*thank you NetGalley for my ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

Tell me I’m worthless is a horror novel unlike any horror novel I’ve read. It’s graphic, unapologetic, and brutal. For all the discomfort I felt in reading this book…. I couldn’t put it down.

The narrative as a whole definitely suffered from being a bit all over the place, but it’s still a great read. The long political messaging took away from the story for me. The overarching themes still come through but it felt jumbled at times.

Rating: 3.81 leaves out of 5
-Characters: 3/5
-Cover: 5/5
-Story: 2.5/5
-Writing: 4.75/5
Genre: Horror/LGBT
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: I guess, depending on the person

Want to thank Netgalley and publishers for giving me the chance to listen to this book. First book of 2023 and what a way to kick it off. Won't lie, it was an okay book. Nothing too grand and nothing horrible. I did take issues with one part and felt like it was just put in as a very poor excuse of an argument. I also feel like I get a look inside the mind of someone who is Trans and I think that is my favorite part about this. Because coming from someone who isn't you don't really know or understand what they go through inwardly, you only ever see it on the outside. How Alison expressed it was done pretty darn well.

As for the horror aspect I really dug it. It gave monster house on a whole different level. There are some trippy scenes and the ending was chef kiss.

Tank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read an ARC of Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt.

There is a content warning at the beginning of this book. You should take it seriously. This book is not very long, but I had to take breaks from reading it. I’m not saying it’s a bad book, but it is very heavy.

This book will have a lot of readers who will love this, but I did not and honestly probably would have never picked it up if the book was marketed correctly.

Tell Me I’m Worthless is aggressively British to the point where I didn’t understand all the references.

At the end of the day this book is social commentary disguised as horror. The horror was intriguing and terrifying but got so bogged down in the commentary that I had a hard time figuring out what point the book was trying to make.

It was also a gratuitously violent in a way that I just don’t enjoy as a reader.

At the end of it, I’m bummed the marketing of this book is leaning so much out as I do think this has its readership but that many readers, like me, will pick this up with false expectations.

Tell Me I'm Worthless, at its core, is a story about trauma, identity, bigotry, and fascism. The novel follows two women and centers around transgender rights and the politics and ideologies that inevitably come along with it.

While I can only attempt to understand the difficulties in being a trans woman, I found the internal conflicts Alice faced compelling and wrought with emotion. Her raw, and often ugly, truth and unflinching self-awareness gave me insight that I never would have known if it weren't for this book.

My only complaint is that I didn't find the novel scary, at least not in a traditional sense. There is a tone which this novel hits about politics and identity that I can grapple with and understand as a real threat, but the House and its terrors felt alien to me, even if they were strange and grotesque and dripping with body horror. I ultimately finished the novel unsure what truly happened within the House's dilapidated walls.

While it wasn't what I expected, I enjoyed the read and would absolutely pick up another of Rumfitt's books down the line.

1/5 stars! I was simply the wrong audience for this story. It felt heavy and accusatory throughout and I couldn't find it within myself to engage in the content. I was hoping this would be about facing our traumas and healing from them, but I did experience that in this book. It felt like the author was trying to attack the reader and force us to believe her opinions, rather than sharing a story and letting the readers make decisions for themselves.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

Where to begin? Has this ever been done before?! I am floored. All of the content warnings for this book.

I could not look away or shake the deeply upsetting images and ideas. You will feel repulsed. You will feel heartbroken. You will feel angry. You will feel sick. You will feel scared. You will feel worried for the main characters, warts and all. You will be haunted. It's sickening and vile, but for a horror story about trauma and fascism, it really needed to be—and god, does it deliver on that. This story feels deeply relevant and personal, especially reading it as a queer person. The writing is gripping, unique, incisive, and fearless. Passages that felt stream-of-consciousness, for lack of a better descriptor, had my eyes darting quickly, chaotically (whereas I am normally a more careful, methodical reader) to keep up with the tidal wave of evil cleverly and putridly rendered. "Tell Me I'm Worthless" left me a certified Alison Rumfitt fan. I can't wait to see what she does next.

