Top Ten Tuesday | Unique, just like everyone else

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Of The Most Unique Books I've Read', which is a topic with a whole lot o' scope. How do we judge what's unique when every single one of us reads different books and even reads the same books in a different way? But there's no need for me to get all philosophical.

Here are ten of the most unique books I've read, all for different reasons, and if you haven't read them yourself I recommend them! Or at least most of them...

Holes by Louis Sachar: I was lucky enough to read Holes in school, and when I was first told I was going to read it I wasn't impressed. It's essentially described as a story about boys digging holes but it turned out to be so much more than that and I have such fond memories of it now.

Blood Red Road by Moira Young: This one was a unique read for me because of the way it's written. Usually I find it hard to get into books written in dialect, but this book pulled me through it and I ended up loving it. I still haven't read the sequels because it turns out I'm rubbish at reading series, but I do still love this one.

Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: As always, I refuse to miss a chance to mention this book. I love witches and I love stories about witchcraft, but there are a lot of samey ones out there. Signal to Noise, however, is such a fresh witchcraft story; it's set in Mexico in the 1980s, where fifteen year old Meche learns to cast spells with her vinyl records. It's so good and you need to read it immediately.

The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig: I don't read many time travel books, but I think the way time travel happens in Heilig's debut is such an exciting, new way. The characters in The Girl From Everywhere don't find secret portals or build time machines, instead there are certain people who can sail to places on a map - but there's a catch, if they find a map to 17th century France then they'll travel to 17th century France. It's just so cool, and a really fun novel, too!

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli: My favourite book of 2017 so far, it's still gives me the warm fuzzies just thinking about it. The protagonist, Molly, is overweight, but something about this book is truly miraculous: the story isn't about Molly wanting or trying to lose weight. I know, it's astounding, isn't it? Read this if you haven't already, it'll make you feel better about the world.

Wise Children by Angela Carter: Sadly I'm not the biggest Carter fan, aside from The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, because her work is just a little too weird for my tastes - Wise Children is no exception. I had to read this during sixth form and it's just bizarre. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet, but any book that ends with a seventy-five woman sleeping with a one hundred year old man who she knows is either her uncle or her father is definitely unique in my book. And bloody weird.

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix: Sadly, this story about a haunted store rather than a haunted house turned out not to be as different as I was hoping, but the way it's been published is definitely unique. Horrorstör has been published to look and feel like a department store catalogue and I love it for that alone.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin: Probably the most unique high fantasy book I've read, which doesn't really say much because I haven't read much high fantasy since I was a teenager and have only started getting back into it in the past year. The way this book is written is unique, the characters are unique, the relationships are unique, the ways magic and science intersect are unique. It's a brilliant book and you should read it.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson: I've yet to come across any other books in which the narrator is a nameless pornographer recovering from severe burns. That's pretty unique to me!

The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis: This is a retelling of one of the stories in The Mabinogion. Now The Mabinogion is already weird in and of itself, and this sci-fi retelling took it to a whole other level that, to be honest, I didn't really enjoy. I haven't read anything else like it, though!

Which books made your list this week?

Review | Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Horrorstör

by Grady Hendrix

My Rating: 

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

I am in no way a horror connoisseur, in fact I'm pretty sure I scare more easily now than I did when I was a little girl, and I scared fairly easily as a child. You might think I'm exaggerating, but I don't even like to watch Shaun of the Dead on my own; I hate dead, decaying things and the noises zombies make are enough to give me nightmares for weeks, and there was that time when I was about eight years old that my family watched I Know What You Did Last Summer - a film I ended up watching with them, probably because I was too stubborn to go to bed - and it terrified me that much I haven't been able to watch it since, which is ridiculous considering it's just another teen slasher movie.

I'm not hysterical - the Scream franchise doesn't bother me and I really enjoyed The Cabin in the Woods - but I have an overactive imagination which likes to frighten me even more when I'm tucked up in bed and all the lights are out. Sometimes, though, I like scaring myself. I think we all do, otherwise why would the horror genre exist? I'm not big on gore - I'm not all that squeamish when it comes to blood and guts, thanks to an upbringing filled with a lot of historical dramas where people were hanged, drawn and quartered left, right and centre - mainly because I think psychological horror is so much more skilful. I think frightening people with a gratuitous use of violence is a rather neanderthal approach to horror.

I've always loved ghost stories, though. I've been fascinated by ghosts since I was very young, and when you grow up in Yorkshire it's hard not to find them all the more interesting; York is said to be the most haunted city in Europe, if you like to believe in that kind of stuff (which I do). I love haunted house stories in particular, so when I stumbled across Horrorstör, described as a haunted house story in a department store, I had to have it.

Orsk is a furniture superstore that's not quite IKEA - it's cheaper, and the furniture's not quite as good - but it's certainly trying to be IKEA. Bless it.

At this particular superstore, however, things are becoming a little odd. Sales are down despite customers constantly buying, and every morning employees arrive to find mirrors and cabinets destroyed and a pungent, swamp-like smell seeping into some of the furniture. Recently the employees have been receiving one word text messages from an unidentifiable number: help.

Our protagonist, Amy, hates working in retail, but life hasn't been kind to her these past few years. Add to that a feeling that the world owes her something and she's not a happy bunny. She can't stand her manager, Basil, who seems to think Orsk is the centre of the universe, but when he offers her extra money and a transfer in exchange for her to work an overnight shift with him and one other employee, Ruth Anne, to find out who's breaking into the store, she agrees. And that's when the trouble really begins.

The first thing I have to say is that I LOVE the way this has been published. The book is formatted to look and feel like a department store catalogue: inside there are diagrams of the furniture, a map of the store, adverts for upcoming sales and even an order form. It's adorable, and I love it when publishers put effort into the way a book is produced. I'm glad to own this book just so I can take it off my shelf and go 'LOOK AT THIS IT'S LIKE A CATALOGUE'.

