Brainwyrms

by Alison Rumfitt

From Alison Rumfitt, the author of Tell Me I’m Worthless — “a triumph of transgressive queer horror” (Publishers Weekly) — comes Brainwyrms, a searing body horror novel of obsession, violence and pleasure.

When a transphobic woman bombs Frankie’s workplace, she blows up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, fucking strangers, pushing away her friends. Then she meets Vanya. Mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya.

The two hit it off immediately, but as their relationship intensifies, so too does Frankie’s feeling that Vanya is hiding something from her. When Vanya’s secrets threaten to tear them apart, Frankie starts digging, and unearths a sinister, depraved conspiracy, the roots of which go deeper than she ever imagined. Shocking, grotesque, and downright filthy, Brainwyrms confronts the creeping reality of political terrorism while exploring the depths of love, pain and identity.

Genres: Horror, Queer, Fiction, LGBT, Transgender, Adult, Contemporary

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 2023

About the author

Alison Rumfitt is a woman in trouble.

She lives and works in Brighton, and writes deeply personal, transgressive horror.

Reviews

[Boston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think a little kinkshaming is okay

[Brandon Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was disgusting 🧡🪱

Brainwryms is about Frankie, who barely survived a bombing by a transphobic terrorist, and who subsequently copes by drinking, doing drugs, self harming, and isolating herself from everyone she knows. At a fetish club she meets Vanya, a young, unusual girl that catches her eye, and together they spiral into a very toxic, sort of master/slave fetish relationship.

The story is about the secrets Vanya is keeping, Frankie's impregnation fetish, the worlds ever-growing hatred towards trans people, and so, so many worms.

To be clear right off the bat, this is extreme horror. I love that Tor has brought EH into mainstream publishing, but yeah, this is extreme and should be approached with that in mind. This story features the following: incest, child abuse, SA, domestic abuse, homophobia, transphobia, self harm, suicide, stuff with bodily fluids (including spit, pee, excrement, eye stuff), wormy body horror (so many worms), graphic sex (fetish stuff, master/slave, consensual and not), miscarriage, kidnapping, terroristic threats and actions, use of slurs/hate speech, hate crimes. I think that might be it, but you know what I mean when I say this is EXTREME.

I would have liked more from the ending (the END end, the final showdown was enough TYVM 😅🤢), but otherwise I couldn't read this fast enough. It's shocking, searing, disgusting, deeply upsetting and triggering, and so relentlessly in your face. It's frenetic and surreal while being all too unfortunately real. Allison is definitely one of my new favorite authors, especially after having recently read and loved Tell Me I'm Worthless.

Tread cautiously, if you have any other specific questions about triggers, message me and I can try to help!!

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) Absolutely disgusting... I loved it! I could not put Brainwyrms down – I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next, I galloped through it, even though at times I was nauseated and/or cringing away from the page. This book takes the ‘trauma as horror’ trope and eats it from the inside out. It’s full of thrilling writing about fetishes, transness, transphobia, dysphoria, and whatever it means to be virtuous, if it even means anything. I know it sounds basic and borderline patronising to call it ‘fearless’, but it really is fearless and so brilliantly weird. Especially when it takes turns into more experimental style choices, with the stage play section (active monsters) being a particular high point. Brainwyrms confirms Rumfitt as one of our most important contemporary horror writers. It’s a book that gets right under your skin (sorry). Never before have I immediately and desperately wanted to reread a book that repelled me.

I received an advance review copy of Brainwyrms from the publisher.

[August Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for making me want to vomit and for being totally unreccommendable.

[Billy Degge]

publish the scratch and sniff version you cowards

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

sexy AND revolting!

[Laurie (barksbooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Tell Me I’m Worthless, Brainwyrms is a book that is definitely not for everyone. Take a good look at the cover, turn up the stench and the horror of it about 100 notches and you still won’t know what you’re getting yourself into. Heed the content warnings at the front of the book.

It’s about two damaged people with a lifetime of unprocessed trauma, who face hatred and bigotry at every turn as they do whatever they can to make themselves feel a little better so they can get through the day. One night Frankie meets Vanya at a fetish club and the pull to them is instant but Vanya has a disturbing way of self-soothing that will likely sicken most people.

