Summary: A member of a religious order details her life in a forbidden diary. The admission of a new member upends the daily, horrific existence of the group and new terrors are unleashed in the aftermath.
Genre: Horror
Content Warnings: body horror, religious horror, animal abuse/animal death, sexual assault

Thank you to Netgalley for providing this digital book. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The opening of this book is intriguing and a tad confusing. The unnamed narrator catalogs her days in a forbidden diary, written on stolen pages using stolen ink or even her own blood. The place she resides in is convent-like, a cloister of sorts where an order of religious devotees lives and worships. The structure and workings of the organization is Catholic in nature, but decidedly not. It is something darker, notably stranger. My first question was, what is happening? We enter the story in what seems to be a future on Earth where the sun is blocked, the weather is cold, cities are drowned, and the women of this order fend off some kind of bad omen. It’s obvious some kind of climate catastrophe has occurred and this order formed, as they tend to in the wake of such disasters.

The sisters are divided into different classes of varying importance. They have innumerable names and ranks, identifying holiness and worth. It all ran together a bit. The only male character was the mysterious He, the ultimate leader of this order, held to a god-like status by the members and aided in ruling by the Superior Sister, a woman who controls the women in the cloister with an iron fist. There is no rhyme or reason to what happens in the cloister. Any small infraction can result in intense torture. The Unworthy are blamed and made to pay for environmental conditions outside of their control. I didn’t understand the rules, the lore, the meaning of anything. Often, the narrator would hint that something of importance had happened, but the reader can’t participate in the anticipation because what happened is never fully explained. Being epistolary, I understand that some information can’t be provided organically, but I think some finesse in the details would be helpful.

There are some beautifully written lines in this book. I enjoy religious horror. While the majority of the story is so cloaked in mystery that it took me out of the book too often for my liking, the story picked up with the entrance of a new member to the order. I felt newly invested in where the story was headed. I started feeling the horror and anxiety more poignantly. And the death of a particular character hit me extremely hard. I cried many tears.

Ultimately, this book is a reflection of a world in which women are held in extreme subservience to a faceless, all-powerful man, in exchange for what they need to live: protection, shelter, food. And yet, this is not without cost. There are body mutilations in the name of ‘sacrifice’ for the betterment of the order, there is manipulation and jealousy, sexual assault, physical abuse, torture. It is not an easy read. However, give the book a chance and you’ll fall easily into the sway of the narrator’s diary entries, the suspense of the lives of these women in the cloister, the depth of their fear and commitment to each other, and just how far one will fight to survive and to love.

3/5 stars

95/100 or 4.75 stars

This was amazing, brutal, and chaotic; I loved every page. I had not gotten a chance to read "Tender is the Flesh," so I wanted to check this out to see if I would like Bazterrica's writing style, and I loved it. I will say this is a book that warrants me letting readers know about the content warnings, as there are quite a few present here. It was difficult at times to read, but it was done so well and with purpose to the story.

I would recommend this to anyone who wants a good horror dystopian novel.

Oof, this was a tough one. I thought the story and the premise was fun, but many, it was not easy to read. So dark and depressing and, though maybe I missed something, was very confusing in what was left at the end of thes story.

I will say i read (and enjoyed) „Tender is the Flesh“ and was hoping it would be kind of the same writing style/storytelling, but this was much different. The way the MC speaks / voices her thoughts was a little difficult to get into and also sometimes hard to understand for me.
Nevertheless I found myself interested in what is happening in her life and what is going on. This is a unique novel but might not be for everyone. This reminded me more of the authors book "nineteen claws and a blackbird". To be honest if i would have known about the journal writing style of this i probably wouldnt have read it. But im glad i did and i finished it.

I was really into the description, name, and cover for this book, but I personally found a lot of the imagery very grotesque. This is a beautifully written book, but I am not the target audience for it. It is definitely a gritty, grimy book and if that’s what you’re on the lookout for I think it’s worth picking up. I just don’t think I’ll pick this up again.

I was intrigued by Tender is the Flesh—it was bizarre, unsettling, at times tough to read and scary in a way that kept me hooked. Unfortunately, The Unworthy just didn’t do the same for me. From the start, both the reader and the main character are completely in the dark about what’s going on and what this world is, and that confusion never really clears up. So many questions are left unanswered, and there’s no real payoff in the end. The setting was bleak and depressing, but instead of being gripping, it just made the book feel like a slog. I kept waiting for something to click, but instead, I was just waiting for it to be over.

