This book throws you into a vivid and grotesque post-apocalyptic world shaped by climate disaster and human desperation. Written in a found-diary style, the narrator’s fragmented memories and unreliable perspective add a raw, emotional layer to her life within the harsh and controlling Sacred Sisterhood.

The worldbuilding is both a highlight and a downside—it’s hauntingly detailed and immersive, but sometimes it overshadows the plot. There’s not much explanation for why the world fell apart.

I was excited to review the Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica as I enjoyed her work Tender is the Flesh. The Unworthy is a novella under 200 pages that focuses on a climate crisis and religious horror. The novella is written diary style, where each entry is part of the MC's diary. There are no organized chapters or marked timelines so its unsure of how much time is passing from when the MC was part of the contaminated earth vs. when she was in the monastery. It would have been interesting to learn more about the background of the Water Wars and how the MC got to the monastery before being dropped into the middle of the story. 3.5*

Tender is the Flesh got me back into reading in December 2023. As much as I love her dystopian stories, this one felt a bit short for me. The religious aspect of the whole thing wasn’t my favorite but overall I did enjoy the book. The whole thing is like a fever dream and I wanted more explanation as to why the world fell apart.

I like that the woman is a bit of an unreliable narrator. The way she only sees a portion of what’s happening while fearing for the future. Her recollection of memories really brought it nicely together. But at the end I felt like I need more from her story. Having gone through all she did to survive, the ending left me wanting more. The unsureness of it all made it suspenseful. Overall I love her writing and style for description. That’s what kept me intrigued in this story. I think it’s fitting that I end 2024 reading this book. It gave me the sense that 2025 will also be a good reading year.

The Queen @agustinabazterrica does it again. Thank you so much @netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC of The Unworthy. I wanted to get my hands on it so, so badly and it didn’t not disappoint.
This book was a wild ride. I won’t give too much away but I will say that if you are interested in eco feminism, the apocalypse, body horror, religious cults and propaganda, the dark side of humans and the horrors that we are capable of, then this book is for you. Mixed in with all of that you will even find a bizzarre love story. Parts of this book felt like a gut punch and left me feeling deeply sad, the way only the best of writes can do. I’ll definitely be picking up a physical copy of this book when it comes out.

This was a quick read - under 200 pages.

Pub date - 3/4/25

We have a sort of post-apocalyptic/Handmaids Tale situation.

This book completely blew me away. We are talking a sort of cult with a new order, which you happily obey because the alternative is death. Either by the cult or the outside... It's very heavily carried by the world building and written thoughts of our MC. Best to go in blind, reading the content warnings as it can be unhinged and raw at times. But I agree that it's a much needed conversation on how close we are to "climate homelessness" and the realities of the human condition.

Editing: on LOC1748 “her firsts were closed,”should read “her fists* were closed”

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC for my honest opinion. I thought this was a great story. Bazterrica’s prose flows so well in my brain that it’s like a film playing on the projector behind my eyes. I love the setting and thought that the post apocalyptic resurgence of brutalist forms of torture and religion worked exquisitely. Overall I think this book will be a hit among the horror lit community. Well done!

This book feels like an intense fever dream, through a horrifying world that becomes more real over the course of the book. The main selling point to this book is the vivid imagery, which is definitely not for anyone with a weak stomach. The book is entirely first person, following a nun living inside a twisted convent. She is restricted in where she can go, what she can do, and kept under control by threat of harsh punishment. When a stranger enters the convent, she is forced to confront both present and past and must figure out what she wants.

The only thing that this book suffers from is the length. I feel like a lot of time is spent fleshing out this world, but not a lot is spent on the plot. This is more personal preference as neither are bad, but I felt that the plot was weak in comparison.

However, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who's into experimental horror, with unreliable narration and interesting worldbuilding. It's worth the read, but please check the trigger warnings before picking it up.

Thank you for the ARC!

I loved “Tender is the Flesh” and had such high hopes for this book going in, but I am sad to say I didn’t care for it.

In her prior works, the author had a clear societal critique - a particular facet of daily life she was commenting on as a whole. This novel, however, seemed more to be motivated by an anger at the world.

Global warming, religious practices, wealth, misogyny, the rise of technology - these are all discussion worthy topics. Throwing them all into one dystopian blender, within an inconsistently built post-apocalyptic world, doesn’t allow any of the topics to be fully fleshed out in the way a reader would expect.

