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I need to finish this over the weekend or I suspect I'm going to be ugly-crying on my commute next week

Honestly this is an absolute banger of a book and maybe my favourite horror novel. It's tense, scary, multifaceted, funny, shocking and entertaining. I haven't actually seen the movie before, quite an omission on my part but I'm really glad I read this book first - I didn't see the ending coming.

That didn't take long

This is a very incremental psychological horror about our propensity to absorb and assimilate the not-quite-right in ways that aren't good for us. It's quite brilliantly done as sort of a haunted house story, but also a story about two people and their relationship. I really loved it.

My main worry when I started this book was that it wouldn't do much but cover the well-trodden ground of US race politics. That worry was founded, but at the same time this is such a we'll-executed book it doesn't really matter. It was evident early on what was going to happen, save a few minor plot twists. So it was a bit predictable, but also meant that the book was very tense all the way through - I was terrified of reading the climax. At the time I was going through a difficult period in real life so I avoided reading more than a little bit at a time. The scares in this book aren't supernatural. They're real and they're pretty sadistic too. I know I'm not selling this book but it was good - the characters, even, especially the minor ones, were well-written and the world fully realised.

I was completely taken by the Ikea catalogue parody design of Horrorstör and that counted for a lot. I enjoyed this a lot although once the shit hit the fan it seemed a bit rushed. Grady Hendrix can be very scary but in this case didn't quite make it. The ending however did not cop out. I recommend this if you're looking for something light and fun in between horror reads.