I must admit that I’m a bit hit and miss on the work I’ve read by author Chuck Tingle.
Bury Your Gays had promise but felt very disjointed, and I just didn’t get Lucky Day, which again took some swings but didn’t wholly land.
Having said this, Fabulous Bodies has certainly reaffirmed the online hype he seems to get a lot.
While it has the zany energy of these previous novels, there is more structure here, which makes it overall his best work in some time.
Billed as Beetlejuice meets Drive, we follow Poppy, an online influencer who also does some shady things on the side to pay the bills. Poppy is also obsessed with rock star Eddie Michaels, who is somewhere between Elton John and Axl Rose.
When Poppy finds out Eddie has passed away, she gets the shock of her life when he returns promptly from the grave for a road trip to hell and back for nefarious purposes.
Tingle goes hard on the gore here but also isn’t afraid to address the absurdity of some elements of the story. His characters are witty, self-aware, and you just want to follow them on all their bonkers escapades.
At 240 pages, it’s also a brisk read, with Tingle wasting no time getting down to the meat of the story and then going full tilt.
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle is available now in various formats from Titan Books.
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