2026 has already been off to a hot start when it comes to great literary horror, with plenty more to come later in the year. Even with new releases from heavy hitters Catriona Ward, and Ronald Malfi, and upcoming books from Stephen King and Christopher Golden, one of the best novels so far is Luke Dumas’ Nothing Tastes as Good. Dumas received some great recognition for his first two novels, A History of Fear and The Paleontologist, but it’s his third and most recent book that is far and away his best work.
Nothing Tastes as Good follows Emmett Truesdale, a gay, overweight Target worker who has fought his entire life to battle his weight problems. Diets, exercise programs, and even starvation, Emmett can’t shed the pounds for good. That is, until he takes part in a special drug trial for Obexity, a procedure and weekly shot that allows him to healthily drop the weight at an alarming rate.
After the trial, for the first time in his life, Emmett feels like a normal part of society. The feelings don’t last; when the numbers on the scale drop, so do chunks of Emmett’s memory. As Emmett gets word of a cannibalistic serial killer on the loose and starts to wake up covered in blood and with a ravenous appetite, his research into Obexity shows that the drug trial may not have been as transparent as it seems.
As a big guy myself, Dumas’ description of how it feels to face the public is so personally poignant and accurate. The author posted on his Instagram about how the weight journey throughout his life inspired the book, and you can feel Dumas’ personal experiences through Emmett’s in-book developments. From the tiny, illogical insecurities to the grand, societal unfairness that overweight people deal with, Dumas absolutely nails it.
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Dumas uses Emmett’s traumatic childhood of dealing with an abusive stepfather and overbearing mother who uses comfort food to cope, to explain Emmett’s addiction to food. This is one of the first times, in any horror book, that I’ve seen the fatness of a character correctly linked to their mental health, and not just described as lazy or disgusting. It’s as cathartic and refreshing as it is infuriating and heartbreaking. There are specific moments where I have felt the exact feelings Emmett is feeling, and finding that relatable character has never been common.
At its core, Nothing Tastes as Good is a message about how society treats fat people like they’re not human, but on its surface, the book delivers an awesome, gruesome, (big) body horror tale that channels the creepiness and inspiration of Stephen King’s Thinner (without the phobic commentary) and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance.
Like both of those masterpieces, Nothing Tastes as Good is weird, uncomfortable, and deliciously gory and goopy. The book is fast-paced, unputdownable, and raw. Each page dives further into Emmett’s desperation in a world built not to allow him to win. By the end, you accept Dumas’ conclusion with finality and realism, regardless of how unrealistic or satirical the story becomes.
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Nothing Tastes as Good’s silliness matches its sincerity, and oftentimes those two things overlap in real life. Too many times, the experiences that big people have to face in general society have been so unfair or neglected that it borders on ludicrous.
This book is a representation. It’s representative of Luke Dumas, it’s representative of me, and it’s representative of many, many “normal,” overweight humans in the world. It may not be the scariest book I read this year, but it certainly will be the most important and most personable.
I completely recommend picking this one up, to all big people, maybe even more to all skinny people. It’s a meal no one should skip. Nothing Tastes as Good is now available at all major book retailers.
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