Emmett Truesdale is an average guy in many ways. He dreams of having a career he loves, but works a crappy retail job in the meantime to pay the bills. His roommate is his best friend, Lizette, a body-positive Latina fashion designer who lives life proudly taking up as much space as possible, and encourages Emmett to do the same. He has a mother who shows love with food, an alcoholic and emotionally volatile father, and older siblings who vacillate between being nemeses and unreliably supportive. His love life is depressing. But all of this is worsened by his weighing 324 pounds.
Emmett spent some time in his dream field of education, only to be bullied out of it by his students and colleagues. When he tries to break back into the field, interviewers assume his size is simply a byproduct of “not working hard enough” to shed the weight, which, in their eyes, makes him a bad potential role model. His retail coworkers, boss, and customers view him the same way, making snide remarks and laughing at him. His boss even warns that Emmett sitting behind the register “sends the wrong message” to their customers, despite it being perfectly reasonable to sit down occasionally. Lizette tries to support him, but her refusal to shrink for the comfort of others only makes him jealous that even as someone marginalized by her weight, her race, and her gender, she is able to live fearlessly. It’s no wonder that Emmett jumps at the chance to join the clinical trials for a new weight-loss drug called Obexity.
One of the things Luke Dumas does best throughout his third novel, Nothing Tastes As Good, is foreground the emotional experience of life in a larger body. The layered way that Emmett’s perception of himself is tangled up in the way the world sees him—the way people’s eyes zero in on certain parts of him in public, the rude comments, the subtle and overt dismissals of his humanity, and even the performative support he gets until he inconveniences someone, after which all bets are off—are true to the point of being hard to read at times. The body horror here isn’t confined to scenes with blood and gore, but also exists in the quieter moments of discomfort he experiences within his body before and after it starts to change. The horror of being perceived is just as unsettling as when someone gets their arm torn off. This emotional foundation makes it all the more satisfying when people who mistreat him get ripped apart, blurring the line between sympathy and a sense of justice being served. Emotional payoffs aside, the body horror and violence are satisfyingly visceral, especially in one scene where he endures surgery while half-conscious because the anesthesia didn’t fully take.
The majority of the story is told in close third person, but there are also letters, interviews, and blog posts that add context and reveal more of each character’s personality in ways the close third-person point of view cannot. In his blog posts, Emmett comes across as someone who is used to making light of what hurts him to avoid making others as uncomfortable with his emotions as they are with his body. He makes a lot of jokes and uses a lot of exclamation points and emojis; he wants to convince you that he is ok even when it’s perfectly justifiable not to be.
His friends and family also gain dimension. For instance, an interview with Emmett’s older sister reveals more of the guilt and regret she feels about their somewhat distant relationship. Conversely, their interactions from a close third point of view, filtered through Emmett, center their mutual resentment. These feelings the other characters share about but not with Emmett make him that much easier to empathize with. None of us sees ourselves with perfect clarity, and that lens only gets dirtier when our insecurities aren’t just personal, but societal.
Toward the end, a few events seem to take place more because the author wants them to than because they make sense. Emmett makes a couple of bad decisions that primarily serve the purpose of getting him to the next part of the story, and there are minor twists that don’t feel altogether necessary (though I can understand their appeal). Some characters also occasionally react to situations in ways that feel out of character. Overall, though, there is far more to love than to scratch your head over.
Nothing Tastes As Good is a ride. Sometimes upsetting, sometimes bloody, but ultimately a great time.
FICTION
By Luke Dumas
Atria Books
Published March 31, 2026
