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.

Wow... what a read! The atmosphere of this novel!!! I just am left speechless. I love the way in which the story unfolded. The snippets our main character give us are equal parts horrifying and devastating. But Bazterrica manages to keep a darkly humorous voice which compelled me to keep reading, even during some of the gory parts. The world building in this novel !!! There is just not enough good things to say. The commentary on society through this dystopian horror lens really worked for me. I devoured this.

i’m not sure if this is a case of “i’m not the right reader for this book” or if it’s actually just… not great?

in a world ravaged by climate disaster, war, and disease, an unnamed woman secretly documents her life cloistered in what was once a monastery and is now home to the house of the sacred sisterhood, a cruel religious cult composed of women who found their way to (or through) the walls of the compound.

i didn’t mind the vague writing style; i was left with a lot of unanswered questions, but it felt appropriate to the fragmented world the narrator exists in and the horrors she experienced. (if a defined setting and elaborate world-building are important to you, you may not enjoy this.) however, the story did feel repetitive by the halfway point and even more so by the end. i think it either could have been shorter while achieving the same impact, or longer and more fleshed out. i found this length unsatisfying and i was underwhelmed overall after reading so many positive reviews for agustina bazterrica’s previous novel, tender is the flesh.

while the unworthy raises some interesting questions about cults and religion as tools of power and oppression, what we will accept and conform to and ultimately cling to in order to survive, and the price of maintaining humanity in a society that demands complicity and cruelty, it ultimately felt like more style than substance? it falls into well-trodden dystopian/cli-fi territory interspersed with progressively more brutal violence and torture. predictability in a story isn’t inherently bad at all, but that combined with an author whose style unfortunately didn’t really appeal to me made for a disappointing read. i do think this book might appeal more to readers who enjoy female-centered environmental weirdlit.

This book had all the compelling details to be a great short story. The covenant, the brutality, and the dystopian “what is going on “ vibes. Unfortunately, we were left in the dark about a lot of things that made me get lost. Also, the whole book felt rushed, i understand this was written as the main character is rushing to tell the story in anything she could find but i just didn’t vibe with that part. Although the writing is poetic it got to be repetitive. And the ending was a let down for me.

This one was a miss for me. I devoured (ha) Tender is the Flesh but the book of short stories that followed was a letdown, and so is this one. It takes place in an ill-defined post-apocalyptic future (intentional, but something we've seen before) where our MC is caught up in a religious cult of torture. The questions that are posed in the description of the book (" How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?") are a bit misleading, because I don't think we're given anytime to ponder these things. Lucia comes into our MC's life about halfway through the book, so even that feels like a spoiler to include in the description. The description ends with "A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror." But I would pose that none of these topics are covered at all, or if they are, it's very surface-level. Reading a description of this book really sets you up for failure. I think it would've been best to go in blind but even then, the story just doesn't cut it.

The Unworthy from Agustina Bazterrica is a mysterious dystopian novel that takes you inside a convent and makes you question what’s happening inside its walls and what’s happened beyond them. This book is moving, haunting, and strange all in one.

Bazterrica is one of my favorite modern horror writers and this did not disappoint! It was a bit surreal and fever dreamy - wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be real or in the narrator’s head, but some gorgeous allegories about religion and sexuality.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
This is a story about a woman's experience during a global disaster. She is found and brought back to life in a religious cult. This novel is a bit out of the realm of my normal read. I'm glad I read it. I could see this novel being turned into an awesome show or movie.

I wanted to joke that this book was unworthy of my time. But I don’t think that’s particularly fair. I did like a lot about it- the writing is beautiful. But the plot just got very boring and repetitive. It wasn’t until the last 20% that it finally picked up. I’m not sure how I felt about the ending either. But I suppose it kind of fit with the book (it would have been weird if there was a happy ending.) Overall, it was just okay.

2.5/5 rounded up

This book was haunting and excellent. The clifi, religious, and otherwise dystopian points hit. It scared me. I hated it. But the journal entries made me love the MC and her poor cat.

This book keeps you so in the dark of the goings-on in this dystopian world, and by the time you grasp even a semblance of plot the book is over. I didn't understand why I was to care about this world or the people in it, and by the end I still didn't have many reasons to care.

