I had a difficult time with this book—talk about trigger warnings! While I primarily read horror, the type of abuse, both physical and mental, human and animal, is extreme and hard to read about. Normally I wouldn't let that affect my rating for a book because the sensitivity is on my end, but I do feel like quite a bit is primarily present just for shock value. This is a hard one to recommend.

One of those car crashes you can't look away from. Dee Dee is a delusional and disillusioned woman who works in a chicken packing facility. She's determined to make her boyfriend and mother love her and believes that a baby is the only way, but she keeps on suffering from setbacks. When Sloan, an old friend who was a bad influence but has since cleaned up her act (at least in Dee Dee's mother's eyes) comes back, Dee Dee becomes even more determined to fulfill her plan, no matter how unhinged the story gets.

Relentless and brutal and grotesque and warped, this book is a gut-punch meat truck to hell. Not for the faint of heart, but it's daring as hell and I guess you've got to admire that.

At a meatpacking facility in the Missouri Ozarks, Dee-Dee and her co-workers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in a single shift. The work is repetitive and brutal, with each stab and cut a punishment to her hands and joints, but Dee-Dee’s more concerned with what is happening inside her body. After a series of devastating miscarriages, Dee-Dee has found herself pregnant, and she is determined to carry this child to term.

Absolutely horrifying and a bit nauseating. Five stars.

Title: Deliver Me
By: Elle Nash
☆☆☆☆

Elle Nash's Deliver Me was somewhat eye opening for me. As an atheist with no children, it gave me a perspective of someone in a trying position. Overall I liked the book. The story is a slow burn in my opinion but I liked it. This is the 2nd book Ive read by this author and definitely looking forward to more releases.

This year has been the year of weird horror for me. I've really been enjoying literary horror and that's exactly what that is. Definitely check trigger warnings as there is loss of pregnancy that plays a big roll in this story. This story is absolutly devastating and I think it will stick with you.

I’m not easily triggered or disturbed, but I do need an engaging story to go with my horror and Deliver Me was a bit lacking on that end for me.

What didn’t work was the repetition — I lost interest in reading page after page of the MCs pregnancy struggles, intimate partner abuse, and overall lack of love and positive attention from anyone in her life. The inclusion of religion and multiple graphic descriptions of animal abuse, death, and job responsibilities at a slaughterhouse were especially heavy handed after a while and did little to develop the characters or advance the story in a meaningful way.

There’s a lot of great reviews for this book so it’s entirely possible this was a ‘wrong book for me at the wrong time’ issue. For whatever it’s worth I think this could’ve been a damn good and truly shocking novella.

Thank you to the publishers for the ARC.

Dee-Dee and her co-workers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in just one shift at a meatpacking facility in the Missouri Ozarks. The work is repetitive and brutal — both on the body and mind. Dee-Dee has been plagued by miscarriage after miscarriage, but she's refusing to let go of this most recent pregnancy as an old friend returns and her life falls apart.
"Deliver Me" is dark, intriguing and stunning. It was a one-sitting read for me that I just had to tear through. One of my favorite niches of the unhinged woman with fantastically well-done body horror.
Thank you to the author, NetGalley and Unnamed Press for the advance copy!

it is really hard to find a book that talks about religious trauma in detail but this book did an amazing job at that and i was very disturbed and pleased

i had mixed feelings about Nash’s previously title “animals eat each other,” so I went into this one with similar expectations but I really enjoyed this one. Dee-dee/daisy is such a nuanced character, and watching the ways mental illness and religious tumult have corrupted her mind was a wild ride from start to finish. It would have been a solid five stars for me if not for several concepts being introduced and kept pretty open ended, and I could see the ending coming halfway through the book. Otherwise, a very compelling read.

DELIVER ME was not the novel I was expecting it to be, but it ending up blowing my expectations out of the water. With themes of womanhood, motherhood, abuse and intimate partner violence, and religious trauma, DELIVER ME delivers on being a book that will punch you, closed-fist, straight in the gut. There are some choices made by the author in this book that appear to be intentionally uncomfortable for the reader and the reading experience (ex: "Dee Dee's persistent use of the word "Daddy") but again, those choices appear to be very much intentional in order to build on impact.

Deliver Me is a painful slow burn centered around the results of trauma, abuse, and sexual repression perpetuated by family, friends, partners, and the church. By the time we meet our delusional protagonist, Daisy, she is already mentally broken down, and things only get worse from there.

As someone who grew up in rural Appalachia, in the land of tent revivals, this story felt painfully close to home. The characters, settings, and attitudes were all too familiar. This, no doubt, allowed the book to resonate with me even more. Unlike many of the children who grew up in these environments, Daisy did not learn how to handle or recover from the dogmatic fear and pressure that was placed upon her. Instead, she lives her entire life doing everything she can to conform and prove that she has value to those around here.