After climate change causes unknown catastrophic events, our unnamed narrator is writing her history in secret on any scrap of paper she can find. Living in a walled off compound with a secular group called the Sacred Sisterhood, the protagonist tries to remember her past while surviving in the brutal cult.
This was hard to read at times, and I wasn’t sure if I even liked it until several days after I finished it. There’s not a lot of back story, the reader is dumped into the middle of the plot we have to figure it out from there, but ultimately I did enjoy this book.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of The Unworthy in exchange for my honest opinion.

One of the things Agustina Bazterrica does really well is take a horrifying piece of reality and spin it into a horror novel. But what Agustina does FLAWLESSLY is create chilling narratives that make you wonder if what is happening in her novels is actually closer to reality (or a future reality) than it is to fiction.

The Unworthy explores so many components of religious trauma and abuse that are not far from the realities of what happens in many religious cults. Some of the things the people of this cult believe are actually the same things that Catholics and Christians themselves believe, which makes this short story all the more unsettling.

While this novel fell short of Tender is the Flesh and Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird, I could see this being a win for anyone who has an interest in reading stories about religious abuse and dystopia.

4.5 stars rounded to 5.

Thank you to Scribner for the ARC.
Pub Date: March 4, 2025

THE UNWORTHY is dark - it is desolate and heart wrenching. Bazterrica places us in an apocalyptic world, ravaged by climate crisis. Our unnamed narrator tells her story through a memoir/journal style and Bazterrica cleverly has sentences pause midway when the narrator is interrupted and words that are forbidden or seem, to the narrator, incorrect are crossed out.

And yet, for how dark THE UNWORTHY is, Bazterrica's words are haunting and beautiful. But despite this beauty, THE UNWORTHY is still absolutely brutal and resolved in its horror. At times, the cruelty and horror can seem unnecessary, but as I sit with THE UNWORTHY, maybe that was the point - the narrator can't escape the pointless horror that she is subject to at the House of Sacred Sisterhood nor if she is in the outside world.

Religious horror wrapped in an extremely grim dystopian package. Not my favorite from this author personally, but the writing is amazing. It really packs a punch, and I will definitely be recommending this.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for this e-arc. All opinions are my own.

To start off with wow. This book is somewhat hallucinogenic, ominous and just has a dread that permeates the pages as you read. The unworthy centers around an unnamed sister who is in a extreme convent amidst an environmental armageddon and is writing what she sees and remembers from her time before arriving there. It is heart wrenching and the way it is all revealed slowly is masterful as she is forced to face her emotions and what is happening inside the convent.

This book is short, but I believe it is super impactful. To be honest I think the reason I like this book so much is because it reminds me of "I Who Have Never Known Men". There are no real answers and we get bits of information as we go but overall there's a mystery over the big picture things. I highly recommend reading this book.

I was very impressed with The Unworthy! I have not yet read Tender is the Flesh despite having heard incredible things about it, so this is my first experience with Agustina Bazterrica’s writing, and it did not disappoint. The writing and descriptions were so dark, moody, and downright terrifying at times, and I really enjoyed how much thoughtfulness went toward building the setting and the world that our protagonist lives in. Especially after Lucia arrives, we learn more about the protagonist’s background before entering the Sacred Sisterhood and the gruesome dystopia outside. This was a fantastic read, and I really enjoyed the themes of religious oppression/suffocation, sisterhood, climate change, and violence. I’m already looking forward to the release date so I can read it again and annotate a physical copy!

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the arc!

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica ended up being an extremely impactful read for me, especially with it being under 200 pages. This is the 3rd work by this author I have read and she truly has a wonderful gift of creating a dystopian world that feels grim, dark and real. I felt that I was at the sisterhood with the main character at all times and felt that desperation and manipulation she did as the plot goes forward. Thank you so much to the publisher and author for this arc copy.

Religious extremism meets environmental apocalypse in The Unworthy, where Bazterrica continues her exploration of how quickly humanity devours itself. Inside a mysterious convent, an unnamed woman documents her experiences among the "unworthy" using whatever materials she can find - including her own blood. While less viscerally shocking than Tender is the Flesh's literal cannibalism, this tale of a brutal religious hierarchy creates its own kind of horror as it examines how power structures consume the powerless. Not as strong as her previous work, but Bazterrica's unflinching style still provokes profound discomfort.

Can I get my religious trauma with some sapphic pining? Yes, thank you.

