I went into this with low expectations because of the mixed reviews I’ve seen, but I came out of this pleasantly surprised.

Through forbidden diary entries, we follow a woman who has escaped a ravaged world and joined a covenant called the Sacred Sisterhood. This group of women is forced to eat nothing but crickets and serve Him and the Superior Sister who decide who’s worthy of becoming “enlightened”. These women, also known as the unworthy, will stop at nothing to become one of the enlightened. Even if that means being mutilated and tortured.

When a new woman joins, our main character begins wondering about life outside the walls and questions the intentions of the covenant. How far will she go to protect herself and the ones she cares about?

Although this didn’t reinvent the wheel, I still found it to be a satisfying, bleak, visceral and endearing dystopian. I enjoy anything that highlights the power dynamics in religion and the importance of human connection, and I was drawn to the story from to start to finish. I really wish I could read the Spanish version because some of this read a little clunky which may have been a translation thing. Overall not too shabby!!

P.S. I still haven’t read Tender is the Flesh.

listen I love a vague "figure it out yourself" type of literary dystopian and seeing as a couple of people compared this to "I who have never known men" I was excited. however I should have known that Bazterrica wouldn't step up to the challenge, I ran into the same problem I have with her other works...this felt unfinished -- almost like a draft.

the majority of the novel leaves the reader in the dark as to what happened for the world end, we get some clues and we gradually get to understand that it was due to a climate crisis. we never get much explained about our mc either, the only thing we know in detail is the violent punishments that are doled out everyday in the strange church our mc gets wrapped up.

this should have been more exciting but for such a short read I was bored throughout much of this

As horrifying as it was, I enjoyed Tender is the Flesh so definitely wanted to read this author’s newest book, The Unworthy.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, this story is told by a woman living in a very bizarre religious cult-like convent. What was being done to the women, the punishments, their beliefs, etc., was so very dark and disturbing.

It took me several tries to get into this story. The first half was very confusing, and I felt like I had no idea of what was going on. Somewhere around the middle of the story, the woman has flashbacks, and I finally began to understand this world and how she ended up in the convent.

If you’re looking for a dark disturbing story, read The Unworthy. I enjoy dystopian, apocalyptic, and post apocalyptic books, but this one was too disturbing even for me. I wasn’t a fan of the writing style as it just felt like a jumbled mess and was hard to decipher.

*Thanks to Scribner and to NetGalley for the gifted eARC!*

I liked The Unworthy — it was a good read overall — but I couldn’t quite get that same visceral feeling of dread and repulsion that Tender is the Flesh left me with. The world-building was bleak and unsettling, but a lot of it was hard to follow. I’m still not entirely sure what Circe even was — a deer? A cat? A dog?? At one point someone suggested a feral child and honestly, who knows. The pacing dragged a bit in places, and while the writing was sharp, I just didn’t connect with the main character as much as I wanted to. Definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of Bazterrica, but for me, it didn’t quite hit the same.

Thank you, netgalley for this free ebook.

Rating: 4.5/5
[Gifted a copy on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review]
TW: SA, Murder, Violence, Insects, Body Horror, Food Horror, Gaslighting

The Unworthy spills out as an unnamed nun writes out her experiences in a horrific cult after the end of the world. Life within the Sacred Sisterhood is not for the faint of heart. Multiations, punishments, hauntings, starvation and cruelty are facts of life. But in a world where the end of times has come and settled in nicely, our narrator prefers the chance of faith over the known horror of the outside. When a stranger manages to slip in, our narrator begins to unravel not only the steps that brought her to the Sisterhood but the truth behind the life she’s living.

Certainly not a read for the faint, The Unworthy really landed for me with its delicious religious horror and existential dread. The story, and our conflicted narrator, did an excellent job giving us just enough to grasp what might really be happening. The ending was mildly satisfying, though in a story light on plot any ending is going to have mixed reactions, but I found that given the sheer level of horror throughout the text some of the more dramatic reveals fell flat for me. That said, if you are craving a religious apocalyptic tale of lesbian hate and desire this is most certainly the read for you.

Bazterrica’s The Unworthy was so hard to put down. When we meet the nameless main character, we find her in some sort of religious order not quite sure how she got there or why she remains. The rest of the book uncovers bits of her past while you accompany her in the present and watch her evolution with the introduction of a new “unworthy”: Lucía. The book is tough at times, definitely dark in others, but it’s also sweet and hopeful. Highly recommend.

Solid 4.5 ⭐️

I am not sure if I enjoyed The Unworthy. It was a bit meandering, I couldn't quite tell if it was a cult novel, a religious seclusion novel, or a post-apocalyptic novel. The audio was average.

Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for an e-arc of this novel!

I thought the translation was well done -- the writing was very evocative of this harrowing, dystopian climate that the main character writes of in her diary. It's bleak and violent and a chilling reminder of the future we possibly face if we don't enact any changes to curb climate change.

The Sisterhood is interesting -- we have a cast of characters and a structure that, if you're familiar with religion and religious institutions (specifically Catholicism), is quite fascinating in its depiction. We have martyrs and saints and a collage of women hoping to become divine, to remove themselves of impurities and filth, all beneath some unseen and unknown He -- a man who dictates who they are and what they can do, with the help of his right hand nun, the Superior Sister.

