Island

What a load of astonishing garbage!

Please unfriend me now if you rate this book five stars, or call me a humorless prick, either way, I don't care.

It's written by a juvenile, from the perspective of a juvenile, to be read by juveniles.

The reason for taking a risk with an author you've never tackled before is to hopefully form a terrific relationship, but I have never read so much superfluous twaddle in my life!

How often can you ogle a woman's puppies popping out of her bikini? For an entire book, that's how long!

Taken from the perspective of a 19-old protagonist is not some sort of excuse!

Going round and round in repetitive circles because there are no real ideas in this book. Stuck on an island, bikinis, horniness, and floundering around with a boner under the table as you type.

I'm angry that people like Richard Laymon made a career out of writing crap like this.

And people like me buy it!

I can appreciate the fun-loving tongue-in-cheek intentions - you want to be silly and shocking, frisky nipples and horny escapades, mom fixations and wet dreams, but there's no tension or atmosphere at all, just juvenile repetition.

The most bizarre thing about this erotic-horror show is how bad it is.

Richard Laymon makes it up as he goes along while continually backtracking through inner reflections (journal entries) to justify this poorly thought out epistolary piss!

He also had a massively good time writing it, no doubt, and those extra unneeded 300 pages of waffle!

You cheated me as a reader like a brainless idiot, and you should never do that as a writer to treat your audience as fools.

And what sort of movie would this make? Some sort of comedy jungle cruise with horny heroes like Dwayne (the rock) Johnson and Drew Barrymore as mum and dad, it's absolutely ridiculous.

And guess what? Movie makers didn't avoid Richard Laymon because he was shocking, but for being so shit!

Talk about needing to get laid while stuffing a giant pizza in your mouth and fantasizing about tits and tooty.

It's a turgid soap opera masking as horror with pointless justifications, and although accessible in an easy to pick up way, isn't scary until it suddenly goes splatterpunk and then it's too late.

And boy oh boy does Richard Laymon like to write, revisit, regurgitate, and write some more - it took about five pages to sneak through a window.

The characters get slashed and horrendously gorged, but you just don't care because they absolutely deserve it for being characters in a novel like this.

Life sometimes sucks and so does this book!

Teenage incompetence with the most unbelievable and unrealistic action ever.

You need a lobotomy to enjoy this as book, or maybe I've unknowingly had one by reading it?

So what is the likelihood of reading another Richard Laymon book in the future?

1, maybe 1.5 percent. 🤣 You never know, there could be some *so bad it's actually good* gems out there?

The best thing about Island?

My renewed appreciation of why some other authors are so revered. In my reading group we have the Stephen King Korner, and now I'm contemplating the Richard Laymon Garbage Heap as ying-yang accompaniment.

Well done for helping to put a knife in the reputation of horror as dumb, sleazy, cheesey, corny and camp.

You could have at least factored zombies or albino pygmies into it - anything but this eros-driven sweaty trash.

Two stars because it's sometimes an intense jiggly romp and, incredibly, because I've read worse, as well as for giving me the opportunity to spew such incredulity as this.

As low budget horror as it gets.