Island

Bad, bad, bad. Another reviewer was right. This guy must hate women and repetitive scenes of the horny narrator sneaking peaks at boobs gets old real fast. The premise of being shipwrecked on a deserted island was promising. The murders were expected. But the idiot women and men who trek into the jungle, back to the beach, back to the jungle, back to the beach was ludicrous and annoying. I quit reading after the vivid descriptions of young girls being raped. Not entertainment.

Finally came across a Laymon book I just couldn’t 100% get into, and I tried. Luckily it doesn’t require a degree in literature to read his books so I was able to get through this quickly.

One of my huge issues with this book was the length. It absolutely did not need to be this long and could’ve easily shaved off half of the end product. My second main issue was the main character of Rupert. I get that he’s a 18 year old boy with hormones but some of his actions and thoughts were so ridiculous I caught myself actually rolling my eyes.

I won’t let this book detour me from continuing to read his stuff as he’s officially my guilty pleasure author, but I have no intentions on reading this one again…

No, no, and again no! Richard Laymon is an astoundingly prolific writer… but that's not always a good thing. At his best, as in his Beast House series, his books walk a very thin tightrope between trashy expatiation and tightly-written suspense. At his worst… well, you have this book.

The Island is nothing but a Friday the 13th movie on paper set on a remote island. Body parts fly, flesh is hacked, people have an astonishing amount of graphic sex… and that's about it. What makes this novel so frustrating is that the premise had promise. Whle the "stranded on a deserted island" idea has been done to death, a writer of Laymon's potential could have done something special with it in a tightly-plotted short novel. But noooooo, what Laymon gives us here is a bloated, endless novel that is part sexploitation, part slasher story, and part characters-needlessly-wandering-through-the-tropical landscape claptrap. It's like someone threw Gilligan's Island, Debbie Does Dallas, and Friday the 13th in a blender and hit "puree." Worthy only for use as a paperweight or doorstop.

This book was obviously written by a man who thinks very little of women. It read like the sick fantasy of some adolescent. Rupert seemed to care more about getting a glimpse of a woman's pubic hair than his survival, and he only seemed to notice the women for their sex function. Perhaps this would be a good read for a man who's going through a mid-life crisis and doesn't understand how the world works, otherwise it's a nonsensical book and an inaccurate depiction of a survival story.

This was a bloody, suspenful fun read even though the ending was what I hoped it wouldn't be, but it was fitting. If you like suspense splatterpunk, sex, serial killers, and a thrilling read, this is it!

One of the best books I've ever read and I'm not an avid reader but this made me one!

Love reading his books. This one held my attention.

This book is 200 pages too long. It is the story of a teenage boy who has never been attractive to girls. About women who have no sense of decency or pride, & men that are not around long enough to do anybody any good. Mr. Laymon has always had such praise from my favorite authors & I think it he was such a likeable man. His writing is good but in this one he went on & on with way too much description & the boys thoughts toward all of the women was very sickening. It is a pretty bad story all in all.

Very slow read, stuffed with fillers. The ending was awful.

Rating this book is difficult. In a lot of ways, it’s an amazing book: steady, suspenseful, fun, and completely 100% enthralling. I mean, it is 503 pages front-to-back and I finished it in less than a week. THAT’S how readable this book is. And the twists come along at a constant pace, the action is brutal and gory and the narrator has a definite “voice” that I enjoyed…but also, sometimes, didn’t enjoy. You see, the book is written as if it were the journal of an 18 year old boy castaway on an island with his girlfriend and her extended family, many of whom are hot chicks. And as an 18 year old boy, he notices these things. Boobs and butts and curves and all the lovely bits that make women a pleasure to look at. So that goes into the journal. Only problem is, it comes up A LOT. Like, he’s constantly ogling these women and thinking about sex, even as a killer on the island is picking off family members one by one. BUT HERE’S THE THING: as eye-roll inducing as that horny-teenager mentality is, it makes PERFECT SENSE for the character. So it’s hard to fault the book for that, even after the 20th mention of his girlfriend’s mom’s boobs barely fitting into her bikini top. All of this really does round out Rupert (the narrator) as a character though. And in the scenes where the violence ramps up or the twists start coming, these minor peccadilloes wane to what is just a great story. And the ending…and I refuse to give anything away…was completely satisfying for me, considering the story I had just read. I don’t know if this is the right book to start with if you’re going to start reading Laymon, but it was a damn fine book regardless and I enjoyed the hell out of it.