Nothing Tastes as Good - by Luke Dumas (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

He finally got the body he wanted. Now he's hungry for something worse.

The nationally bestselling author of The Paleontologist and A History of Fear returns with a spine-tingling new thriller about a weight loss treatment with terrifying side effects.

Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mold of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Over three hundred pounds, he carries the weight of his childhood trauma and millennial ennui around his waist and in his soul. After trying every diet under the sun, he remains stuck--in his dead-end job, in love, and in his body.

Desperate for help, he enrolls in a clinical trial for a new weight loss product called Obexity. The treatment is as horrifying as the results are miraculous and as Emmett sheds pounds at superhuman speed, every part of his life improves overnight.

Unfortunately, Obexity comes with some killer side effects, including lost stretches of time and overwhelming cravings. Worse, people who were cruel to him have started disappearing and when the police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, he fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster. But how can he give it up now that people are finally starting to treat him like he's human?

Nerve-racking, sinister, and at times surreal, Nothing Tastes as Good is an unputdownable thriller that combines the body horror and social commentary of The Substance with the best of Stephen King and keeps you guessing until the final page.

Review Quotes

"A staggeringly honest exploration of how shame, cruelty and the hunger for acceptance can make us feel sub-human. Visceral and vicious, horrifying and heart-wrenching, unflinching and unputdownable. Pulling no punches, this is the quintessential novel about the horrors of fatphobia, weight loss, and diet culture." --Rachel Harrison, New York TImes bestselling author of Play Nice and So Thirsty

"Luke Dumas has served up something truly special here. Nothing Tastes as Good is gripping, funny, angry, heartbreaking, urgent, honest, unsparing, and more than a little terrifying. A must-read for anyone with body issues--which is to say, anyone with a body." --Nat Cassidy, USA Today bestselling author of When the Wolf Comes Home and Mary

"Nothing Tastes as Good is both a riveting novel and a commentary on our society's view of obesity, painting a poignant picture of Emmett's struggles as a fat person." --Booklist

"Gory, a touch campy, and superbly well timed for the current cultural moment." --Kirkus Reviews

"A deliciously mean romp of a novel that eviscerates America's skinny obsession, using its sharpest canines. A true delight that shines insight on what it's like to be fat in a world obsessed with Instagram perfection." --Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors and A Better World

"Deeply unsettling, complex, and visceral. Nothing Tastes as Good is a grotesque body horror that perfectly encapsulates the destructive pitfalls of our modern Ozempic era. It's a book that will eat away at you with every page, leaving you hungry for more." --Liann Zhang, internationally bestselling author of Julie Chan Is Dead

"The recipe for Luke Dumas's savory new novel: the bones of a thriller, the juice of a satire, and the meat of . . . well, I wouldn't dare give away the secret ingredient. Season with Stephen King, garland with pepper-black comedy, and sink your teeth in. Nothing Tastes as Good is feverish and frightening (Dumas, one of today's most inventive novelists, also ranks amongst our most fearless), but it's unexpectedly moving, too: a book that forces us to assess how we assess--how we judge and diminish and make jokes, sport, even targets of others; how we reduce people like a sauce, dispose of them like leftovers. It's horrific yet humane, lurid but longing, part thriller and part cautionary tale and altogether delectable." --A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window and End of Story

"Luke Dumas takes aim at culture's fitness and image obsession, one that demonizes whoever isn't the capitalism-stamped-and-approved size and shape. Sharp, honest, unflinching, horrifying, Nothing Tastes as Good is a distinctly American nightmare and it's Luke Dumas's best book yet." --Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts

"Nothing Tastes as Good as a violently visceral and emotionally raw horror novel like this one. Luke Dumas puts fatphobia under the biomedical microscope and blows it up to monstrous proportions." --Brian McAuley, USA Today bestselling author of Breathe In, Bleed Out

"I absolutely devoured Luke Dumas's new nightmare and have zero regrets. Nothing tastes as good as a Bachman book in overdrive--think Thinner for our modern medical times--where you burn through the pages faster than you can flip them." --Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

"A searing, blisteringly aggressive critique of identity, queerness, and weight loss, this book shocked me and brutalized me in equal measure. Nothing Tastes as Good reminded me of when I watched The Substance for the very first time. I was enthralled, disgusted, and deeply moved." --Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

About the Author

Luke Dumas is the USA TODAY bestselling author of four horror and thriller novels including Nothing Tastes as Good and A History of Fear. His bestselling novel The Paleontologist won an ITW Thriller Award, and his short fiction has appeared in The Big Bad Book of Kaiju and Dread Coast: SoCal Horror Tales. A nonprofit professional, he worked for five years in the zoological field for San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and Brevard Zoo. He lives in San Diego, California, with his dogs.