A psychological, surreal, body horror novel focusing on a young woman, Elsie, working at graveyard shift at a Midwestern sugar beet farm. Great premise—the opening pages are from a beet-level perspective—but I felt like the writing was either effortful or very plain, and some of the surrealism landed as goofy rather than sinister.

I liked its economic stakes and non-NYC setting, and I'm sure this book will appeal to readers of Elle Nash and Mona Awad.

This was such an intriguing take on horror. I knew nothing about sugar beets or the harvesting of them. But now that I do it’s pretty horrifying.

Unreliable narrators are my favorite and I loved the main character Elise. Definitely flawed, but endearing. Overcoming an eating disorder, bad financial decisions and low self esteem, she decides to make money in the seasonal work of the sugar beet harvest. Along with her boyfriend, Tom, who I hated. Workers start to disappear and things get really weird. Like peanut butter and American Cheese sandwich weird.

Still thinking on the ending, but overall really enjoyed the unique universe.

For fans of unreliable narrators and eco horror.

Thank you very much to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for the ARC.

Elsie is a broke, anorexic, depressed and wannabe New Yorker and her partner Tom is a trust fund kid that doesn't wanna touch that money cause it's just not punk. Together they spend their last few bucks to drive to Minnesota to be seasonal beet harvesters and to save money.

Okay, I apparently love reading from POV of unstable women!

It is weird, eerie, harrowing and very unhinged. I loved the writing and story so much! Can't wait to buy a copy of the book for my personal library once it is published!

Oh my god, this was a weird one. And I loved it so much. I've been looking forward to Beta Vulgaris since I first saw the cover in November, maybe? I'm ecstatic to say that it did not disappoint by any measure. I'm so glad that this was my first read of the year. There were so many things that I loved about this book. The main character, Elise, was the perfect narrator in my opinion. She's insufferable in a way that's too relatable. I really enjoyed her internal monologue, especially as the situation got more intense. The details in this book are so specific that it felt like the author had to have experienced something similar. I don't know what inspired Margie Sarsfield to write about a sugar beet harvest gone wrong, but I'm so glad that she did. I would absolutely read anything new that she reads. 5 stars. Thank you so much to NetGalley and to W.W. Norton and Company for the ARC.

Wow. I cannot believe that this is a debut! I was hooked from the first page as the writing style really clicked for me. Elise as a main character is very interesting, but also can be difficult to read from. I love a book that feels like a character study and the subtle horror in the background of it all was chefs kiss. I would recommend checking triggers before going into this one as there are many topics that could be difficult for some readers. If you are into weird, unhinged books, this is for you!

Beta Vulgaris is a blend of weird fiction and psychological horror. It was a bleak and odd read. The story is mainly about the horror that occurs in this woman’s mind.

This is a strange book that kind of felt like an A24 film. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I do know after reading this, I’ll never look at a beet the same way again.

I thought the main character was very complex and interesting. She had a lot to deal with throughout the story. She’s in a relationship with a man who does not really want to be with her, she doesn’t have much money which causes her to sometimes rely on her rich boyfriend, she feels alone and depressed, she hates her body, and she hates herself. It was difficult to read from her perspective. I could relate to some of her feelings.

I thought the writing style was very unique. It felt poetic in a way. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

I would recommend this to fans of weird horror fiction.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an eARC of this book via NetGalley for review.

3.5
This book is an entire acid trip. Absolutely not what I was expecting horror wise. Overall, I think this is better described as a quiet psychological horror. We spend the story inside the mind of Elsie as she embarks on a journey to make some money. The story is a deep dive into her inner struggles with her self image, relationships, mental health, an eating disorder, and her dark decent into a beet infested oblivion.
In the end, we are our own worst enemy.
Thank you netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield was a bit of a wild, anxious ride with a great cover. The story starts with our broke protagonist and her boyfriend driving from NYC to work on an annual beet harvest in the Midwest. I didn't catch how they found out about it and got the job, but I don't think it mattered. I flew through the book, half enjoying how it was written and half wanting to get to the end and see how everything resolves itself.

There's a great cast of seasonal worker characters that could have all had their own stories, and the setting is brought to life in all of its cold, grey monotony that can be autumn in the north. I can confirm that I have no desire to work any beet harvest.

Elise and Tom travel from home in Brooklyn to spend a season harvesting beets in Minnesota. But it is not as Elise expected. She has no money, she is falling back into her old eating disorder patterns and then people start disappearing. Reality is thrown into question as the novel is told from Elise’s point of view, and I’m not sure if she is a reliable narrator.

This book was slow paced, which I usually don’t enjoy because I get antsy waiting for something big to happen. But the slow pace helped the surreal tone of the novel. Elise is a well developed character, with many layers and a definitive background. Overall the tone was creepy and atmospheric in a good way.

I have seen this book referred to as horror, a genre I generally stay away from. This novel, however, is a psychological horror story which was much more terrifying to be honest. The human mind can be a scary thing. I was looking forward to reading this novel and it did not disappoint!