Combining this apocalyptic world with this fanatic religions structure is compelling, and I think, seeing the collapse of everything we know, is all too realistic. I can see people taking advantage of the collapse of civilization in this way -- because that's always the way it's been, religions taking advantage of people who are afraid and alone and looking for solace or connection or the divine. An answer to the violence and the terror.

So, I can appreciate what Bazterrica is doing, and I think she depicts it realistically and well. There's a hazy quality to the writing that is also interesting.

I do wish we had gotten more from the narrative, though. I can answer away the main character not knowing what happened to her through the trauma of what she went through, that makes sense, even though it felt a bit out of place given all of the recollecting she does. I do, however, wish there had been stronger moments between our MC and Lucia that made their connection make sense to me. I wanted more depth or even just an explanation as to what drew them together. Obviously, this is a one sided narrative, especially because it's an epistolary, but I never really understood their relationship. Again, obviously, because this an epistolary story, it's all tell no show, and I just struggle with that often because we don't get to see the world with as much depth and characterization as we would otherwise -- and I think it does this novel a disservice, in a way.

This was one of my most anticipated for 2025, but unfortunately it didn't deliver. I just didn't find myself invested in the story or drawn to picking the book back up, despite the short length. At under 200 pages, it somehow felt plodding and tedious for most of the book, and might have been better as a short story.

Redeeming factors are that I always love a post-climate apocalypse setting and culty vibes. Will 100% still be checking out the next Agustina Bazterrica translations.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC of “The Unworthy”. I was so excited to read this follow up stand alone from the author of “Tender is the Flesh”. I have to say this didn’t grip me quite as much as Tender did, but I liked it all the same. This one hit harder having been raised Catholic my entire life. I do wish the novel didn’t start out so slowly.

What a strange little book. As another reviewer says, "This book makes me want to become Catholic again."

Thank you, Bazterrica, for your brilliant mind.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

*Thank you to NetGalley for gifting this E-ARC*

I absolutely loved Tender is the Flesh and it's definitely in my top horror books of all time. Having said that, I was super excited when I saw that Augustina wrote another horror book. I think my issue with this was the journal style of writing. It didn't flow the way it should've and it was pretty repetitive. It didn't have enough context to keep me intrigued or even slightly surprised at the ending. While the thought behind the plot is good, a religious cult set in a post apocalyptic world, it fell flat for me.

Welcome back to Climbing Mount TBR where I, your humble Book Kaiju, struggle to climb to the top of my “to read” pile one book at a time. This time we’re looking at The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica with Sarah Moses as the translator. I want to give a shout out to the publisher who graciously gave an eARC to Kaiju & Gnome for an honest review… And boy, am I going to be honest.

So, what is The Unworthy?

After some cataclysm the world is dying. There’s poison in the air, water causes insanity, food is scarce, disease is rampant, and let’s not forget all the people. People are the worst!

We are reading the diary of an unnamed woman who is a member of the Sacred Sisterhood. What’s that? Think S&M nuns, but not in the fun way. More in the “torture and mutilate ourselves to become more pure” way. How do they mutilate themselves? Examples include: Blinding themselves so they can hear ants. Cutting out their tongues for… reasons. Deafening themselves so they can see things that aren’t there.

Our narrator wants to become one of these select holy women, except maybe she doesn’t. It’s complicated. But since she’s got nowhere else to go, the rest of the world is a devastated hellscape (maybe), she’s stuck with the nuns. It’s not all bad though, she gets all the crickets she can eat, can bully and torture the servants, and when there’s a funeral, they get to drink coffee!

Life kind of sucks, but then a mysterious lady shows up who will change everything. And by that, I mean, show them that maybe being tortured and torturing others in turn isn’t the best way to live your life. Perhaps, instead, they could use the greatest power of all… Love Getting the heck out of there and running away.

What did I think?

I wanted so badly to like this book. It’s religious horror! That’s my horror genre of choice! It’s feminist horror with a message! I agree with everything that it has to say. There’s nothing it has to say about toxic masculinity, environmentalism, societal mistreatment of women, and the role of religion in all of it that I disagree with. I’m fully on board with the message. Preach it from the mountain tops!

So why didn’t I like it? Why do I just find myself slamming my head like a Monty Pythonian Monk with every page I read?

Maybe it’s because of the writing style. This is written as a diary of a woman in an oppressive convent that tortures anyone that steps out of line. She was orphaned at a young age, lived as a borderline feral child for a while, and now must strap her loose diary pages to her chest to hide them. So why does she write like she’s an accomplished modernist? Why does her prose use tricks and styles that are poetic to the point of being pretentious?

It just doesn’t make sense. The language of the story doesn’t match the substance. All I can think of when I’m reading it is the disconnect between what’s on the page and what is supposed to be in the page. The appeal of a story told via letters and diaries is you get a feel for the characters. You get to see the world as they see or, more importantly, as they remember it. The Unworthy’s prose instead feels like you’re just reading what the author wrote. There’s not a character to inhabit, just an author telling you vaguely what’s happening.

