Customer Reviews

Bride of the Living Dead

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I'm a big fan of the romantic comedy, and I'm an even bigger fan of romantic comedies that feature sassy, full figured women who believe in living life and not living in the center of their weight. Unfortunately, stories like that are few and far between. Enter Lynne Murray and her novel, Bride of the Living Dead, where we meet Indie film critic Daria MacClellan. Almost immediately, Daria meets her one true love and the pair set upon getting married and spending the rest of their lives together. There are a few snags, however. Past loves, both on Daria and true love's part, threaten to break up the nuptials. Daria's perfect, anoxeric, older sister Sky--who is dealing with her own personal issues--steps in to micromanage the wedding to death. And at times, Daria has a sneaking suspicion her mother-in-law-to-be would prefer her son marry a psychopath than to marry Daria. Each day, as the wedding approaches, a new set of drama unfolds, and Daria can't help but to wonder if her wedding will turn her into the Bridge of the Living Dead. As a rom com, the novel has everything you'd expect - cute, fun, light, hilarious moments and lots of romance. What I love the most about this book is that the focus of the book is not on Daria bemoaning her weight. Yes, we know of it. Yes, it is referenced--by Daria and by other characters. But the story is about a sassy girl who meets the man of her dreams, falls in love, and has to jump hurdles and crazy situations to make it to her I DO. Don't think it gets better than that.

Reading a Lynne Murray book is like going to a hall in which the very best kind of comedy reigns from morning to night, and your favorite beverages and foods are always available. In Bride of the Living Dead, Murray not only serves up warmth and humor in large and luscious doses, but her beautiful, determined, heavy heroine Daria manages to surmount guilt (her own and others') and echoes from her past -a psychotic and controlling former lover- as well as her own anorexic sister's tendency to control and micromanage, her husband-to-be's conservative and less-than-accepting mother, and her own former hippie family whose members have settled down to a seemingly white bread type of existence, but not completely.

Women of size and those who believe that beauty and comedy come in all shapes and sizes will embrace Daria and her wonderfully curved voyage toward marrying an adoring man whom she finds hotter than a shining star, and who feels so very much the same about her, her sharp wit and her loveliness of body and mind.

HOLY MATRIMONY! Who is Lynne Murray and how does she keep writing such great novels? If you're not laughing almost as soon as you start reading this book it may be a sign that you're among the living dead yourself (in which case slide on over and pick up Murray's latest, The Falstaff Vampire Files). Seriously, folks, this is one funny novel. Do yourself a favor and move this one up to the top of your reading list--the collected works of Sartre can wait while you bring a little sunshine into your life.

I really enjoyed Lynne Murray's writing style in "Bride Of The Living Dead." There's humor, serious moments, and just an all around entertaining style and story that kept me reading until the last page.

The story is handled really well. Daria, the main heroine, is "the fat sister." Her sister, Sky, is anorexic, yet holds the "ideal" of perfection. As the story opens up, Daria is talking about Sky's wedding eight years earlier, and says, "Eight years after Sky's wedding, the rose petal perfection of it all still hung over me like a mocking pink cloud."

And this sets the course of the story. I can't tell you too much because I don't want to give away any of the plot, but this is a book worth reading. I highly recommend it.

San Francisco Indie Film Edge critic Daria MacClellan sort of attends her perfect sister Sky's perfect wedding. Sky's perfect plan excludes her overweight sibling as only size 5 is acceptable at her nuptials to Richard the perfect husband.

At the Camera Obscura Digitalis film festival showing of Top Soil Despair, Daria and Oscar Winslow meet when both find the inane flick amusing. They begin seeing each other, fall in love and plan to marry though her ex boyfriend, his ex girlfriend and his mom who would prefer a serial killer for a daughter-in-law. His teenage sisters on the other hand root for her. However, the worst intrusion comes from Sky, whose perfect happily perfect ever after has fallen apart. She becomes her sister's wedding planner from hell.

This is an entertaining jocular romance of a big woman with doubts that she can keep a hunk like Oscar until he admits he went to the movie in which they met when he saw her outside and followed her in to the theater. Character driven, Daria learns a lesson about the perfect perception caused by envy would have pleased tutor Pangloss of Candide with a nod to Joe. E. Brown as Osgood's final comment in Some Like It Hot. Living life large to some people is natural and they feel good in their own skin which is why Lynne Murray provides such an interesting tale of a picture perfect wedding.

Harriet Klausner