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?
Well, we’re about halfway through the year and I don’t know, man. I think there’s a decent chance that Luke Dumas’s NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD is the horror novel of 2026.
It may not wind up being my favorite read of the year (if not, it’ll be damn close), but I sure hope this book is making the kind of impression on people that it made on me.
This one spoke to some really messy & personal things for me, and I want to touch on that briefly, while still making some attempt at an actual book review.
I think I’ve always had a pretty messed-up relationship with food, and I’d say my earliest memories of hating my own body are probably from around age 12-13, or thereabouts. My Mom was an amazing person, full stop. Her own struggles with her weight & her body image were well-known, and lasted her whole life (my Mom died of breast cancer when she was 65). And frankly, I inherited these struggles. I inherited a complex & super flawed relationship with food.
And it’s a struggle. Twice over the course of my life, I’ve lost a massive amount of weight and then put most (or all) of it back on. There were times in my life where I felt I “had a handle on it,” and was eating super healthy & feeling somewhat good about myself.
Until I wasn’t. I would love to tell you I have the answer to self-acceptance, but I don’t. I’d love to tell you the answers are in the pages of NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD, but they aren’t. Not really, anyway.
But if any part of what I described resonates with you in any way, you might find yourself really drawn to the story of Emmett Truesdale.
When we meet Emmett, he weighs about 325 lbs., hasn’t had a boyfriend in a long time, and is pretty miserable working at Target. We learn quickly that his life has been an endless rollercoaster of fad diets, weight loss, weight gain, and self-loathing. He grew up with a really abusive stepfather, and with a loving mother who definitely helped establish Emmett’s toxic relationship with food.
Emmett gets an opportunity to enter a clinical/experimental drug trial for something called Obexity. He starts the injections and the weight starts falling off of him. No matter what he eats, he keeps dropping pounds.
He starts getting more romantic attention. His shithead supervisor at work starts respecting him more.
And people who’ve wronged Emmett start turning up dead.
Surely that’s a coincidence, right? Or maybe a tiny…homicidal side-effect of this radical new medication?
Hmm.
This book gets into some super gnarly body horror territory, so fair warning. The comparisons to “The Substance” have some merit, I’ll leave it at that.
And in the spirit of content warnings, there are lots of flashbacks to Emmett’s childhood & they feature some awful moments of abuse, both verbal and physical. Emmett’s stepfather is a total monster, and these scenes are deeply upsetting.
There’s a really cool mixed media aspect to the book that made it feel so timely, and lands NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD right at the intersection of social media and wellness. Beholden to an NDA, Emmett starts to chronicle his weight loss journey on Instagram, but can’t mention the drug trial. His voice in these posts is so instrumental in understanding the character, and there’s a lot of commentary here on the pressures of social media in general, weight loss journey or otherwise.
I’ve gone on & on here, but I would be woefully remiss not to mention Lizette, Emmett’s best friend and roommate. She has her own business making cool clothes for bigger bodies, and she might honestly be the most ride-or-die best friend I’ve ever met in a horror novel. She’s fucking hilarious, and she will absolutely call Emmett out on his bullshit. But also like…she’s the only person who just loves Emmett for who he is, unconditionally. Their friendship is so special & it’s the beating heart of this totally bananas story.
The best horror novels will have you run the full gamut of your feelings, and NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD certainly did that for me. I felt such a deep sympathy for Emmett (and he’s not always the most sympathetic character), and I was viscerally angry at his constant mistreatment throughout the book. I laughed with him & Lizette one moment, and then on the next page I raged with them both.
This is a remarkable book, for sure one of my favorites of the year. Reading the acknowledgments is all you need to do to know this book is deeply personal for Luke Dumas. And as I said, this one hit me so hard. Really looking forward to checking out Dumas’s earlier work, I honestly couldn’t be more impressed by him!
Grimdark Dad 