Plus, this book does nothing new. At first glance the world feels interesting. Butterflies cause burns where they land? Water causes madness when it’s drunk straight from the stream? The vague hints at the world outside the wall? What the heck is an “artificial tree?” The mystery is intriguing and fascinating, but as the story unfolds the answers are just the normal dystopia causing catastrophes.

The climate crisis has reached a point that the world was devastated in the water wars, just like in Mad Max. Then the polar ice caps melted and caused flooding ala Water World. Then there’s disease like in The Stand. The main character gets with a group of feral kids ala Beyond Thunderdome. Then she joins a religious order that hearkens to The Handmaid’s Tale while its isolation harkens to every single dystopian novel that involves some bunker like Wool.

It's a rather paint-by-numbers dystopian. It’s so cliché that the big reveals that are supposed to make the reader go “OMG!” were easily figured out around a quarter of the way through the book. I didn’t realize what was supposed to be the “Big Reveal” until I finished the novel and looked back over my notes. Not because the reveal was overly subtle, but because I thought it was so obvious that it couldn’t be the big mystery.

Plus, I was not expecting a character like Lucia. I can’t help but think of Lucia as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Do you know what a MPDG is? It’s a character archetype found in a lot of nerdy movies from the late 90s through the 2010s. A MPDG is a character that comes in and disrupts the main character's normal life because they are so wacky and have an “I do what I want” attitude.

And that’s what Lucia does. She comes in, has a relationship with the lead, and throws the lead’s life askew. She uses some tricks to subvert the authority of the theocracy. She becomes super popular, while still being the mysterious/dangerous outsider. She inspires the lead to do the right thing.

I’m not going to dwell on this book much longer. It wasn’t for me. Like I said, I wanted to like this book. I liked the themes and the message. I loved the premise. This book should have been my jam, but it wasn’t. Maybe it will be yours, but honestly just go read The Handmaid’s Tale instead.

But hey, that’s just my opinion. Let us know what you think over on Bluesky @kaijuandgnome.bsky.social‬!

3.25✨

“The Unworthy” follows an unnamed woman recording her experiences in a post-apocalyptic world as she navigates the cult where she’s ended up.

What I liked about this book was the narrator’s skewed point of view—how she was unreliable and morally grey because it’s what she had to become to survive. I thought the Sisterhood in a dystopian perspective was an intriguing setting. Despite this, I found the story sort of meandering. The narrator’s journal entries didn’t tell her story chronologically, there wasn’t much of a plot, and by the end of the story, three wasn’t much of a takeaway. Still, I enjoyed the narrator’s perspective even though I would’ve liked more of a message/point/plot to the story.

I've got to be for real... I didn't understand this book. Like, at all. Things that you were waiting for answers to .... just didn't come.
A lot of things were more subtly alluded to as opposed to getting fleshed out.
I just didn't get it.
But that could be a me problem.

I'm interested to hear others thoughts.

2.25/ 5

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica is a novel about a woman in a religious order. It is extremely dark and explores topics like the climate crisis, religion, and human instinct. I found the author's previous novel Tender Is the Flesh to be more interesting and haunting. I just didn't quite understand where the author was going with this book. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

The writing in this was off putting. Very little dialog and mostly stream of conscious. I did not care for the end. There were still so many unanswered questions.

So, I requested this book because I enjoyed "Tender Is the Flesh" and was excited to read something more by its author. Unfortunately, this one didn't give me the same enjoyment.

It was.... very hard to read.

We start the book in the middle of a weird, dystopian world into which we've been thrown smack in the middle without context or background info. We quickly realize the narrator is living in some kind of religious institution (convent maybe?) but it's a dark place full of whippings, torture, rape, and more.

But that's really it. There's no build. There's no plot. I mean, yes, eventually there is a plot. But the book moves so slowly and is so disjointed that it isn't immediately evident.

And the writing style itself doesn't help. The book itself is the MC's hidden diary, with random starts and stops and words marked out. It's slow and repetitive. And while I think both of those things were deliberate choices made by the author; they didn't land as well as I imagine she'd hoped they would.

The characterization and character arcs aren't strong, and the plot is murky and hard to untangle from one scene of torture to the next. It's like the book is trying waaaaaay too hard to be dark and mysterious -- so hard, in fact, that you don't really have any idea what's supposed to be going on until the last 20 pages or so.

I read a review of the book that said, "If it was intended to provoke thought about women and religion, it missed the mark for me." This is PRECISELY how I feel. After finishing the book, I could finally see the author's vision, but... the book itself didn't get there.

I just couldn't get into it.

To sum it up, it was an under-200-page book that took me a whole month to read. I think that says all that needs said.

I’d already read some books by this author and enjoyed them but this was probably my favorite so far. It was dark, scary and really made you think! I’ll have to recommend to friends who like the same types of books!

This book was an early DNF for me. It may sound silly, but I stoped with the central character abusing cockroaches. I would probably step on a cockroach with no qualms if I encountered one—but that's different than taking pleasure from causing pain. I just have to stop reading when I hit violence again animals. <y apology for being unable to give this title a full review.