Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

TL;DR: Another fantastic Tingler!
Source: NetGalley, so many thanks to the publisher!

Plot: Influencer by day, body snatcher by night. Poppy steals the wrong body and things go poorly.
Characters: Our primary characters, Poppy and Eddie, are two sides of the same coin and it’s so fascinating.
Setting: This isn’t a strong part of the story, but I think that’s intentional and with the pace of the story, not really needed.
Horror: This is mostly a bloody, body horror with a touch of the alien. Well done.

Summary:

Fashion influencer by day and grave-robber by night, Poppy Stringer is on call when Eddie Michaels—a flamboyant, piano-slamming rockstar and queer icon—unexpectedly dies. All Poppy has to do is retrieve Eddie’s body from the medical examiner’s office, but what starts as a routine delivery quickly goes off course when Eddie wakes up.

Poppy must fight for her life in a blood-soaked night of carnage and fabulous entertainment all across Palm Springs.

Thoughts:

Chuck Tingle is one of my favorite authors for so many reasons, but high on the list is his fantastic horror and this doesn’t disappoint. Poppy steals bodies at night, and by day is an up and coming influencer. She’s pretty, she’s got the energy, and she’s determined to make a better life for her daughter and herself.

Things of course, go sideways quickly when Poppy is offered a huge payout to steal the wrong body. This body is not quite as dead as it should be and what follows is a body horror, gore fest of death and… well influence. Chuck Tingle takes Influencer and turns it into a true horror. What is the power an influencer yields, and at what point do we stop listening to the beguiling voices that make us numb to one another?

I adored this. The message, the love, the horror, all of it was just right for me in this moment and I can’t recommend it enough. Just remember, it’s bloody, gross, and classified as horror for a reason. But it’s so, so worth it.