This was so engaging! I was hooked from the very beginning. the characters are a little immature at times, but I got used to it. It was a great young adult thriller!

Reviewed for NetGalley:

Alice, a trans teen, having underwent a great deal of trauma in her past, and living a dark, cheap existence, returns to the House of horrors of her past.

I pictured Alice as a character from Europhia with some added horror. Not my type of read.

A literal and metaphorical haunted house story, Tell Me I’m Worthless is a subversive, spellbinding horror novel that explores the depths of trauma - especially as it relates to the trans community.

Several years ago, Alice went into a haunted house with 2 other people - Hannah and Ila - but only 2 of them emerged. Now, Alice and Ila are living with the trauma of their shared experience, yet each of them have very different stories about what really happened that night. In order to find out the truth, they must return to the house that swallowed their friend and (literally) scarred them for life. But the house has never forgotten them, and it will show them things they may not be ready to face.

As much as this book is about queerness (the trans experience specifically) and trauma, it’s also about fascism and trauma. Fascism has a way of destroying everything it touches and supplanting logic with cruelty. Both Ila and Alice ruminate on this, and the foundation of the book transforms once again - building a big room to house narratives on the philosophy of neo-fascism. It’s a dark and violent journey of course. Readers should be prepared to encounter about every triggering subject that exists. This is body horror with a side of mind-f*ck, which also manages to be a sociopolitical indictment - exposing the rot of imperialism, especially as it relates to bodies of government / authority and bodies of queerness.

I’ll be thinking about this novel for a while. I’m not sure if I have even processed it all yet. This reading experience reminded me of Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching - a book that still has a grip on me nearly 10 years later. Both excel at blending poetry with prose, and both contain a sentient house as a vehicle for exploring elements of violence, trauma, queerness, memory and truth. Enter if you dare. And bring a highlighter!

This book was brutal. I can not understand the type of hate that was described here. I expected violence, hate, even racism in most horror novels, but what was written here was way more than I could take. The 2 main characters, one a Trans woman and one a Lesbian, had such hatred for each other and themselves I was floored. And the hate that others spewed at the Trans people was sickening to me.
I'm not sure if this book is brave for addressing what Trans people may go through or dangerous for inciting such hate that even went into anti-semetism and Facists.
I won't tell you to not read this, but I hope and pray you are an intelligent human who realizes that this is a representation of one group and does not encompass all of us in the LGBTQA community.
Thanks to @Netgalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion, though I wished I had skipped this experience.

This is a searing and unflinching horror story that is not only about a literal haunted house, but also the spectres of transphobia, bigotry, nationalism run amok, and the sudden appearance of fascism in the 21st century West (or perhaps the fact that fascism isn't so much as just appearing but has always been simmering under the surface just waiting for the right moment to rise anew). It's a brutal tale with lots of really disturbing imagery and moments, but it doesn't feel unwarranted or out of place or that it detracts from the overall message. Bring on the brutally honest, no matter how uncomfortable. The reader shouldn't look away.

I was hoping to like this book, but it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get into the story, i found it boring for the most part. I had to DNF.

I genuinely have no words for how much this book completely destroyed me. The prose, the plot, the characters all were woven together to make a phenomenal story that left me speechless.

Another reviewer said that if you read this book, prepare to be haunted, and I completely agree. This book will follow me for a very long time.

I have not read a book like this in so long, something so new, refreshing, and unique that it shocks me to my core.

This novel is not for the faint of heart and it did deliver on some creepy moments, entirely unsettling at others. But I recommend it to those who enjoy horror and character explorations because this was perfect for that.

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt is a haunting queer horror novel about trauma and life under the rise of fascism. It is a tense, terrifying, and tragic tale that will turn your stomach and make you lose sleep at night.

