This was different. Not in a bad way just not like anything I read before. It definitely had me engaged because I was trying to figure out what was going on. I think a lot of people will like this one.

This is such an eerie book with great atmosphere. The characters and the stories kept my interest. I have added it to my personal collection.

A haunted house story brimming with many real life issues. Great for spooky season, and I enjoyed the diverse representation.

This was a pretty solid horror. I will say it wasn't the scariest horror I've read but it was interesting to go into! The story and the buildup to everything was cool and the writing was nice as well. I think I maybe didn't connect with it as well as some people have and will, but I could easily see this being a favorite for many.

Sorry, just not for me! The haunted house aspect was interesting but, overall, it felt like the author was trying to do way too much.

Honestly, I went into reading this blindly. This story did not hold my interest or keep me entertained. The summary sounded intriguing but I could not get into this story at all.

Whoa. It's been a long while since I've read a book as visceral at this one. Please, if you are planning to dive in, take the content warnings very seriously. I'm very glad and grateful that the author chose to provide those at the beginning of the book.

I understand that for some, the content mentioned by that warning may be the reason they cannot finish this book. For others, the narrative style the author utilizes is overwhelming, confusing, or both. However, the ending of the book is so resonate and powerful that I do encourage those who can comfortably push through to do so. Despite the gruesome, terrifying, and terrible bulk of the story, there's a shining light of hope and love at the end.

There were portions of this book that I did personally find very confusing and I'm still not sure I fully grasp what certain things meant or represented, but I believe the author's message still came through loud and clear.

🏚️TELL ME I'M WORTHLESS by @alisonrumfitt is like no other book I have ever read. In fact it is so unique that it was hard to get into at first for me. The past and present are woven together in somewhat of a dreamlike state and I was confused at first by the introduction of the house as the third main character. Once I got on board with that, I realized this was a complicated but worthwhile story not only about the trans experience but the general human drive to judge and 'other' with little or misguided information about the 'other'.

🏚️This is not your average haunted house story. There is a lot to unpack in this story but in general terms, Alice, Hannah and Ila spend a night in a haunted house and only Ila and Alice leave. The fallout is devastating and Alice and Ila become sworn enemies for a time as Ila takes up with an anti-trans group. Alice is a shell of herself, barely moving through her day to day tasks until one day the two women run into each other and Ila asks Alice to return to the house, together. Alice is terrified but also can't refuse.

🏚️There are a lot of mixed memories, trauma, misunderstandings and flat out brutality in this book. It is dark and visceral and makes you feel a bit haunted yourself. This book had me asking lots of questions, looking at my own bias and teasing out the reasons why humans treat each other the way we do.

🏚️This book is for folks who are looking for some introspection on love, relationships, our bodies and our personal vulnerabilities while also looking at the brutality, loneliness and despair of existing.

♥️Thank you to the author, @netgalley, and the publisher @tornightfire for my ARC copies and @night_worms for including the U.S. version physical copy in their subscription box last month.♥️

This one is hard to review. I loved the modern trans perspective, inclusion of characters of various identities, skillfully written gothic atmosphere felt in the house, depictions of trauma.

The facism and slurs made me extremely uncomfortable- as they should- but made it hard to read. It was not a bingeable, one sitting read. I did not care for the stream of conscious narration, the only somewhat pleasant character dying, where the MCs ended up at the end.

This book was not for me but reminds me of another very popular book that didn't work out for me. I'd probably reccomend for someone who is looking for a specific vibe or enjoys extreme horror, but probably not to someone I didn't know. Take the trigger warnings seriously- the topics are HEAVY and she did not hold back.

I think this book maybe wasn’t for me. It was too random, too jumpy for me to follow sometimes and a lot of the rambling tangents really took me out of the story. The parts about the actual house and Isla, Alice, and Hannah’s relationship(s) I did enjoy but the rest I could have done without. It’s really a shame the other parts took me out of the story so much because the actual haunted house portion was fantastic.

This is a story about hauntings.

I don’t know how to review this book effectively- it didn’t work for me at all, but I’m not sure it was supposed to. I felt deeply distressed by all of the perspectives present, which may have been the point? The author is obviously super talented and I’ll definitely check out future works.

Thank you so much Netgalley & Tor Nightfire for for the eArc & Macmillan for the audio.

This is not your standard haunted house book. I don’t even know how to start describing this book, other than to say it’s raw and powerful and frightening. There are some serious, serious content warnings and it’s an absolutely horrific read at points. It’s unsettling, nauseating and thought-provoking look at a trans woman in England surrounded by TERFs and fascism.

Before the night in the house, Alice, a trans woman, and Ila were friends with benefits. But while they and their friend Hannah enter it, only Alice and Ila leave, both believing the other subjected them to horrific abuse. In the aftermath, Ila has become a well-publicized TERF and Alice is barely able to function. But they’re both bound by what they suffered, and perhaps the only way to free themselves is to return the house that started it all.

“I have to believe that other people have also experienced impossible, horrible things.”


If there’s one word to describe this book, it’s trauma, it’s all about trauma. Told from Alice, Ila and the house’s perspective, it’s a sort of gothic horror that draws on classic horror stories as well as today’s anonymous online discourse. Alice comes off as highly sympathetic and extremely traumatized. Holding down a steady job is hard, so she makes ends meet by selling sexual videos of herself saying trans slurs. That image of a trans woman denigrating herself for money was sad and shocking, but also somehow powerful. Something, I’m hoping, like the author felt as they incorporated their experiences into this book. “I have to believe…” Alice says several times, reminding herself that she’s more than her trauma, but even at the start it seems like that trauma – like the House – is winning.

