Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas
As the author of the cosmic horror novel Fat Monster, a tale of an obese woman caught up in a sketchy weight-loss scheme, I was eager to see how another author would handle a similar body horror premise. And Mr. Dumas did not disappoint. Nothing Tastes as Good is told in a brilliant combination of social media posts, letters and health journal entries, interspersed with regular exposition (my favorite type of storytelling, going all the way back to Stephen King’s Carrie).
A Life Defined by Hunger and Dissatisfaction
Emmett Truesdale is a fat gay guy working at Target in California. He’s unhappy with every facet of his life when he signs up to be in a clinical trial of a new miracle weight-loss medicine. What does he have to lose, besides weight?
His dream was to be a teacher — he has the degree and everything — but somehow he’s still stuck behind the counter at Target because the kids were just so mean. Emmett’s bestie and roommate Lizette is also fat and obnoxiously body-positive about it. His other female role model, his mom, was always dieting and yet let him eat as he wished and never called him fat.
The Seduction of Transformation
The weight-loss clinical trial is full of delicious puns — I’ll leave them for you to find — and the clinical trial accepts Emmett, although his self-loathing makes him feel as if he isn’t worthy. This miracle procedure rewrites the DNA of the participants and requires maintenance injections. The monetary price is horrifyingly steep, and the price Emmett ends up paying is even higher. But those who end up in the clinical trial get this life-changing weight-loss drug for free, of course.
And the drug works. It is the miracle it claims to be. Emmett loses weight. Lots of weight. Rapidly. But is it cheating? Have his eating habits really improved, or have his cravings just…changed? As Emmett’s body becomes smaller, he begins to explore the events of his past that contributed to his overeating, his hidden binging and his shame eating, revealing everything to the world on his Instagram. The underlying question in this age of Ozempic, of course, is, is any quick-acting weight loss treatment actually safe? What does it do to a person’s body? What if it all went horribly wrong?
The Horror Beneath the Surface
Mr. Dumas salts nice foreshadowing and hints throughout (that tattoo!) with some sly humor and an interesting extended Pokémon metaphor. There’s some lovely body horror, if that’s your thing (it’s mine!), a sprinkling of child abuse and quite a bit of unexplained blood.
As someone who has been both morbidly obese and normal weight, I enjoy reading this sort of story. I suspect that those who have never been overweight might experience very different feelings, and Mr. Dumas balances the story well to cater to both audiences. Weight loss drugs are a very timely topic, and Nothing Tastes as Good nails what scares people about these “lose weight quick with no side effects” schemes. Whichever side of the fence you fall on, you will enjoy this.
About Luke Dumas:
Luke Dumas is the USA TODAY bestselling author of The Paleontologist and A History of Fear. He is the winner of the 2024 ITW Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original, and his work has been optioned for film and TV. He received his master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh and has worked in nonprofit philanthropy for more than a decade. Luke was born and raised in San Diego, California, where he works for a biomedical research institute.