"The Unworthy" by Agustina Bazterrica (translated into English by Sarah Moses) is a dystopian horror novel about a pseudo religious commune in a post-apocalyptic world. They take in "the unworthy" or young women that wander in from the wasteland and brainwash them to follow their hidden leader, only referred to with the capital H "Him." They all seek to become "The Chosen" or "The Enlightened" for this god-adjacent person, accepting mutilation as part of the ritual. And they're willing to do horrible things to themselves and each other to make that happen.

This novella was... a lot. The writing style was just shy of magical realism and confusing to follow. There was one character spoken so reverently and poetically about that I assumed they must have been a former lover, only to find out it was a cat. It was also strange for the set up of the book itself. The narrative is meant to be an in-world journal from the protagonist, who has a severely limited amount of paper and ink to use, only to go on long-winded. It could be that some things just don't translate well or need a certain context to be fully understood. For me, I was rereading a lot just to understand the basics.

This book is labelled as horror, but it doesn't really build much tension. You're dropped in to the middle of horrible things (it literally begins with cockroaches in a girl's pillow) and it just stays bad the entire time. It might have also been a personal thing, as the more confusing the writing style is, the less scary the horror is. But I was hoping for more of a gradual descent in the religious fervor that keeps them all trapped, watching the brainwashing slowly take them over a la the BITE model. But, conveniently, all the women seem to forget their lives before wandering in and immediately accept the new arrangement.

There was also supposed to be this mystery about what goes on behind the big closed door with a reveal at the end. But if you have the most basic knowledge of what goes on in cults between a male leader and his female following, you know exactly what's happening from the beginning.

The cult itself makes a big deal of the fact that it's better than the "false god" of the Catholic monks that were there prior, but it's just Catholicism by a different name. That's not necessarily a ding against the worldbuilding, plenty of irl cults claim to have the grand new idea when they're just retreading old ground. Still, the religious trauma was a little too over the top to really hit home for me. But that might be the Protestant upbringing talking.

As for the romance, I didn't really feel it. True, I am a slow burn girly and this is a novella. But more could have been done with the short run time. The romantic interest doesn't even appear until nearly halfway through and when she's there, a lot of of the page time is still spent on other flashbacks. There was some talk about prophetic dreams, as if that explained their quick connection, but overall it was hard to feel the connection.

All of that being said, I do believe there's an audience for this book. Readers that like highly purple prose and a lot of things left open-ended or taken on faith. But for me, it just didn't hit.

What a small but mighty book - Bazterrica manages to pack so much emotion into these 200 pages. Definitely not for the faint of heart! As a reader, you’re dropped into a dystopian future where the narrator lives as part of a mysterious covenant (a cult, basically), and the story is told through the narrator’s writing in secret. My only complaint is that I found the world so fascinating, and would loved to have gone even further into who the cult was, how they came to be, and how we got to that point in the future.

I’m seeing a few reviews from people that have said that they loved Tender is the Flesh but couldn’t get into this book, but that wasn’t the case for me. I think this felt more subtle in some ways? I’m struggling to think of how to better compare the two, but if you (like me) like books about dystopian futures, cults, and female protagonist I think this will be up your alley.

Thanks for the ARC net galley!

After having read “Tender is the Flesh”, this wasn’t what I was expecting from this author. It wasn’t reading to me as cult as it was just deranged. This plot felt like it’s been done before in other religious fanatic books, and I felt a lot like going in circles, I got to around 50% and just didn’t care for this anymore and felt bored.

I thank the publisher for this opportunity to read this ARC and hope on the future I will pick this up again with a new perspective, as I really do enjoy this author.

𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚: ★ ★ ★ ★.5
𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘: March 04, 2025
𝗔𝗥𝗖 𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪:

You can’t change my mind otherwise, Agustina Bazterrica is a favorite of mine. I devour her writing up. When I saw Agustina was coming out with The Unworthy I knew I HAD to read this and already knew I was going to love it. The backdrop, the setting of this book was perfect for the storyline, the feeling and vibes you feel throughout this book was spot on, it was a heavy feeling as well. We see horror, destruction, death, pain etc, things I expect to see and feel in our authors writings. It really sets the mood for the read. You can vividly SEE the things within this book with the writing, it’s so impeccable. I’m not diving far into this book just giving my quick look inward for you all but stating that if you loved Tender Is the Flesh, please dive into this one, you won’t be disappointed. I will recommend this to the select few of my friends who would love this type of read…I know that they’ll love it!

Large thank you to our Author, NetGalley as well as Scribner.