Genre: Horror
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Publication Date: January 17th, 2023
Pages: 263, trade paperback
Source: Bought

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice’s life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep.

Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go.

Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own.

Tell Me I’m Worthless left me feeling much like Docile by K.M. Szpara did, in that I’m perhaps not as well read on some subjects as I’d like to be and therefore I was a little out of my depth on the subject matter. It’s a complicated story where everyone is an asshole of varying degrees, trying to live their lives after having been traumatized and while continuing to be traumatized every day. They don’t make great choices and they hurt each other and themselves. It’s an uncomfortable read in several ways, from the vile transphobia, racism, sexism, sexual assault, to the fascism and antisemitism.

I highly recommend finding a list of trigger warnings for this book, as while I believe horror stories have every right to be upsetting and uncomfortable, Tell Me I’m Worthless deals heavily in Nazism and Holocaust imagery for some of its horror. I found it effective for a story that’s literally about the rise in fascism that’s been happening in the last few years, but I am not Jewish and obviously this will affect people in different ways.

There was also a multi-page description of a fantasy where a trans woman is brutalized that, admittedly, I had to skim after the first page. Again, I see what Rumfitt was going for in that this is shit trans people, especially trans women, have to deal with online and off every day, but at a certain point I wasn’t sure I was being horrified so much as engaging in torture porn. Like I said, this is a difficult book.

Some of my complaints are quibbles, mostly: I do understand that the first 100ish pages were set up to show how Alice and Ila were living in the shadow of what happened in the House, and how they were dealing with the rise of mainstream transphobia and TERFism–both on opposing sides–but it did feel like it dragged on a little. Ila’s story especially seemed to be a little aimless.

I think the book marketing does Tell Me I’m Worthless a bit of a disservice, because Hannah doesn’t feature much in the story, although her chapter and the scenes of the trio at the House were the most effective and gutpunching. (At one point, I literally said, “Oh my fucking gods” out loud.) This makes it seem like Alice and Ila’s return to the House would be more of a feature than it ended up being. The book instead is more an exploration of the horrors of transphobia, fascism, and how people are trying to live through it.

I really enjoyed the House chapters, though, and it definitely feels like a character in its own right, as all haunted and/or Gothic houses should.

So… all that being said, I have no idea how I feel about Tell Me I’m Worthless. Am I upset that I read it? Only in that the subjects were upsetting in ways they naturally should be; not necessarily because I believe I wasted my time or money. But can I say I enjoyed it, or that I think it’s a well written book? I’m not sure. I don’t know that Rumfitt accomplished what she set out to do. The scope of the story is broad, maybe almost too broad, which leaves things with Alice and Ila feeling a little unfinished. But then, the issues they face are still ongoing, still being fought, so not tying everything up in a pretty little bow is fitting, I suppose.

I recommend reading reviews from Jewish and trans reviewers before going into this; obviously they will have a different viewpoint on everything in the book than I do. While reading the low star reviews, I can’t say that the things they bring up are wrong, only that I understand why Rumfitt included them as she did, and that they didn’t affect me as they did others.

I dunno, y’all. Sometimes you read a book that just stumps you. Tell Me I’m Worthless is one of those for me.