Reading Horrorstör felt like reading a horror movie. It doesn't mess around, it just pulls you into the story; like many horror films all the action takes place over the course of one night, and all you have to do is sit back and see who survives.

I loved the idea of a haunted furniture store - a haunted house story 'for the modern age' (though considering we still live in houses I'm not sure what to make of that statement) - but sadly I was a little disappointed by it. I was looking forward to discovering why a furniture store was being haunted; was it going to be a secondhand furniture store full of misplaced ghosts from other houses, or was it going to be something completely new? Instead it went down the (in my opinion) over-done route of a building 'built on haunted ground', which I thought was a shame.

I didn't hate it by any means, as you can see by my rating I enjoyed the book, I was just hoping for something a little different.

I wanted the characters to succeed - Amy, Basil, Ruth Anne, Trinity and Matt are all people you don't want to see get hurt, unless you're particularly sadistic - but sadly I didn't feel totally connected to them. Like I said, reading this felt like watching a horror movie, a movie like Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer, where the characters could be characters from any other 'try and survive the night' story. There were little sections that fleshed them out, but I would have liked to have known them better because what I did discover I found pretty interesting. Amy in particular isn't the typical sweet and virginal heroine you usually find in the centre of horror stories, and that made for a nice change.

One thing I must say is to stay away from this if you're not a big fan of gore. I was a teensy bit disappointed that Horrorstör seemed to rely more on physical horror than psychological horror for its scares. It's nothing hugely gratuitous, but if you find the description of someone's fingernail peeling off 'like a wet stamp' then you might want to give this one a miss.

So, I didn't love this book but I did like it. It's a great read for this time of year, and it's also a great read for readers who really like horror movies; if you're a big fan of slasher movies or games like Until Dawn I think you'd like this book, and even if you don't end up loving it I think it's so fun to have it on your shelf because it's testament to what publishers can create.

Top Ten Tuesday | My (very over-ambitious) Halloween TBR!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is all about the books on our Autumn TBR. As I've said many times before I'm not a fan of TBRs - I often feel bogged down by them and I feel like I've 'failed' if I don't read the books on my TBR or if I read a book that isn't on my TBR at all - but I do like seasonal TBRs. I love these because I don't pressure myself to read all of these books, but I love the chance to talk about books that fit a certain theme.

In Autumn I like to try and read as many spooky books as I can during the build up to Halloween, so those are the ten fifteen books I've picked today!

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier: Is this book spooky? No idea, I haven't read it yet! But it does include a possible murder, and it's been likened to Rebecca, which is most definitely a psychologically spooky read. Plus I love Daphne du Maurier and I want to read more of her work.

Sugar Hall by Tiffany Murray: This book is published by the publishing house where I work, Seren! It's a ghost story set in the border between England and Wales during the '50s, so perfect for this time of year. One of my colleagues and I will be reading it throughout October - come and join us!

The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson: Shirley Jackson is my favourite horror writer. I love her. I now own all of her novels, and one of her short story collections, that have been published in the Penguin Modern Classics editions and I'm slowly working my way through them all. This one's next!

Carrie by Stephen King: I don't like Stephen King's books. There. I said it. There's just something about his writing style that means he and I don't get along, and it irritates me that his main characters are almost always writers. Seriously dude, write about someone else for a change. Having said that, I did enjoy Misery when I read it because there was nothing supernatural in it - as much as I love supernatural elements in the stories I read, I don't like them when King writes them - but I'd really like to give Carrie a try because I'm pretty sure it was the first novel of his that got published, and the concept does interest me. I've got it on my kindle, so we'll see what I think of it!

The Poor Clare by Elizabeth Gaskell: This little novella is the story of a family curse. I've read one of Gaskell's ghost stories before and enjoyed it, so I'm looking forward to this one.

The Raven's Head by Karen Maitland: I think this is Karen Maitland's most recent novel, and I still haven't read anything of her's which, as a lover of historical fiction, is practically scandalous. She writes historical crime/mystery novels set in Medieval Europe, and this book sounds particularly spooky!

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix: This is a haunted house story, set in IKEA. IKEA! Okay, so it's not actually called IKEA in the book but we all know it's IKEA, right? Right. What I love most about this book, though, is that it's set out like a department store catalogue. It's the same size, shape and feel as a catalogue, and it even has an order form in the front. It's adorable! Even if I don't end up liking this book (it seems to have very varied feedback on Goodreads) I'm still glad to own it because I love it when publishers do something different like this.

How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back and White Trash Zombie Gone Wild by Diana Rowland: I love this series, and with the fifth book coming out next month I'm looking forward to getting all caught up with the series so far!

This Strange Way of Dying by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: As you know if you've been following my blog for a while, I adored Silvia Moreno-Garcia's debut novel, Signal to Noise, and now I'm really eager to check out some of her short stories. This collection sounds like the perfect collection to read as Halloween approaches!

Half Bad and Half Wild by Sally Green: I've been meaning to start this trilogy for the longest time (I meant to read Half Bad with Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight earlier this year and completely failed) and after I picked up a copy of Half Wild for just £1 at the weekend I figured I might as well give the series a try!

Demon Road by Derek Landy: I pre-ordered a signed, limited platinum edition of Derek Landy's latest book and I'm very excited to read it - I'm saving it for October!

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: I'm pretty sure I put this book on my spring TBR, and I still haven't read it. I really want to, though! I did read the first chapter and I got distracted by something else, but considering it basically opens in a graveyard I think it's a pretty good read for this time of year.

Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst: This is more fun than spooky, it sounds like a very entertaining reading experience and I'll turn to it when I'm in the mood for a giggle.

Which books made your list?