The random, sporadic writing style was an interesting choice that left me confused for the first third of the book and wondering what was actually happening in the story and what was told to the characters involved in this "cult" to move along the leaders' agenda.

The main attention to detail is given to the punishments or "sacrifices" the women of this story have to endure. Otherwise everything is deliberately vague, even to the point where I didn't realize Circe was a cat and not a deranged child until 50 pages after she's introduced.

While I somewhat enjoyed the writing style (it read as the ramblings of someone potentially losing their mind, as I'm sure it's meant to), there was no coherent story that I felt invested in. Everyone was inexplicably cruel, and the ending was so predictable it's a wonder only one person there saw it coming.

What a fascinating post-apocalyptic world Agustina Bazterrica has given us a glimpse of in The Unworthy. I loved the way this novel played out - from the protagonist’s journaling (including snippets of what ink she is scrounging together to write with) to the fragmented view of the outside world her recollections gave us.

While I didn’t find this as gruesome or horror-filled as Bazterrica’s prior work Tender Is the Flesh, I found it to be haunting and engrossing — definitely a read I’ll be thinking about for days to come. The religious themes were spot-on and the lead up to the end felt like a natural progression. I think it ended perfectly and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for access to this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Bazterrica has the skills to pull us into worlds that feel drastically different from our own but once you step back from her novels you’ll begin to see them as reflections and portents. Here we have another novel that’s a mirror being held up for us to see what’s happening to us whether we realize it or not. We live in a society that is often just as bleak and cruel as the world that the unworthy inhabit.
The writing style succeeded in making me feel detached from what was happening. I felt numb and because I never connected with the characters when they meet with their cruel demises it was just another thing that happened. It’s kind of like how desensitized we often are when hearing about atrocities in current events. They often don’t feel real until they happen to us. So, this book is a gift to us all - will we open our eyes and our ears to heed its warning?
Thank you to the publisher and NetGallery for letting me read!

Quick synopsis: A woman sheltered in a violent religious convent is writing about her life while the outside world is complete chaos, trying to remember all the details from before she found herself there. When a new woman stumbles upon the convent, the two women grow closer rapidly and starts questioning everything.

Review: I’ll be honest, the first maybe 40% of this was confusing and boring? However once I got the hang of the story and basically when the second girl showed up in the convent I was locked in. Bazterrica does it again with the dystopian story, this one being about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and of humans most violent and exploitive instincts. Initially I didn’t care for our MC but as she was uncovering more of her story’s past and present, I was really attached to her and wanted to see her thrive. It felt like reading a diary and super authentic in the rushed writing, scratching things out, and not finishing complete thoughts — but not overdone (maybe the scratching out part but that’s ok). Don’t talk to me about Circe because that wrecked me. The ending wrecked me as well but hey this is a Bazterrica novel after all.

As a lover of Tender of the Flesh, of course I was excited be read an arc copy of this! I honestly don't even think I read the description, so I went in blind. The story gives you the feel of floating through a hazy dream. It's dark slow and disorientating, yet it feels so darkly beautiful that you can't stop. A lot is left up to interpretation but we are in some sort of dystopian land within a cult. I can't say I quite understood but of the storyline itself or what exactly was happening, despite that I still found it interesting to read and wanting to see the story though. I enjoyed the unsettling cult vibes, the sadistic nuns, and the all consuming forbidden love.

I loved her previous novel, but just couldn't connect with this one. Same dark dystopian subject matter but far too impressionistic and insubstantial for my liking. .

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Agustina Bazterrica really has a way of creating an uncomfortable brutal world like always. Immediately you’re shown what to except from this book so there’s no sugar coating anything.

Despite this I feel like this book wasn’t for me. There however is an audience out there for this piece.

Thank you once again for giving me the chance to read this

Loved this one! Eerie, suspenseful and relevant to the political state of Argentina and the use of pesticides that harm its land and people. The storline was intriguing and spooky. Highly enjoyable!

