Cover of Nothing Tastes as Good: A Novel, by Luke Dumas

NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD

Out March 31, 2026

The USA Today bestselling author of The Paleontologist returns with a spine-tingling new thriller about a weight loss treatment with potentially murderous 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 Substance with the best of Stephen King and keeps you guessing until the final page.

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Raves and Reviews

“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, USA Today 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

“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

"I absolutely devoured Luke Dumas' 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