This novel is asphyxiating. It is all flayed skin and raw nerves, a type of suffering that is only experienced through intimacy. There is no real plot to speak of, but instead a character study of a young woman suffering from mental illness without the necessary supports to keep herself afloat. It reminded me, not in specific themes or ideas, necessarily, but in vibes, as a combination of Iain Reid’s novel "I’m Thinking of Ending Things" and Coralie Fargeat’s film "The Substance."

It is classified as horror, which might be a little misleading. The story is certainly horrific, a series of car accidents lined up one after another, which the reader can naught but witness, no matter how far in the distance you may see the accidents coming. The whole story follows the character of Elsie, and we are there with her small joys and victories, at the beginning, always overshadowed by her constant insecurity and anxiety. As her life and experiences spiral out of control we are along for the ride, the writing keeping us in a profound intimacy, one that parallels the disorientation she constantly experiences. There are a handful of other characters, though all of the ancillary characters are colored and shaped by Elsie’s experience of them, the roles she assigns them in her life. Because of this they are not incredibly deep, and yet they are memorable, they feel like genuine characters, even when filed down to the singular focus Elsie gives them.

Elsie is complicated and messy and feels all too genuine. Her past and her present and all of the voices telling her the ways she is nothing but a disappointment to everyone, herself included, everything feels painfully real. Bad decision after bad decision you may feel frustrated with her, so close to pulling herself out of the hole she just keeps digging, but at the same time all of her decisions make sense for her character. This slow-motion breakdown is set amidst really great world-building. The ethereality of seasonal work, the very lack of substance that it embodies, works really well. The environments, from the campground to the soup kitchen to the worksite, they all feel dirty and tangible, slowly building a picture of the particular assortment of circumstances that can push Elise farther away from herself than she has been before, a distance we wait with bated breath to see if she can return from.

This story isn’t particularly fun to read, in a conventional sense. But it is incredibly compelling and heartbreaking, in equal measures. It is expertly written, with prose that really situates you in the troubled and untrustworthy mind of the main character, and while you may not feel good when the story ends you will likely feel transformed, in some small way.

I want to thank the author, the publisher W. W. Norton & Company, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Big thanks to W. W. Norton & Company for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I've seen this on a lot of lists people have for horror novels they're looking forward to in 2025, so I applied for an ARC when I saw it listed. I'm very into the unhinged women subgenre that's gotten popular the last number of years, and when that's combined with horror tones, I'm all for it.

Unfortunately, I found this book to be mostly disappointing. It becomes fairly repetitive by the time you hit the halfway mark, and the ending is incredibly abrupt and without resolution or explanation for a lot of the plot devices. It runs very stream of consciousness, but oddly it's not written in first person. I was thrown off a number of times by parts in it that felt... Pandering, for lack of a better term. I'm a leftist myself, but the chunks where the main character is for no real reason contemplating if they're racist or not, having vague half baked thoughts on class and capitalism, or touching on gender and sexuality all seemed fairly out of place because the thoughts didn't much lead anywhere, which made it feel performative. There was also an embarrassing amount of mentions of "crust punks," "train kids," "free bleeders," "emo kids," etc, but not in a way that felt relatable. Between that and name dropping random bands, it just felt out of place and awkward.

Overall there are some weird parts that were interesting, and the execution wasn't a complete bust. I'm not sure there was enough horror in it to merit even calling it psychological horror. I don't think it was much for me, but it was something to read I guess.

Beta Vulgaris tells the story of a young woman who works as a seasonal worker. Her work takes a bizarre, delightful turn and she is forced to contend with wild surprises. Overall, this was an engaging debut.

While listed as a horror, this is more a horror of the psychological kind. There were elements of traditional horror throughout, but as the reader we did not explore them beyond surface level. Throughout the book we follow Elise through her spiral of anxiety, self-doubt, and a raging eating disorder. The psychological horror builds in such a way it makes the reader uneasy if they allow themselves to be fully immersed in the story.

If you in any way identify with Elise or her characteristics, this one will make you squirm.

3.5/5 rounded up

Elise and her boyfriend Tom’s journey to the Midwest in search of financial relief serves as the story’s foundation. Still, it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary tale of economic struggle. The sugar beet fields are rendered with an oppressive and otherworldly atmosphere: the grueling physical labor, the desolate setting, and the underlying sense that something is wrong. As Elise begins to experience strange occurrences—threatening calls, an inexplicable rash, and the unsettling whispers emanating from the beet piles—the novel tightens its grip, turning the ordinary into something deeply menacing.

At the heart of Beta Vulgaris is Elise, a protagonist whose anxieties about her financial instability and personal failures are all too relatable. Her psychological and physical unraveling mirrors the novel’s broader themes of class, trauma, and consumption. The disappearance of Tom and other workers leaves Elise isolated, forcing her to confront the horrors that feel both external and internal. This isolation heightens the novel’s tension, as readers are left to question what is real and what might be the product of Elise’s crumbling state of mind.

