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A review by lauriereadslohf
Resurrection Dreams by Richard Laymon
4.0
This is an amusingly vile take on the back from the grave plot. Laymon takes twisted delight in creating Melvin, a junk food ingesting geek with an all consuming desire to bring back a woman from the dead. He uses old tomes with recipes/spells to bring the dead back to life but never truly believes it’ll work (we would’ve heard about on the news if were possible, wouldn’t we?!). Somehow his most recent *recipe* works and then the fun begins because he’s unprepared to deal with the consequences. It’s quite entertaining in a morbid, dark-humor kind of way.
Vicki was unfortunate enough to witness Melvin’s first attempt at resurrection when they were teens at the same high school and has had horrible nightmares ever since. Now she’s a doctor and headed back to her home town and decides (quite ridiculously, if you ask me) to visit Melvin who owns the local gas station. Melvin always liked Vicki because she was the only person who was nice to him as a teen. Now that Vicki is all grown up Melvin likes Vicki a whole lot more and develops an unhealthy obsession and starts some serious stalker-like behavior.
Vicki and her friend Ace decide the only way to end Melvin’s obsession with Vicki is to shatter the illusion. So these two brainiacs concoct a plan where Vicki will “date” Melvin thus shattering his dreams of the perfect “dream girl” once he realizes Vicki isn’t entirely inaccessible to him. Yeah, that will work . . . This, of course, only allows Melvin closer access to her life and causes more trouble (and more grossities)
I found this book extremely funny and was especially amused at all of the perverted men populating the story. The thing that cracked me up the most was the “resurrected” people who all came back as raving sex fiends. Eyeballs gouged out? Hands burned to a crisp? Half a noggin’ gone missing? Fear not, in this book one can still get excited and easily grab the nearest breast with nearly a fumble.
For those who care about such things be warned that this book would’ve benefited by another round of the red pen. See page 109 for example. Two characters are in the same room talking about trivial things like biting hands and such when in the next sentence (not chapter) they’re suddenly in separate rooms and it seems like we’ve missed a huge section of naughty goings-on. Hey, I want to know why all of the good stuff went missing! It was disconcerting and jarred me right out of the story.
Vicki was unfortunate enough to witness Melvin’s first attempt at resurrection when they were teens at the same high school and has had horrible nightmares ever since. Now she’s a doctor and headed back to her home town and decides (quite ridiculously, if you ask me) to visit Melvin who owns the local gas station. Melvin always liked Vicki because she was the only person who was nice to him as a teen. Now that Vicki is all grown up Melvin likes Vicki a whole lot more and develops an unhealthy obsession and starts some serious stalker-like behavior.
Vicki and her friend Ace decide the only way to end Melvin’s obsession with Vicki is to shatter the illusion. So these two brainiacs concoct a plan where Vicki will “date” Melvin thus shattering his dreams of the perfect “dream girl” once he realizes Vicki isn’t entirely inaccessible to him. Yeah, that will work . . . This, of course, only allows Melvin closer access to her life and causes more trouble (and more grossities)
I found this book extremely funny and was especially amused at all of the perverted men populating the story. The thing that cracked me up the most was the “resurrected” people who all came back as raving sex fiends. Eyeballs gouged out? Hands burned to a crisp? Half a noggin’ gone missing? Fear not, in this book one can still get excited and easily grab the nearest breast with nearly a fumble.
For those who care about such things be warned that this book would’ve benefited by another round of the red pen. See page 109 for example. Two characters are in the same room talking about trivial things like biting hands and such when in the next sentence (not chapter) they’re suddenly in separate rooms and it seems like we’ve missed a huge section of naughty goings-on. Hey, I want to know why all of the good stuff went missing! It was disconcerting and jarred me right out of the story.