Wonderful paranormal esque thriller. I love now that more books are featuring LGBTQ+ characters as leads and this one features a trans main character. This book is a slow burn but leaves crumbs along the way to keep your interest going.

Unfortunately, I have DNFd this book, it just wasn't for me. I was so excited to get into it and I just couldn't. I did not enjoy the writing or the main character. Thank you for the opportunity.

Tell Me I'm Worthless is a fantastic queer horror that explores themes of fascism, anti-trans violence and misogyny, the haunting effects of sexual violence, and the far-reaching influence of a sinister haunted house. The content of this story is not for the faint of heart, but it is a successfully horrific and chilling journey through the insidious nature of violent rhetoric. The audiobooks is particularly effective in this regard, with the narrator delivering the scenes of these ideas with a perfect blend of hypnotic monotony, gluttonous disgust, and underlying attraction. If you are a fan of horror with current and relevant social themes, I highly recommend this book, and I will definitely keep my eye out for future works by this author.

This book doesn’t hold back at all and that’s probably what made this one so hard to digest. It was so good to start and slowly began to decline. It was just a lot to take in and a bit confusing at some moments? Not for what was being spoken about but just how things would shift so much. I get not wanting to make each character the same, but it felt like I was almost reading a different story.

Wow, what a heavy book. I am not typically affected by trigger warnings but this one…I needed breaks in between certain parts of the novel. Has almost all trigger warnings you can think of. Don’t say I didnt warn you. It took me almost 2 weeks to finish reading. Almost DNF’d due to its graphic contents (but I didn’t).

I cannot listen to this book any longer. There are so many things that turn me off of this book, especially the excessive use of slang for various parts of the anatomy.

I have listened to books in the past which are much better to listen with headphones, but this is even more excessive.

I cannot rate this book since I did not finish it, but it would be a 1 or below.

I didn't want to DNF this book. However it was a bit too much for me for many reasons that alot of people have gone through. I do think this is a great book for learning and wanting to understand more about and what transgender people have gone through.
The author’s writing style was not for me however i know alot of people that would love her work.

I was immediately intrigued by this book when I read "supernatural and real world horrors" I think that fiction can be used to tell a story of real world horrors and heavy, important topics in a way that's easier to digest. For this reason I was excited to read this one, unfortunately it wasn't for me. The horror in this book felt too real and difficult to read, it just didn't read like fiction to me. I felt like I was listening into someone I know completely falling apart and I found that haunting, Maybe that is exactly the intended purpose of this book and I am just not the ideal reader. I would like to give a lot of credit to the author who wrote trigger warnings at the beginning of the book, this is a very deep, dark story please consider the warnings carefully.

This is a haunted house story unlike anything else I have ever read. Rumfitt’s prose is lyrical and haunting and fully takes the reader on a journey, helped along by powerful narration by Nicky Endres.

While the narrative is disjointed, it feels done with a purpose and I think serves to reinforce the themes and point Rumfitt was trying to make. This book talks about contemporary life in the UK (though can easily be applied elsewhere) and intersectionality and the “oppression Olympics” and the rise of fascism and the definition of womanhood and so much more. I’m certain I didn’t catch it all and look forward to seeing what I missed upon reread. There’s literally a moment in the book where the author writes something along the lines of “we don’t need to dream the Nazis won World War II, the fascists are already here on our streets everyday,” and I had to actually pause the book and just think about that for a few minutes.

This type of literary social horror is 100% my jam, though I can see why it might be a miss for others.

This one is hard to review. Brutal, raw, graphic, violent - everything that you could want from a horror book. However, I felt there was a tad too much of all that in this literary horror book. The violence, especially explicit sexual scenes, made me space out when listening to this tale. The violence and the hate towards the LGBTQ community, especially the trans community was very disturbing. The combination of the constant ugly and brutal violence and hate with the literary side of the story - just made me not enjoy the process.

I know this is getting rave reviews, and I give big props to the author for this work. But I'm definitely not the audience for this book. I like my horror, I just don't like it to be that in-your-face brutal.

That said, narrator was fantastic. The writing is great. Just the style of attack - not for me. Thank you to Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio for my ALC.

This is a hard one to review. I'm stepping away from it at the 27% mark because I'm finding it hard to stomach. Alice is haunted by her memories of her ex-friends Ila and Hannah. After spending a night in a haunted house, Alice and Ila are no longer on speaking terms, and what happened to Hannah is a mystery. They return to the house to find answers, but I'm unsure of what those answers are because I didn't make it to that point.
This book is probably really good for the right reader, but I am finding it too upsetting to continue.

I've read this novel twice, as a print book as well as listening to the audiobook. The narrator is fantastic for this story. I have huge respect for the Alison Rumfitt for writing this novel and for the way she mixes the contemporary historical real horror of everyday life with the tropes of genre horror. It's a unique and tricky mix of personal and political and horror story and I can't say it always worked for me. Sometimes the story felt last on the list of this novel's ambitions. Sometimes I felt the story was telegraphed, where too many times I knew exactly what was going to happen by the end of the sentence or paragraph or chapter.

I really wanted to like this; however, I ended the audiobook not feeling fully satisfied. This book deals with a lot of heavy content, and at moments it felt like it was too much for me. I normally enjoy the harder topics, but this felt overwhelming at times. At other times, I also felt like I just did not understand what was happening in the story. I'm not sure if that's because I was listening to an audiobook or because of the writing.