Unfortunately, I don't mesh well with this kind of storytelling. The writing was detached, but horrific. We didn't know a lot about these characters or their motivations or the dystopian world they live in, but we did get pages and pages of them living through horrific conditions and torture.

Truly, I wanted a deeper context to the world outside their cloister and for the relationships between the women to be fully fleshed out.

For me, the only good thing I can say about this book is thank goodness it is short. I love a good dystopian book just as much as the next person. The issue I have with this one is we are plunked down in the middle of a dystopian world and given no background or insight into what has happened or is happening. The characters all seem to be horrific people and it’s a repetitive amount of brutal punishments for reasons we don’t understand.
I stumbled through it thanking my lucky stars that it was more a novella than a full blown novel.
Perhaps her next story will be more of a hit for me.
I received an ARC of this title, all opinions are my own.

The Unworthy is a piece of epistolary horror fiction following the deprogramming of a young woman from a cult that arose in the aftermath of generations of apocalyptic natural disasters. It explores themes in duality: creation and destruction, community and isolation, growth and decay. For our unnamed narrator’s every written word cataloguing a life colored by her cult—fear of being found out and subsequent mistrust of her fellow acolytes, forbidden mourning for those she loved before, desire to join the higher ranks and hatred for those of the Unworthy she feels are more likely to advance than she—there is another word she’s already burned, struck through, or forgotten in service of her safety and benediction. As she writes, the more of her past before the cloister she allows herself to remember, and though she fears retribution she also can’t stop the act of self assertion and the desire to leave a mark of her true self behind. Her ambivalence, the desire to believe the cult’s doctrine contradicting her independent thought, makes for a complex, layered narration style. She is not likeable. In turns she’s jealous, a fanatic, envious, duplicitous, and cruel. But she’s also motivated, defiant, and capable of tremendous love and loyalty. Not every character is interesting and full of enough depth to carry a story, but The Unworthy’s narrator certainly was for me.
The prose is poetic to the point of madness, though no less effective at revealing the character and her broken world to readers for that. The hints of ecological destruction are presented so matter of factly, as a mention of the weather would be in modern day, both to save the narrator’s precious paper and ink and because it’s not worth noting. The author says as much with what they leave out as they do with what they put on page. The frequent mid sentence cut-offs as the narrator must stop writing in order to not be found out maintain tension throughout the narrative and give it a sense of being just a piece of something biopsied from the middle rather than a story begun and ended wholecloth, adding to the realism of the novel’s framing structure.
Overall, I very much enjoyed The Unworthy, though I would have liked another page or so to sit with the horror of the final scene before the ending. It felt a little rushed, though it makes sense given the circumstances, and I would’ve liked to feel the stomach churning moment with a little less urgency in order for it to sink in more deeply. Regardless, I think the novel did exactly what it wanted to do, and I will be reading more from this author. I recommend The Unworthy to horror fans who like their protagonists to become as monstrous as the situation they’re in calls for, those who feel the fragility of the world we take for granted with every breath, and who like their women to come equipped with teeth that bite.

Another dystopian novel by Bazterrica. Although I still prefer Tender Is the Flesh, reading this author is always a delight. It’s just as violent as the previous one and reminded me of books like The Road by Cormac McCarthy or The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood. But one thing is certain—I will definitely keep reading this author.

This is a short, but dense novella set in a post-apocalyptic society where we follow an unnamed woman that is part of an abusive cult-like sisterhood. This story reads like a stream of consciousness and we learn of the narrator’s past life and current situation.

This book goes into many themes that are quite relevant, especially during the current climate (no pun intended) in the US.

-Religious extremism and blind faith in everything said by them.
-Oppression
-Climate crisis (although we never learn what actually happened to lead the world into apocalypse)
-Survival

One of my favorite parts was when the narrator realizes that the sisterhood keeps saying acid rain is coming to control them, but the actions they’re told to do have nothing to do with protecting their crops and themselves from the rain. The superiors keep saying “this is a test” but nothing comes from it. I absolutely loved that!

I do wish the author gave us more into what happened to cause this apocalypse and maybe just make it less ambiguous because it was a very dense read.