Sometime before our story begins, three girls went into a haunted house and only two came back out. Alice, a trans girl who is tormented by the ghosts of her past and the events that occurred in the House, is struggling with her mental health and drug abuse when she receives an email from her former best friend, Ila. Ila is now a TERF who claims that Alice sexually assaulted her during their time in the House. The chapters dedicated to Ila's point of view are especially hard to read at times because of how realistic the portrayal of TERF and transphobic talking points. These violent ideologies spread insidiously through our country, causing hate and harm to come to those in society who are the most vulnerable. The other point of view provided is that of the House itself. It is a pulsing structure of evil, luring in vulnerable people and turning them into violent monsters. It is analogous to the fascist ideologies that are so pervasive in online culture and right-wing talking points.

This book was hard to read because of how well it was written. It scared me to the bone with its relevancy and brutal prose. If you find yourself unable to read it, perhaps consider why the subject matter makes you so uncomfortable and how the trans community (and other vulnerable groups trampled by fascism) feels from day to day. I highly recommend this book and think it is a great addition to the horror pantheon.

If, like me, you’ve been waiting for a piece of transgressive LGBTQ+ horror fiction that’ll push your boundaries, then Tell Me I’m Worthless may be the book for you.

Alison Rumfitt’s novel is narrated primarily through the point of views of trans woman Alice, TERF Ila, and a haunted house. I particularly enjoyed how although the house may serve as a metaphor for trauma the main characters must process, as well as fascism, the house is also able to come alive as its own entity through its observations of the past, present, and future. The novel also displays quite a bit of nuance in that although Alice and Ila are often unlikeable characters, they are also portrayed with a sense of empathy throughout.

I hesitate to recommend this novel to everyone as it is quite dark and deals with heavy subject matter. I will say, however, that I was consistently engaged with the text overall. I don’t always read novels in the car or before bedtime, but I had to keep reading to know what would happen next.

My only main critique was that I found the horror elements somewhat lacking at times (which took me out of the story), but perhaps that was just my expectations that this would be more horror-centered. While there are many terrifying real-life occurrences in Tell Me I’m Worthless, as well as supernatural ones, I think the novel functions more as a genre-bending character study, close look at dysfunctional relationships, as well as how trauma and brainwashing has the ability to shape us.

The U.S. edition of Tell Me I’m Worthless will be released January 17th. Thanks to Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for review. With the caveat of definitely looking into the trigger warnings for this title, I’d say Rumfitt’s debut is well-worth reading and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

3.5 Stars. The cover for this book is stunning. The writing itself, and perhaps the stream of consciousness style prose, is what caused me to really not vibe with this one. I may try to reread in the future once I have the audio, but the dark content felt a bit on the nose and suffered from telling instead of showing and it was hard for me to connect to the characters or feel immersed in the world they existed in because of that.

4 stars.

This book is c o m p l e x. I put stuff on my TBR all the time and forget what they are even about by the time I go to read them, which I think happened here. I was not expecting the disturbing complexity and tough topics that Alison Rumfitt executed so well, I wish I had been in a better headspace and better prepared to really unpack everything this book has to say.

Extremely uncomfortable and incredibly important in a great many ways.

“If you don’t look at the wound, maybe it isn’t really there. Maybe that isn’t blood you feel flowing down you.”

“For someone to be comfortable, another has to be uncomfortable. For someone to feel safe, another has to be unsafe. And the one who is safe may not even be safe, they may just feel safe, up until the moment they don’t.”

Thank you to everyone else who has reviewed and unpacked this book in such meaningful ways.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me a digital copy of this title.

Will be reviewing a physical copy of this one. Thank you again for the ARC and hopefully this opens up a space for someone else.

I read this like 3 weeks ago and I am still unsure how to rate it. I have lots of thoughts but don't quite know how to string them together. I waver between a 2 and 3, because I don't particularly think I liked it, but ughhh, I don't know! May have to give this one another read.