“Fabulous Bodies” by Chuck Tingle

Content warning for the book: self-harm, graphic violence, and lots of both.

Chuck Tingle’s latest horror novel is about Poppy, a fashion influencer by day and grave robber by day. She’s got a solid following on social media, but it doesn’t provide enough money for her to give her young daughter the life she wants; hence the grave robbing (or, more often, medical examiner’s office robbing). She considers it a victimless crime, since the victims themselves aren’t in a position to care, and there are always people willing to pay well for … whatever they want dead bodies for, Poppy doesn’t ask.

The plot begins when she gets a call on her cellphone (which she doesn’t give out to anyone except trusted friends so she’s already a little freaked out) offering her a huge amount of money to retrieve one body in particular: the corpse of rock star, queer icon, and Poppy’s personal idol Eddie Michaels, just recently killed in a car crash.

All goes well until Eddie wakes up.

This is a hard book for me to review because I am absolutely not the target audience for this. I do not like body horror; this book left me feeling distinctly ill at points. But, like someone who can’t handle spicy food trying to review an Indian restaurant, I don’t fault the book for this. I just can’t really tell you if it’s good, by body horror standards.

Setting that aside, Poppy is a great character. The notion of a fashion influencer who is also a grave robber is a solid setup for a story, and Tingle does wonderful things with her. It makes sense that someone so focused on outer beauty—which she is very self-aware about—would consider grave robbing a victimless crime; they’re just meat when what animates them is gone.

The interplay between Poppy and Eddie is fantastic. He’s a monster, both literally and metaphorically, but he’s got style and stage presence and lives to entertain (pun intended). I didn’t know where this was going, exactly, though I knew it was nowhere good for Poppy; yet the actual reveal was handled fantastically, and the climax was wonderful.

Looking forward to the opinions of people who have read this and can appreciate body horror. I absolutely cannot.