First, a big thank you to Scribner and NetGalleyfor the advanced digital copy of this book.

The Unworthy delivers another unforgettable dive into literary horror, following the acclaim of Tender is the Flesh. Set in a devastated world of environmental collapse, the story follows an "unworthy" nun in a rigid, violent convent as she grapples with faith, identity, and buried memories. Through her fragmented, raw writings, the author crafts a chilling atmosphere where control and despair dominate.

The introduction of an outsider sparks questions about the convent's sinister hierarchy and the narrator's long buried past. Themes of love, survival, and humanity's capacity for both destruction and resilience shine through the grim setting, offering moments of poignancy amid the relentless bleakness.

While the book's brevity ensures a sharp, impactful read, it leaves some world-building and character depth under explored. Bazterrica's trademark unflinching prose and haunting symbolism make this a gripping but heavy read, earning 3.75 stars for its thought-provoking exploration of faith and survival.

Fans of dystopian horror will find plenty to appreciate, even if it doesn't quite eclipse her previous masterpiece.

A timely read— as odd as that feels to say. As time goes on, we start to see the gap between a Dystopian story and our reality grow thinner. The tiresome war on women’s rights, the censorship, and the suffering of many for the comfort of the few.
Bazterrica did a wonderful job crafting this story. I genuinely felt for the narrator and understood her motives. It was hard to understand the world in the beginning, but I soon caught on and appreciated the vagueness. It added to my curiosity as well as the dark and eerie vibe throughout. This is Bazterrica’s best writing so far, and I’m eager to see what they write next!
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this early!

I screamed when I got accepted for this arc. I read tender is the flesh and was so taken aback by the story but so frustrated with the ending. I could not wait to see what else this author held and I was not let down

This enchanted me. Being dropped into the story and witness the cruel and demented acts of the sisterhood left me confused but wanting more! The pace was slow but with the experiences our narrator described through diary entries made it feel natural.

Mixing climate crisis, misogyny, power dynamics, jealousy, and religious fevor made for an erie backdrop. The thought of escaping this small hell wasn’t possible knowing the world was unlivable outside of the walls.

I was happily surprised by the characters. Their resilience, their backstory,
especially Circe, the ability to form bonds and save each other despite the mistrust.

The ending was predictable but there were few options to go in a story like this. I was left just as many questions when I started but only in the details of the character, not the plot line itself.

This was a 6 star read in my book. The story was immersive, chilling, and brutal. I devored it. It haunted me when I would take a break from reading, I needed to know more.

I really enjoyed all the cult stuff and I also enjoyed the horror parts, sadly it's a bit short and you don't really learn anything about what happened before the sacred sisterhood

now why does Bazterrica tend to soil her stories like that.. sci-fi and religious rites from hell didn’t have to go into forbidden love story with the Matilda of the Wormwoods!…let’s make love with nature instead of making love with AI…real eyes realize real lies… it’s silly and I’m aggy because it was enjoyable until it nose dived. three stars for halfway there!
Thank you Scribner & NetGalley for the e-arc!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner Books for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 STARS ⭐️
I was really excited for this book because I loved Tender is the Flesh, but this really fell flat for me. The author doesn’t give us a whole lot of info about what is going on: the who, what, where, when and why are all pretty vague and it’s up to the reader to infer what is happening. With the premise of a mysterious convent in the middle of an apocalypse, this had the potential to be a really good story yet it had no semblance of a plot and was highly repetitive. The parts of the book I enjoyed the most were of the narrators flashbacks from before she found the convent (the narrator also remains nameless for the entire book), and I was pretty surprised when it’s revealed that Circe is an animal (what kind, we don’t know) and not a human. The reveal of “what was going on behind the black carved door” was pretty easy to guess and anticlimactic, but I did like that the ending implied that the letters are being found at some point in the future. All in all a weird little book that (although written beautifully) tried to evoke religious and apocalyptic horror and kinda failed at both. I could see how some people would REALLY like this, and it’s so short you might as well see for yourself.
Song pairing is AmEN! by Bring Me the Horizon ⛪️☄️

PUB DAY: MARCH 4TH 2025 🥳

This is a deliciously strange, twisted tale, with an immaculately crafted world. If a violent cult residing in a convent that seems to be a better option for the women residing within than the outside world intrigues you (it should), then this is exactly the book for you.

I couldn’t imagine what a follow-up to Tender is the Flesh, an iconic novel, would look like but The Unworthy delivers. Agustina Bazterrica continues in her apocalyptic style of creating an alternate universe where we are forced to atone for our treatment of the Earth. It’s challenging to divorce yourself from Bazterrica’s reality check because the aftermath she creates is eerily similar to what’s happening all around us. Bazterrica is hauntingly descriptive in her portrayal of the future and leaves you feeling unsettled in the best way.

Thank you Agustina Bazterrica, Scribner, and Netgalley for early access to The Unworthy!

I'll read anything Agustina writes.

The Unworthy was equal parts harrowing and addictive. I loved the world-building and everything that isn't being said. Literary horror is one of my favorite genres, and Bazterrica is a force. Shout out to translator Sarah Moses whose translation reads like liquid.

Despite a slow paced story, I still had so much trouble following the plot of this one. We're following an "unworthy", in some sort of cult/community in a post-apocalyptic world. We only get bits and pieces of what happened to the world, hearing briefly about metal trees or the final blackout. Yet nothing we learn made me get gripped into the story. While the ending picked up, I don't feel as if there was enough character/world development along the way that made me want to care what happened.
As of right now, I seem like the outlier, and I am conscious of that. Not every story is going to grab ever reader.