“In the mirror Ila can see that she is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her traumas sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.“


Ila was at first a harder sell for me. We first meet her while she’s speaking at a TERF meeting, and she seems so diametrically opposed to Alice’s character that it feels impossible to like one without hating the other. But what the book excels at is revealing how Ila’s actions are as much a response to trauma as Alice’s, that neither is as different as they seem. Perhaps, in Ila’s case, the trauma goes deeper than she’s willing to admit.

“There are some who immediately feel safer, knowing that the House is there, and there are some who do not. For someone to be comfortable, another has to be uncomfortable. For someone to feel safe, another has to be unsafe.”


And the house, oof. Like I said before, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill haunted house book. In a lot of ways, it’s the commonplace, non-fantastical things that are the most horrifying. The house is every mocking 4chan discussion, every indication that violent fascism has been baked into England past, that it’s a feature, not a bug. It’s set in England and written by a British writer, so I’m sure there’s plenty of cultural references I’m missing, but the themes are timely and sadly apply to America as much as England. Wokeness for brownie points, empty of empathy for the people supposedly being protected, empty tombs full of click bait headlines designed to spur outrage and stop rational thought. It’s Brexit and colonialism and racism and xenophobia and how deceptively innocuous they can seem when they start and spread.

Reading the book is an experience as well. It’s very stream of consciousness at points (I think there was one page without a single punctuation mark) which, for me, increased the visceralness of it. The book also quotes or riffs on other media, with several I recognized (“Jerusalem” and “The Haunting of Hill House”, for instance) and I’m sure plenty I missed. It’s a format that I’ve frankly tried to read before and bounced off quickly but it works so well (horrifically?) in this book.

It’s hard to say much more without ruining the book. While it was an uncomfortable reading experience at times due to the content warnings, this was a truly worthwhile book and one I’ve thought of frequently since I finished it. If you’re a horror fan, I highly recommend this! Also if you enjoy books written by trans authors about their experiences!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

DNF
Sorry. The idea behind the book was great and I was really hyped to read it, but I just couldn’t push myself any farther. I DNFed it at about 26%.
Dark. Graphic details. Brutality. Details on suicide and rape and drugs that I just didn’t need in my head right now. Too much everything for me. It read like the ramblings of someone on a drug- or alcohol-binge gone way bad.

There are a lot of great reviews, and maybe I quit too early. And maybe I’ll try it again later. But, for now, not for me.

This one took me a while to read. I went in for a read about a haunted house, which ended up being a minor part of the story. It is a heavy read about being trans in the UK, fascism, politics, hate, racism, religious discrimination and all sorts of heavy subjects. The narrative is written in jarring form, slurs and explicit language used as a tool to bring the reader into the world of an #ownvoice author.

This book was a wonderfully written horror piece, in the way that if it had teeth you could feel them sink down into your flesh. You could feel the ghost of them, after they're gone.

At the same time, there was so much going on that I'm not even sure I understand what exactly the main point was supposed to be. Diving in between transphobia to fascism and the ideologies that come with both, this novel simply had too much to balance.

With inconsistency in formatting (whether intentional or not), to the outright unnecessary graphicness of certain sexual scenes, it was simply difficult to read. In some horror cases, over-describing detail in both gore and other horrible ways can be a great way for a novel to show its audience its teeth. For this book, that was its exact downfall.

Tell Me I'm Worthless is a story of trauma, transphobia, and somehow, fascism.

It could work either as a horror novel with its wonderfully awful, sentient House and some other undertones (see transphobia and trauma), or as a story where those undertones are its main focus. Where the horror is less supernatural and more integrated as a real struggle. The House's allegory is the most prominent, and only clear claim to the fascism that is imbued, besides some other side comments or internal monologue (which was not spared). This book is overcompensating for its lack of plot, and while it could have been well-constructed, even the ending left too much to be considered.

I've read some incredible queer horror in the last year, including other titles from Nightfire, but TELL ME I'M WORTHLESS really sets a whole new standard. It was grotesque, stomach churning, disturbing, and unforgettable. I loved every minute, even the parts that made my skin crawl. A gripping, unrelenting look at hatred, British Colonialism, and transphobia, Tell Me I'm Worthless asks a lot of its readers, but take my word and stick it out until the end. Because, for all it's viciousness, Rumfitt's novel delivers a surprisingly hopeful message about the world in which we live and our ability to fight for something better.

A very difficult and impactful read that will seriously impact any reader who picks it up. Pay close attention to the trigger warnings.

This is beautifully written but very (understandably) heavy and dark. I’m still processing and this will be a book I think about for a while.

Wow, Rumfitt has made such an intense novel. I think I'm going to be haunted by it for a long time to come. Heed the trigger/content warnings because this one isn't for all readers. We will be purchasing a copy for my library as there are some patrons that will definitely want to read it.

Blown away by this novel. It is dirty, angry, profane, & loud- like great punk is. It is terrifying, unsettling, gruesome, & spooky- like great horror is. It is searing, harrowing, political, human, painful, & beautiful- like great ART is. And MORE. Spectacular.
Be aware: this book is brutal and filled with disturbing scenes & imagery. If you need/prefer content warnings, know that this would have MANY. But if you like brutal, honest, transgressive fiction that is smart, with layers & scares galore, you want to read this. It is a vicious, dark book with a bleeding heart.