Tell Me I'm Worthless

By: Alison Rumfitt

Narrated by: Nicky Endres

Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless is a dark, unflinching haunted house story that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors through the lens of the modern-day trans experience.

"Nicky Endres pulls out all the stops when performing this horror story about a haunted house and the shocking trauma it inflicts on three people...This is the stuff nightmares are made of..."—AudioFile Magazine (Earphones Award Winner)

"Narrator Nicky Endres narrates three distinct POVs (Alice, Ila, and the House), and her voice easily slithers between all three, demonstrating how the house dominates this story and the women’s lives."—Library Journal

"Transfeminine actor Nicky Endres’ narration is chilling throughout, as they voice the perspectives of Alice, Ila, and the house at an easy, relaxed pace. Their voice maintains a lulling and melodious sing-song quality, which acts in opposition to the horrors portrayed in the book."—Booklist

“A triumph of transgressive queer horror.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

“Easily one of the strongest horror debuts in recent memory.”—Booklist, STARRED review

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.

Cutting, disruptive, and darkly funny, Tell Me I’m Worthless is a vital work of trans fiction that examines the devastating effects of trauma and how fascism makes us destroy ourselves and each other.

“Ambitious, brutal, and brilliant.”—Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt

©2023 Alison Rumfitt (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Easily one of the strongest horror debuts in recent memory, and essential reading not only for anyone interested in horror writing, but for anyone interested in, for want of a better term, the ‘trans novel.’”—Booklist, STARRED review

“A gripping, hallucinogenic haunted house novel as righteously angry as it is horrifying, Tell Me I'm Worthless unflinchingly lays bare the personal and cultural scars we wear, endure, and inflict.”—Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and The Pallbearers Club

“A lush masterpiece. Each page crackles with unnerving texture and unsettling sensation, and I felt chewed and digested by the end. Albion is the scariest haunted house since Hill House.”—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth

Brutal and Beautiful

The stream of consciousness prose buffered the traumatic sequences for me. The narration was superb. I will be mulling this one for a while.

WOW

This audiobook was very well done; narration superb. 🤌

This was dark and very unsettling. You will need a palate cleansing afterward to get the dark out of you
(r/eyebleach or something).

This. Is. Horror. Fascism is a nightmare creeping more and more into the everyday modern world. TMIW brings it in and it feels like an illness--like a sickness that creeps inside of you and makes you doubt everything. And, there's the house! "The house is salivating... " Oh, that sentence brought a gross and unsettling visual to my mind that just stayed there.

Have you ever been online and came across a wall of text in which someone has just spilled their hate and mental illness into your eyeballs? Have you ever been part of the demographic the hate was aimed at? Whether or not you have, Alison Rumfitt will throw you into the utter helplessness of that pit of dispair, and when she's done, the feeling of relief you get when the scene is over is real.

This was heavy and great, and I will definitely be reading it again. But, in print this time... because this audio book was just sooo intense.

Amazing Book

Beautifully sad representation of todays world. Could not stop listening, a must read book. Very dark and thoughtful. I absolutely loved it.

Haunting

It's horrifying, smart, brutal and it'll stick with you for days afterward. Be forewarned, the content warnings before the start are there for a reason. Do not take them lightly.

Great Narration - Wonderful Story

The narrator was fantastic and I appreciated their articulation - their voice was also wonderful to listen to.

The story was fantastic and touched on so many themes and topics of true horror and evil through fascism. I would give the story an overall 5 stars, but the beginning was slow, and seemed to really focus on the feeling the characters had around a room. After the story started to progress it was hard to stop listening.

Not what I expected

This one took me a while to read. I went in for a read about a haunted house, which ended up being a minor part of the story. It is a heavy read about being trans in the UK, fascism, politics, hate, racism, religious discrimination and all sorts of heavy subjects. The narrative is written in jarring form, slurs and explicit language used as a tool to bring the reader into the world of an #ownvoice author. It is a good read, just not what I was prepared for.

Laytex maid

Chapter 7 alone should be enough for this to be greatest books of all time. That internet post should be the sample you get to listen to before buying. But in seriousness it is a great book and well written.

fantastic narration enhances excellent story

this book was really scary. my threshold is pretty high and this book made me remove a headphone to listen for otherworldly screaming more than once. the ghosts are excellent. clearly a lot of the authors heart was in it. on top of that the narrator like totally sells it. I'm not sure what the narration version of 'chewing the scenery' is but this is that. several times I was taken aback by the vocals they were adding. the voices they choose are perfect.

Cathartically anti fascist

This story was gross in a perfect haunted horror kind of way and some of the lines felt so real and true that I had to turn off the audiobook and walk it off. This is a powerful and emotional story and I was absolutely riveted. I love the voice that the actor does for the house, genuinely spooky.

hard to follow.

definitely a good read If you like nasty stories. but the point gets muddy and hard to follow