Nothing Tastes as Good: A Novel

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

“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

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. Soon his old tormentors start disappearing, and the police warn of a killer on the loose. Emmett 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 a human being?

“A deliciously mean romp of a novel that eviscerates America's skinny obsession” (Sarah Langan, author of Trad Wife), Nothing Tastes as Good combines the body horror and social commentary of The Substance with the best of Stephen King.