National treasure Grady Hendrix follows his classic account of a haunted IKEA-like furniture showroom, Horrorstor (2014), with a nostalgia-soaked ghost story, My Best Friend’s Exorcism.”— The Wall Street Journal, on My Best Friend’s Exorcism Hendrix cleverly sprinkles in nods to well-established vampire lore, and the fact that he's a master at conjuring heady 1990s nostalgia is just the icing on what is his best book yet. Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.” Elizabeth Tabler runs Beforewegoblog and is constantly immersed in fantasy stories. She was at one time an architect but divides her time now between her family in Portland, Oregon, and as many book worlds as she can get her hands on. She is also a huge fan of Self Published fantasy and is on Team Qwillery as a judge for SPFBO5. You will find her with a coffee in one hand and her iPad in the other. Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang es Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l spa Old_pallet IA-NS-1300260 Openlibrary_edition

Terrific... Sharply written... [ My Best Friend’s Exorcism] makes a convincing case for [Hendrix’s] powers as a sharp observer of human behavior.” Basil approaches Amy and another employee, Ruth Ann, and asks them to work a dusk-til-dawn shift with him to hopefully catch the vandal. Important people from corporate are arriving the very next morning and he wants to have a handle on the situation prior to their arrival. Just dropping in to clarify (this is obviously VERY IMPORTANT) that IKEA isn’t a random set of letters, it’s an acronym containing the founder’s initials, and the first letters in the name of the farm where he grew up and in the name of his hometown. Also, all IKEA product names have a certain logic to them (and mean something). They’re not just selected at random. This is highly googlable, so I won’t bore you with the details.Thanks to this review and my subsequent read of this book I will now have a totally different perspective of IKEA when I walk in the store and I WILL NOT go shopping after dusk. 🙂 The other thing is the use of ö over the letter o, which I assume is used to signify that something is Swedish? (In Norway we write the same letter as ø?) I’m always curious about how people who don’t use that letter will read it inside their head. But in this title it gets a double meaning… because “stör” is a Swedish word, which means disturbed, and I’m kind of hoping that the use of the word was intentional. Each chapter is named after one of the pieces of furniture sold at Orsk (and just like the furniture sold at Ikea, I can’t pronounce any of them), complete with a picture of the item and a catalog-perfect description that is spot on in its imitation of the fake perkiness and wannabe-clever used by the retail industry to convince consumers to buy something. As the book goes on, the “furniture” pieces grow more and more sadistic, transforming from ultra-modern couches and modular storage to torture devices like restraining chairs and iron caps—but the captions never drop that tone of fake perkiness as if they’re trying to convince you to buy something. “Embrace the simplicity of eternal repetition with KRAANJK,” one torture device reads. “A rustic handle mounted on resistance gears to encourage eternal turning. Enter a meditative state of despair after one hundred turns, one thousand turns, even ten thousand turns.” I was literally laughing out loud.

And thoroughly enjoyed it! It gave off a Silent Hill vibe in the way that the store and the old prison became one after hours, and was haunted by the old penitents. There isn’t an IKEA in the country where I live. Like the town whore, I only know it by reputation from what I’ve heard from others. I use that analogy because I heard that (like the town whore) their merchandise is cheap but of low quality.Brown, Todd (August 5, 2015). "Charlie Kaufman To Exec Produce TV Adaptation Of Grady Hendrix's HORRORSTOR". Screen Anarchy . Retrieved January 29, 2020. We finally get to the supernatural disturbances and they’re a joke. I mean, they’re played totally real but they’re just a glob of horror story cliches. It’s the Indian burial ground-type setup, tedious monologues about never getting out and being punished forever and ever. Even the villain in this is tedious! Have you ever worked retail? I have and it is truly a horror story. Anyone that has ever worked in customer service knows one thing really well: The customer ISN'T always right. So to base a book, a horror book no less, on a haunted version of IKEA or Orsk as it is named in the book is such a brilliant and unique concept. I’ve worked countless overnights and let me tell you, sometimes you do get a bit freaked out/chills down your spine when it’s 2:15 AM and you can hear a pin drop in a completely empty and quiet retail store. Especially when you start hearing the usual random noises throughout the night as I loved the authenticity of how Hendrix captured all that. I don’t know if he’s ever worked in retail or asked people that did but my goodness, combining that with all the crazy horror in this book was perfect. Churches are built where saints were martyred. A bridge requires a child in its foundations if it is to hold. All great works must begin with a sacrifice." pg 96, ebook.