The novel’s premise—a siren song emanating from the sugar beets—could have veered into absurdity, but it works remarkably well here, thanks to the author’s confident and incisive prose. The beets become a symbol of unchecked consumption and decay, their irresistible and destructive lure.

Through Elise’s haunting journey, the novel explores the physical and psychological toll of economic precarity and how trauma can consume and distort. The result is a story that lingers long after the final page—thought-provoking and profoundly eerie.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It didn't feel like horror, I was expecting some sort of beet or soil monster to appear or something more sinister than a wildly dysfunctional inner monologue as our main character loses her tenuous grip on sanity.

While Elise was very well written, her anxieties and disordered eating absolutely ring with lived experience and her spiral into... whatever that was... was believable and authentic.

However. I couldn't stand her as a main character. While yes, she was definitely ill, it was frustrating to watch her completely destroy her life. So while I think this was a well written book, I really did not enjoy it. I'm going to give it 3/5 for the writing, and I can admit that maybe it's just not for me, but I probably should have DNF'd it rather than hoping for a monster or a serial killer to show up.

>she couldn't figure out why, because she wasn't an expert in snaps. Elise was only an expert in egomaniacal self- hatred, the dark art of inventing new and spectacular ways to feel bad.

Woooooow. Adding to the pile of messy as fuck queer women I will never stop thinking about.

Definitely a weird idea but it was done well and had me hooked throughout the time it took to read. If you are looking for something different you can't go wrong here.

this whole book felt like a hallucination. it was so trippy. so weird. so insane. so.....muddy....
i can't stop thinking about it. if you love female characters in books that are so unhinged it's crazy please read this when it comes out. also if you love worms & maggots.

throughout the whole book it was beautifully described how being isolated feels like and how vulnerable you actually feel when you're off-meds for your high functioning depression and anxiety.

the protagonist, Elise and her bf Tom joins a sugar beet harvest as night shift workers to pay off any debt they had and make some money + afford to buy her medications again for her mental health. over the course of two weeks working in the field, workers starts to disappear with no trace of them at all. Elise was starting to live in her fantasy world again and lose the grip of reality. her inner struggles started to go horribly and it made her defensive about EVERYTHING. paranoia, panic attacks & more {check TW}

there are so many social issues talked about in this book especially her struggles when it comes to her eating disorder. she would count calories & constantly call herself a "fat bitch" even tho she is very petite & small. the struggles she is going through was so damn relatable and it was like reading my own story. everything Elise went through i went through and still does and i love that when it comes to a book because you know that someone out there UNDERSTANDS YOU. SEE YOU. HEAR YOU.

let's not forget the main focus of this book—BEETS.
how the author manage to turn freaking sugar beets into a psychological horror is something i would never understand but it works. i'm scared of talking beets. i don't want to eat them anymore. let them stay underground.

this debut novel reminded me of Ottesa Mosfegh's book called My Year of Rest & Relaxation & Mona Awad's book, Rouge. brilliant writing. amazing premise.

and oh yeah, fuck beets.

(release date: February 2025)

Beta Vulgaris is labeled as horror but it’s not the type of horror that goes bump in the night, it’s societal horror that’s explored in this surreal debut novel by Margie Sarsfield. We follow Elise and her boyfriend Tom as they take a seasonal job harvesting sugar beats. For Elise it’s the chance to earn enough to pay a few months rent and escape the never ending calls of debt collectors. But then people start disappearing and she keeps finding strange pamphlets relating to the beat harvest, not to mention her growing suspicions of her boyfriend cheating on her. She begins to disassociate and fall back on disordered eating habits, and we, the reader, begin to question the what is real and what’s in her mind.

This was a really interesting read that delves into class, consumption, mental health, trauma, and an exploration of self loathing. Elise is a flawed but sympathetic character and seeing her deterioration and breakdown was rough. The atmosphere of the novel is strange and surreal, a bit like a fever dream. I really enjoyed Sarsfield’s prose. The ambiguity of the ending may leave readers wanting but I feel like it works and left me thinking about it long after I had finished reading it. Sarsfield’s writing definitely left an impression on me and I want to read more of her work in the future.

I think that this will appeal to those who enjoy Mona Awad and Melissa Broder’s writing. It also had My Year of Rest and Relaxation vibes.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and the publisher. I received an advance review copy, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

What an interesting journey this was. Initially, I must admit I struggled with this, but ultimately I realized that my discomfort was the entire point. This is a bizarre, slow burn psychological horror that will weave its way through you so subtly that you won’t even realize until it’s too late that it’s gripped you by the roots.

Elise is ruled by her endless neuroses. Struggling with an inner cacophony of with body dysmorphia, disordered eating, money insecurities, identity crises, relationships and other stressors, Elise can never seem to find solace.

When she volunteers on a middle-of-nowhere midwestern beet farm with her boyfriend, she is forced to confront these agonizing and unrelenting inner voices and decide if she can learn to live with the many versions of herself.

Thank you to W. W. Norton & Company for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.