Hello everyone!! I hope everyone is having a wonderful end to their June. Can you believe that we are already halfway through 2026??

Honestly, June has been a little rough for me—although, let’s be real, this entire year has been rough. Even so, I’ve somehow managed to have one of my best reading months of the year, and one of the reasons for that was the ARC I’m reviewing today.

I SCREAMED when I got approved for Chuck Tingle’s newest release, Fabulous Bodies. This is now my third Chuck Tingle book, and I’ve had such a great time with everything I’ve read from him so far. I read Lucky Day last year and absolutely loved the straight-up wackadoodle energy from beginning to end. It was basically everything I love about horror movies in novel form: characters grappling with real-life struggles mixed with absolute chaos, ridiculously gory deaths, and campy horror plots.

TL;DR: Fabulous Bodies was a fun, weird slasher that was missing some of the emotional heart that usually makes Chuck Tingle’s books stand out to me. I still had an absolute blast reading it, though, and it delivers plenty of the quirky, over-the-top gore that I’ve come to expect from him. I’ll continue reading everything he publishes. 4 stars.

Fabulous Bodies will be published on July 7, 2026.

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GENERAL INFO

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle
Published on July 7th, 2026
Genres: Horror
Pages: 240
Format: ARC
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads

From Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays, comes Fabulous Bodies, a supernatural joyride where Drive meets Beetlejuice.

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.

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First things first: if you cannot handle gore, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. This is an incredibly gruesome ride that starts almost immediately and never really lets up. One of my favorite things about Tingle’s horror has always been how over-the-top the violence is. It reminds me of the ridiculous kills you’d see in a campy slasher movie (like I’m talking House of Wax or My Bloody Valentine vibes), which is one of my favorite horror subgenres. 

That said, the gore in Fabulous Bodies hit differently than it did in his previous books. It felt more grounded and, as a result, a lot more painful to read. 

This book includes some very difficult scenes involving self-harm and suicide that happen on the page. Please, please, PLEASE check the trigger warnings before picking this one up if those topics are difficult for you. Based on some of the things going on in my life right now, it was very difficult to read this one at times. I typically don’t skim over death scenes, but I had to quickly read through a couple of these.

As I said earlier, one thing I’ve consistently loved about Chuck Tingle’s horror is how he builds his stories around characters dealing with very real problems. The monsters and gore are fun, but there’s usually an emotional plot line that gives the horror even more weight. 

From the very beginning, it’s obvious that our main character, Poppy—a single mom, influencer, and nighttime grave robber—has a lot of growing to do. She’s unbearable, cocky, self-centered, and honestly kind of the worst. But I actually don’t mind unlikeable main characters (especially in horror) because they usually set up some incredible character development by the end of the story.

Unfortunately, that’s where Fabulous Bodies didn’t completely work for me.

My biggest complaint, and the reason this ended up being four stars instead of five, is that I never felt that enough had happened to truly justify Poppy’s decisions by the end of the novel. Her growth felt so sudden rather than developing naturally throughout the story. Because of that, I actually preferred the first half of the book, even though Poppy was driving me absolutely insane. 

Something I loved in both Lucky Day and Camp Damascus was the powerful journey the main characters went through. I felt like it wasn’t as in-depth in Fabulous Bodies, but it should’ve been! There was so much room for it! Instead, it felt like the kills became the priority. And don’t get me wrong, I never want Chuck Tingle to tone down the ridiculous death scenes because they’re some of the best parts of his books. I just wish the character development had gotten the same amount of attention because I think Fabulous Bodies could have been something really special if it had leaned harder into Poppy’s emotional arc.

Even with that complaint, there is still so much to love here. Chuck Tingle really knows how to write a death scene that feels painful, but also feels so crazy that you can’t help but keep reading. I wouldn’t call his writing complex, but the ease of reading makes you FLY through the book. I read it in one day, to the point where I was ignoring my family just to finish the book!

I also think that if you don’t read or watch much horror, quite a few of the twists and reveals will genuinely catch you off guard. I guessed most of them pretty early, but there was one reveal in particular that completely SHOOK ME. I genuinely did not see it coming, and it ended up being one of my favorite moments in the entire book.

Overall Thoughts

Overall, while I don’t think Fabulous Bodies reached the emotional highs as his previous works did for me, it’s still an incredibly fun, bloody, bizarre slasher that reminded me why I’ll continue picking up every Chuck Tingle release. 

And that’s all for my review! Please let me know if you plan on picking this one up, and don’t forget to answer the question of the day!

QOTD: Are you a horror reader, and if so, what are your favorite aspects of the horror genre? I always love nerding out about the horror genre, because I think it can be so underrated!! 

Until next time, xx