It is hard to put into words how an Agustina Bazterrica book makes me feel. I'm always struck by the amount of longing and loneliness that comes through in her work even though it is objectively a horror or dystopian story. This one in particular struck several nerves, especially in struggling to remember traumatic experiences as well as crying over things that you would never get to experience. Overall this story was a wonderful internal narrative, one that is going to stick around for a while. It's also terrifying in the way that it strikes as a definite possibility, especially in today's world and political climate. I think it definitely needs to be added to the list of dystopian books to read and watch if you are trying to become more aware of society around you, because while it doesn't explain a whole lot about the larger universe it is more accurate to the way that everyday people would be affected. I also appreciate that the horror aspect of it while graphic was not so graphic that it was unreadable. I was horrified but not so horrified that I couldn't read it. All in all another wonderful work from a favorite author.

Thank you Scribner and Netgalley for the ARC.

This was a unique take on cult horror. We normally see more perspective of the leader yet this focused on those that carrier out his commands. Only in the very end did we meet the "Him" that entrapped the women. It was a fascinating exploration of victims becoming perpetrators, all while still being victims.

I enjoyed the diary style of writing, but at times, it felt a little too cerebral for me. I enjoy slightly more straight forward writing, but the themes and stories Agustina Bazterrica tells are fascinating.

The ending was great. I loved the representation of queer love, and I actually did enjoy not giving power to the man in this book by allowing his story to be told.

4.25 rounded down to 4.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was violent, stressful and extremely relevant to read at the moment. The Unworthy takes place in a dystopian future, where it is never explained, but assumed that massive weather due to climate change, along with the downfall of technology/electronics and potentially AI, leave the world in ruins. It seems like disease is also running rampant. Humans are mostly wiped off of the earth, but there is this little religious cult that seems to accept only wandering young women. In this "convent" of sorts, the women fight to become one of the "Enlightened Ones," and there's this entire structural system in place based on the amount you sacrifice and atone for.

I don't think I've read a bleaker book - the main character is secretly writing a journal about her experience at this convent, and while she writes she remembers events that led up to her current situation. In her flashbacks, you see how the world came to be, what she endured, and how her current situation essentially brainwashed her. We are thrown into this story with no explanation whatsoever about the current state of the world, or what the purpose of the convent really was. It took me a little bit to get into the rhythm of the writing style, but once I did it was hard to put this book down. A lot of the story came together as it progressed, but I was still left with some questions about this religious cult - what were their motives? What exactly happened that caused the world to end up the way it did? When did this all happen?

This was a very effective, terrifying glimpse into what the world could become. I thoroughly enjoyed the brutality and bleakness. I also liked the internal struggle we got to see with our main character, and how she fought the brainwashing she seemed to have succumbed to.

Mild spoiler, there is a bit of a violent animal death, among other types of abuse and torture that might be triggering.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book! I loved Tender is the Flesh, so I was excited to see that the author was coming out with her translated version of The Unworthy. Similar to her previous book, this book centered themes around environmental disasters, dystopian societies, and power struggles between classes. I was very confused at the beginning of this book as it did not give much context to how they became this dystopian society. Some information about this is peppered in later on. No significant character development or world building happened, which was disappointing because this story had a lot of potential. The author’s writing is poignant yet vague and skims over valuable details. Nothing significant happened until the end of the book, although it was predictable to me.

I still have every intention of eventually picking up <i>Tender is the Flesh</i>, but as a first experience with this author, it could've gone better.

Unfortunately, I found myself very bored with this book. It was a lot of beautiful -- if repetitive -- prose, but nothing really happened and there aren't enough answers given or world-building developed, and so every time I sat down to read this, I found myself regularly either falling asleep or thinking about other things. My mind shouldn't wander when reading a literary horror book and yet it did, a lot.

I kept hoping something would happen, especially after she found the wanderer in the Tower of Silence, but it was more of the same. And the ending? So meh.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Well, well, well. This was my first Agustina Bazterrica novel, as I couldn't quite stomach Tender is the Flesh (I was bound eventually to find my threshold). That being said, I can understand why people love her work, but I don't think it's for me. I will always be interested in queer horror, religious perversions, and the intersection of the two (hence the still decent rating), but both the pacing and the lack of world-building lost me here. It's a good story - don't get me wrong - but fell short of the high expectations I had for the author.