"Wax" is a 2012 young adult comedy/horror novel by Portland, Oregon author Phil Duncan. The book's plot centers around Yancey Muncey, a teenage boy who dies in an accident, and is resurrected by a mad scientist. As a "Zombie", Yancey feels no pain and is able to quickly regenerate all damage, up to severed limbs. The book alternates in chapters that show Yancey's predeath life, and his life as a zombie.
This book is a creative take on typical young adult plots, as well as typical zombie stories. Predeath, Yancey is a nerd who suffers persecution from "the jocks" (although I found the parts with "nerds" getting "stuffed into lockers" to be a bit outdated---as we all know, violent school bullying ceased to be a matter of jocular machismo more than 20 years ago). As a zombie, Yancey is not mindless, still having all his human emotions and conflicts.
I found this book by serendipity about a week ago, in a Little Free Library. Since I was looking for horror literature, it was a lucky find. And I decided it was worth reading on about the third page, when we find out that Yancey's older brother is in college studying Esperanto. That was the first thing that surprised me, and showed me this book didn't take itself too seriously. Which made me realize just how seriously most young adult fiction about the paranormal does take itself, as in City of Halves, a book I read about the same time. Unlike the pristine heroes and heroines of typical "paranormal" fiction for young adults, Yancey has acne and a family that it is tearing itself apart in a way that is both ridiculous and relatable. The grotesqueries of his condition also manage to be comedic, and frightening, at same time: the gross out factor of the descriptions of his body growing new bones and eyes hits with a visceral punch that I found lacking in many other horror or paranormal books for young adults.
So, in short, this book manages to thread the needle, including the grotesque and the comic in a way that is both more exaggerated, and more realistic, than most books like this.
The book ends on something of a cliffhanger, but as far as I can tell, a sequel was never produced.