This was such an incredible, atmospheric, terrifying, trippy, and meditative ride through a post-apocalyptic world. We read the diary of a member of the House of the Sacred Sister who recounts wandering through a scorched earth, but now wonders if staying in this monastery is safe, especially once ‘she’ arrives.

Thank you so much to Scribner and NetGalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for my review.

My feelings about this novel are conflicted. I feel if you've seen any horror media featuring a cult or people trying to survive post-climate-collapse, this book won't bring anything new to the table. It's also epistolary, and I kept getting stuck on how our protagonist was able to keep finding paper and keeping her journal hidden. I wondered if the story might be better off as regular first-person instead.

And yet... I finished this book before going to bed and I dreamed about its imagery. I didn't think it was scary in the moment, but clearly this book got under my skin. I found it to be oddly beautiful? I liked how our protagonist developed a stronger personality as she regained her memories from before she joined the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, and her goals also shifted accordingly. I actually really liked the way things shook out in the end.

While it didn't give me the "creepy evil nuns" vibes I was looking for, I'm still glad I read it.

Creepily immersive, and a story that leads you along a dark hallway by torch light. Following the Narrator through their journal entries, allowed the dystopian world to feel imaginable which heightened the horror of this fictional world. This is a must read for dystopian and religious horror fans.

Thank you so much to Scribner for the earc, all opinions are my own.

In a dystopian world in the far off future we follow the journal ramblings of a member of the Sacred Sisterhood. There is different levels to this cult, and our narrator is in the lower levels. It is confusing, and that’s the point. We hear about her mother, her time spent alone after her mother dies, and how she is surviving the cult on her own. This book gives me similar chills as Tender is the Flesh. Agustina really pulls in the real issues going on and turns them in a true horror.

Huge thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to ARC read this novel!

We follow along an unnamed MC in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world where she is in a secret covenant that is protected from the outside world. She writes to us in her secret diary of the events going on around her. I know some people don't like the unfinished or unanswered aspect of this book, but I quite enjoyed it. I found that sometimes I don't always need all the answers to have a good time with a book. It is grotesque, unnerving, and horrific. The story reminded me of the film, 'The Village" by M Night Shyamalan.

The MC flashes back and forth between timelines, the time before she joined the covenant and her current timeline. A wanderer joins the covenant and her world changes, together they unmask the truth of the cult. I did feel like that the ending did feel a bit rushed and would have enjoyed a longer book that was more flushed out. It was a short read, but would have liked more world-building to gain a fuller experience.

There's a bit of time for you to adjust to what and where and when you are with this book. It's a short book or it was for me at least on netgalley, but it takes some time to get into the writing style and what the MC is saying is happening.

It's some 40-50 years into the future and humanity was on the brink of extinction between climate collapse and starvation.

The cult/religious group that our MC has stepped into is very alarming and disturbing to read about. There are systems of torture and compliance that the leaders enforce and the followers seem to willingly subject themselves to.

I found that it was very repetitive in some places even though it was so short of a read. I don't think that the repetition was helpful in reinforcing anything other than to mark that these ideas are constantly swirling in our MC's head. From a reader's standpoint, where we're desperately trying to uncover the what, why and how, it just seems to get in the way.

I don't think this was Bazterrica's best but I am still eager to read forthcoming works.

This was good, but the ending felt a bit rushed and anticlimactic. There was no dialogue, as this book is written like a diary in past tense. A few major details flew completely over my head, and I'm not sure if it was intentional by the author to be a later reveal or if it's just because of the way it was written, but one detail involving Circe in particular really confused me. As for the horror, I wouldn't say it was scary, but it was definitely unsettling. Overall though, a good time. Dropped half a star for the ending.

I was hooked almost immediately, then considered DNFing. Then got hooked again, and then again considered DNFing. All of this occurred within the first half hour of starting. Once I hit my stride, I was in for the ride, but the beginning is kind of uneven.

The end was not really all that surprising (although I also didn't find the end of Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh all that surprising either, and seem to be in the minority there), but was still incredibly effective.

Wow, The Unworthy left me reeling, and I’m still processing everything I read. I was thrilled to get this ARC because I really enjoyed Tender is the Flesh. Bazterrica’s writing is undeniably unique, and her ability to craft unsettling, thought-provoking stories is unmatched. With Tender is the Flesh being such a standout, I was eager to see what she had in store this time.

Set in a dystopian future (not far from our own), humanity has pushed the Earth to its breaking point, depleting nearly all of its resources. The story follows the narrator, one of the "unworthy," who seeks refuge with the Sacred Sisterhood, dreaming of becoming one of the Enlightened. However, inside the convent lies a dark reality—violence, torture, and relentless control. It’s a brutal place to exist, yet the outside world is no better.

This book is incredibly violent, even more than I expected. While I understand its classification as horror, some of the graphic scenes felt excessive and unnecessary to convey the story’s message. Another aspect I struggled with was the lack of chapters, which made the pacing feel relentless at times.

That said, Bazterrica’s storytelling remains captivating. Her ability to provoke deep discomfort while exploring human nature and societal collapse is remarkable. Though this book wasn’t perfect for me, I’d still recommend it, especially to fans of Tender is the Flesh or those who enjoy bold, thought-provoking horror.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing February 4th!

I'm an odd one out with this apparently, in that I liked this quite a bit more than Tender is the Flesh, Bazterrica's first novel that was translated into English. The pacing can be a little uneven, but I found the post-apocalyptic setting fascinating (even though we didn't see anything outside the convent where the story is set except in brief flashbacks). There is violence, although in my opinion not enough to term this "splatterpunk" like some other reviewers have. We don't get much depth from any character besides our protagonist, but I didn't mind it much in a shorter-form novel like this one. Really liked this overall.