Has My Mother Heard of You?: Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

You aren't famous until my mother has heard of you - Jay Leno

Poppy is a fashion influencer by day and a grave robber by night. She's also a mother - one determined to give her daughter a life that she didn't. Poppy knows she is gorgeous and her opinions on beauty leads her to be very blasé about the bodies she is collecting and what they are being used for. 

Poppy is also very serious about her love of Eddie Michaels, a very flamboyant music star (think a cross of Elton John and David Bowie, with a wardrobe like Elvis's). Even stranger? The phone call that comes to fetch his body from the morgue.

Strangest of all is when Eddie Michaels sits up in the back of her van. 

What follows is a psychedelic road trip from hell.

Welcome, buckeroos, to Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle. 

Let the bodies hit the floor, and water, and rocks, etc...

Chuck Tingle has done it for the fifth time, knocking mainstream horror with heart out of the park.

Tingle has written hundreds of books, most of them self-published erotica on Amazon with titles like Absolutely No Thoughts of Pounding During My Fun Day with This Kind T-Rex Because I'm Aromantic and Asexual and That's a Wonderfully Valid Way of Proving Love Is Real. As absurd as those titles sound, everything he writes is deeply sincere. His work explores consent, body horror, the idea that love is real, and neurodivergent people simply existing.

Personally, I think he's brilliant.

Poppy isn't a character you're meant to like, but she is a character who proves that change is possible. Sometimes it just takes a traumatic event of epic proportions involving an undead rock star and copious amounts of body horror. Poppy and Eddie are mirrors of one another. Eddie is the logical end point of the path Poppy is on, driven by the need to prove herself in the endless sea of fashion influencers. At the expense of everything and everyone, Poppy could become just like Eddie if she surrendered the last pieces of her soul.

What keeps her grounded are her daughter and her best friend. Those relationships are the truest ones she has, even if she takes them for granted. Her journey with Eddie forces her to recognize their value, even as she fights desperately to protect them.

Chuck Tingle excels at taking readers on a wild ride while reminding us that love is real, even as the world tries to divide us. We are all buckaroos.

Remember: when you get the call to move a body and the price seems right, I'll be here with another book recommendation whenever you need one.