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.

While I did really enjoy listening to the audio book, definitely adhere to the trigger warnings before listening to it. Beware, you have been warned.

(Also posted for the ebook, as I started with the audiobook and switched to the former.)
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.

"The house watched the three girls and a thin line of water dripped from the ceiling. If it had been raining that night, it could've just been rain. But it wasn't. It was dry outside. The house was salivating."

I want to start off this review by emphasizing that there are a LOT of trigger warnings that one should be aware of, more than I could remember to list here but primarily there is detailed body horror, rape, xenophobic/transphobic/antisematic/all sorts of phobic tbh language, and just a bunch of things in that vein. If you think, "might __ be mentioned?" just assume it will LOL. I normally don't mention trigger warnings in books but this one had so many I just want to be sure no one walks away from this review unawares.

As for the actual review: This story follows 3 girls - Alice, Ila, and briefly Hannah, who all went into a haunted house three years ago. We discover what really happened in the house those years ago in stages. The truth is difficult to discern because what each girl experienced was different from the others.

Though it is a "horror", this is novel's themes are focused on historic and contemporary societal mindset - who to believe, who we want to believe, what society wants us to believe... Especially now with this weird world full of people getting radicalized on the internet, doing and saying whatever they want and pretending to be whoever they want you to believe they are. The author also ties this into our own realities and how our private innermost thoughts are shaped by the culture surrounding us. (and the internet is all around us now)

At some points of this book these themes are poignant. At other times they are overbearing. There are times where arguments are delivered humorously, such as the evil Morrissy poster hidden under the bed or Alice recounting a over-the-top transphobic internet post she read once. But sometimes the joke is dragged on endlessly and I found myself trying to figure out how much longer it would take until we actually got back to the story. This is not a flaw in the writing though. It is clear that the author is mimicking the inane arguments people with fascist/transphobic/xenophobic/racist/antisematic ETC ideologies make online. It's part of the story, but unless you are someone who is terminally online you're going to come across a lot of things that you need to google (really crazy news articles come up when you google "4chan" btw).

As for the horror aspect it wasn't so much a spooky tale as it was a violent one, with a lot of that aforementioned body horror and rape scenes. While the story mostly uses these themes to reference sexuality, gender, transness and societal impact on our sense of self, there were times where I was like "really?".

By the end of this book I felt like I didn't really know how I felt about it, or how anyone should feel about it. Maybe it's because I am the type of person who hates gender like bite scratch kill when I'm referenced with any gender term makes me feral kind of person is what makes these types of books also kind of gucky.
At the end of reviews I also tend to recommend books to certain types of people/ for different types of moods but for this one you're on your own. Do or don't read it that's your business not mine

Thank you Tor/MacMillan Audio, NetGalley, and Alison Rumfitt for the opportunity to preview Tell Me I'm Worthless.

While I'm typically up for reading just about anything I've started to completion, and have only ever rarely struggled to get through any text I've read with my ears, this one was a DNF for me. I was (and remain) so excited for a queer/trans horror story grounded in the realities of modern society. I was also grateful when I read the author's HEFTY trigger warning and apparent understanding of the nuances that need balanced when addressing these issues.

Unfortunately, the writing was stilted and the trauma relentless. The piling on of rape; TERFS; SWERFS; BDSM; convoluted and interwoven consent & abuse; sex work; sissy porn; murder; nonlinear stream-of-consciousness; unreliable narrators; and back again over and over was an incredibly difficult slog. As a bonus, following the narrative proved a fairly realistic practice of following the thought process of many of the most-impacted youth suffering significant crisis and mental health challenges served by our local mental health providers. For a reader wanting to understand, experientially, what's happening for a young person in these circumstances, check this book out. For anyone else, this is one to skip.

I was excited for a queer, trans, haunted house story but this was a bit more than I bargained for. Definitely read the trigger warnings in the beginning and be ready for a book that doesn't shy away from tough topics. There was a lot of horror in this book and it wasn't all from the house.

That being said, I did find it captivating and thought it was a really good story certainly worth telling. It's the story of two young women, Ila and Alice, who together with their friend Hanna went into a haunted house three years ago. Hanna disappeared into the house and both Ila and Alice have traumatic memories of the other one raping them and carving words/pictures into their skin. Neither has recovered from the night. Alice, who is trans, believes her own house is haunted and does drugs she doesn't want to do and goes to parties she doesn't want to go to. Ila has become a very vocal lesbian TERF. They reunite to confront the house once again believing that it will help them heal and that they might be able to figure out what happened to Hanna.

I listened to the audiobook version of this novel and I enjoyed the narrator, Nicky Endres, she was very good at creating distinct voices and tones for different characters, including the house who is very much it's own character in this story. Despite the variance in voices, I thought this story was a little hard to follow, at least as an audiobook, because of the nonlinear format and multiple perspectives.

However, overall it was a very good book and I look forward to more from Alison Rumfitt

Unfortunately, this was a DNF for me. I'm not in the right frame of mind for it right now--as the trigger warnings in the front of the book will tell you, it is VERY dark. I'm pressing pause at 27%, I might come back to it later when I'm in the mood for something darker and will update my review if I do! I'm sure it will find its audience.