindle.

I love true crime, and follow a couple of podcasts focused on true crime. I am in a Facebook group for one of them and they were talking about book recommendations, and this author came up again, but with a different book. So I bought both of them - the one Joanne recommended and the one on the Facebook page.

I started with the one above, the one the Facebook group recommended. It's a short book, and as you know from above, I was looking to ease myself into my not-a-new-years-resolution so it felt perfect. Also, the lead character is called Amy, and that's a banging name.

The story resonated with me for a couple of reasons (beyond the obvious sharing of name) - I kind of got the lead character. She's working retail and is clearly capable of more, but feels stuck and trapped. Her craving to get out of retail, a standing job, and into an office job, a sitting job, was the exact thoughts I had whilst working in retail and hospitality.

The work itself was painfully familiar - I've worked so many retail jobs in the past and you do submerge yourself in the terms each company uses. I could swear I've been in break rooms identical to the one described.

A word of warning now - if the title doesn't give it away, it is a horror story. Imaginatively set in a knock-off IKEA called Orsk. If you've ever got lost in an IKEA showroom, this might give you PTSD. It relies on that feeling of being trapped in the timeless realm that is an IKEA-type store. In doing this, it feels like a mirror world - something that is awfully familiar, but not quite what you know. It adds to the feeling of discomfort in reading.

It's a short novel, but it's gripping - set in just one night at the Orsk store. The story is simple, bad things are happening in this store. Despite enough shoppers spending their cash, the store was not making the money it was projected and the problem was inexplicable. It was a new store, with many of the colleagues having transferred here from existing stores 50 miles or so away, so how was it not working out?

Strange things are happening overnight, such as sofas smeared with something unspeakably smelly and disgusting (it's unwritten, but is clear that it's faeces), the escalators running backwards and it all appears to be happening after 2am when the main lights switch off and the cameras aren't picking it up. There are so many stock write-offs that it has caught the attention of head office, who are making a visit the following day to investigate what is happening.

This is where we join the characters of the novel - they're arriving on site first thing in the morning to open up the store. A group of them decide to stay through the night to try and find out what is happening after 2am - and what they find is documented thoroughly.

I really enjoyed this story. I knew it was a horror story, but it wasn't what I was anticipating. I was hooked, and it really took me on a rollercoaster with the characters. I couldn't put it down, so I was relieved it was a short story that I could power through.

The thing I enjoyed the most, is the little details of Orsk products at the beginning of each chapter, that slowly devolve following the story. They're information about particular Orsk products which will feature in some way in the forthcoming chapter. It's helpful, because much like IKEA from which Orsk is trying to undercut, they name their products with Swedish sounding names, which don't actually describe what the product is.

It's a really clever move by the author - to have what appears to be an excerpt from the Orsk catalogue, rather than disrupt the story to describe the furniture. The characters are then uninterrupted (as employees of Orsk, they all know what they're talking about) and you remain caught up in the story, instead of losing momentum in descriptions that aren't integral to the plot.

I was also unsure how the story would end until I got there - it kept me on edge, and I felt anything was possible. I was aprehensive that one way it might end that I was anticipating would be a disappointing end, but it steered away from that conclusion which was a relief. That sounds incredibly cryptic, but I don't want to give anything away!

Ultimately, I would definitely read this again and recommend it to any horror fans out there. I was worried I would feel short changed from a short story, but it feels like a perfect story that needs no more than it gives. I highly recommend.