The main highlights from this book, for me, were the storytelling and the prose itself. Throughout, there are brief flashbacks to Daisy's childhood and interstitial moments where she gets lost in thought. Each of these came at the perfect time. At certain points, it felt like I was reading a poem with how delicately each word was placed. This sounds hyperbolic, but I really loved the writing completely separate from the story.

The story itself, as mentioned, is quite a slow burn but done very well. At no point did it feel slow or drawn out. Every moment built to another, and none were wasted. In fact, my main critique would be the rushed ending. Once we finally reached the moment that everything had been building to, it was over. I really wish there was a bit more room to digest at the end. Instead, I set the book down with a feeling of whiplash.

Aside from that, I had no qualms with any parts of the story. I simply wish the ending was a bit more fleshed out. If you enjoy slow burns, themes of religious deconstruction, delusion, childhood trauma, motherhood, and self-deprecation, this is the perfect book for you. An emotionally heavy read, Deliver Me felt like a masterclass in storytelling until the final few pages.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

This was BRUTAL. It had so much visceral descriptions, and such a vivid way of describing things. I knew the ending was coming, but it was still just as shocking and jaw dropping. Wow!

This book is hard to review. I put it down various times thinking that I wasn't going to return to it because 1) the subject matter and our narrator are both truly disturbing and 2) the animal cruelty was too much for me.

So, I've thought a lot about how to conceptualize my thoughts regarding Deliver Me and I can say that what ultimately kept me reading was Elle Nash's writing. Nash's prose is exceptional. There were times that I felt like I was reading poetry and times when I found myself re-reading sentences to just let it sink in. The religious portions were captivating and Nash's characterization was also incredibly intriguing. But-- the characters in this book just make me feel dirty; they're grimy and gross and just weird. Nash really created a work of art in this book, but it's not for the faint of heart.

This is really disgustingly detailed book but I love the dark & eerie vibes of this book.

It may not for anyone, as it involved about insect fetish (I'm quite traumatized by it).

Thank you Netgalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review

Elle Nash is such a genius! I love her perspective and writing so much. I’ve enjoyed every one of her books, and Deliver Me was no exception. She is leading feminist horror so well. I can’t wait for her next book.

There's so much to unpack in this novel, and at this point, I have become nonchalant, as it is the only way to protect my sanity. When the appetizer is religious trauma, the main dish is motherhood in all its complexities, a side dish of animal cruelty, a dessert of obsessive female friendship, and Elle Nash didn't even think of adding a palate cleanser. Now that it left this burning sensation on your tongue, you felt it scrape your dry throat, almost lodging. The grotesque, hard to swallow, yet it slowly coated your heart like fats and oils. So you dry-heaved with the hopes of expelling the toxins, but of course, nothing came out. It has become one with your body. The title is nothing short of desperate because there is no deliverance meant for anyone, not the main character nor the reader.

Deliver Me comes in the wake of a whole canon of unhinged girl lit - books like Paradise Rot, The Doloraid, and almost anything by Ottessa Moshfegh - but unfortunately (at least for me) this one missed the mark.

Nash's concept is perfectly sound: without spoiling too much, the novel follows the story of Dee-Dee, a former member of the Pentecostal church who now works in a factory slaughtering chickens. Although her current relationship seems far from the ideal environment in which to raise a child - her boyfriend, a man she calls "Daddy", is a criminal with a disturbing, insect-related fetish - Dee-Dee longs for a baby, and when an old friend shows up at her apartment complex pregnant, with a toddler in tow, her envy threatens to push her over the edge. That being said, while the narrative was compelling, enough so that I found myself flying through it in almost one sitting, there was little there in terms of style or form to keep me interested; Nash is clearly a good writer, but perhaps not yet a great one - at times, the ideas she was trying to communicate felt let down by her uninspired execution of them. The novel contains several graphic, disturbing scenes, but the shock value all too often fell flat: in failing to give me a reason to connect with her protagonists, I found it difficult to care much for the culmination of their stories.

Thank you to NetGalley and The Unnamed Press for this free ARC ebook!

Wow, what an unbelievable book. Super uncomfortable, horrific and terrifying. Leaves you feeling a bit broken. With definitely stick with you.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for an eArc of this book in exchange for an honest review. Overall, I thought this was a pretty good horror. Be warned there are several instances of animal abuse/animal death. The pacing felt a little off to me, but that very well could have just been a personal reading issue. The ending felt rushed, but makes sense with the events that happened; personally for me I would have like less of the parts with the animal death and more with the ending of the book. I found the relationship between Daisy and Sloane to be intriguing and would’ve liked a little bit more about them when they reconnect as adults.