This book is uncomfortable, so much of it off-putting and yet it’s difficult to put down to take a breather (and you’ll probably need at least one). It doesn’t tiptoe around any of the horror. There are scenes that you won’t be able to unread. The synopsis does not lie. It is “shocking, grotesque, and downright filthy”. It is all of those things and it's also very well written. You'll have to sit in that experience of pain and filth and suffer right along with the characters.

Brainwyrms is a graphic, bleak, horrific, and traumatic reading experience. It probably won’t leave you unscathed. If you’re looking for a fun read, this probably isn’t the one for you but if you’re looking for something that will shake you up, enrage, and creep its way forever into your brain this will do it.

4 1/2 Stars - so why not a five, you asshole? Well, small parts of it were written in a way that weren't my favorite. An extreme dream-like/nightmare almost bewildering sort of way (sorry I'm a reader, not a writer and that's the best I can do explaining it) and that slowed parts down for me. You might love it though.

[Stitching Ghost]

I kept waiting for something to really happen, but I think it was all lost in the general horniness of the characters. It's not that nothing happens it's just that the characters are seemingly extra horny and willing to do almost any old sketchy thing to get their rocks off which is just about the most boring thing a character can be in my opinion and because of that the actual events got lost in the miasma. Long story short, this one really wasn't for me.

[alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alison Rumfitt I want to like you but you are making it incredibly difficult

So, an attempt at an actual review: it's not that I'm too faint of heart for Brainwyrms' extreme content; I just never felt that it came to anything greater. I don't read Kindle Unlimited extreme horror novellas for the exact reason that I've picked up both Alison Rumfitt's novels so far; I want to read literature that is disturbing for a purpose, beyond merely 'to disturb'. (This is a taste thing. If you enjoy the kind of edgy, gross-out horror pre-teens pen on niche internet forums, you will probably like this.)

Brainwyrms felt smaller in scope than its predecessor, Tell Me I'm Worthless - a smart move, imo, as I found TMIW almost too ambitious, given its length and lack of subtext - but otherwise did not improve on what Rumfitt is quickly establishing as her formula in any significant way. It was certainly less straightforward than TMIW, but shock is still prioritised over substance, a jarring, frustrating experience in a novel that clearly wants to be taken seriously, as social commentary.

I won't be running to read Rumfitt's next novel, but I would love to see her put out an anthology or short story collection. Short stories would really play to her strengths - as I see them, interesting ideas and concepts - without any of the pitfalls (unconvincing character work, nonexistent stakes, meandering plots, and dropped threads) that have plagued her releases so far.

[thevampireslibrary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was gross and disgusting and kinky and I loved it, I think alison is an important new voice in the contemporary horror genre and I can't wait for everyone to read this so we can all talk about it, I loved the commentry on social media, the correlation between vanyas parasite fetish and the transphobia that works much like it, infesting and corrupting the minds, this is body horror at its finest but the real horror here laid out for us is living as a trans person in the UK, this book is like an axe to TERFs head, political and provocative, this is an amazing transgressive piece of ART, but it might probably maybe definitely 100% make you vomit a little

[Ghoul Von Horror · Rating 5 out of 5]

‼This is Extreme Horror‼‼

TW: use of c-word, language, mention of rape, graphic sex scenes, watersports, eating disorder, scat, molestation, grooming, incest, sexual kinks, r-word, gaslighting, suicide

*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:When a transphobic woman bombs Frankie’s workplace, she blows up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, fucking strangers, pushing away her friends. Then she meets Vanya. Mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya.The two hit it off immediately, but as their relationship intensifies, so too does Frankie’s feeling that Vanya is hiding something from her. When Vanya’s secrets threaten to tear them apart, Frankie starts digging, and unearths a sinister, depraved conspiracy, the roots of which go deeper than she ever imagined.
Release Date: October 5th, 2023
Genre: Horror
Pages: 304
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ⭐️

What I Liked:
1. Great cover
2. Some of the kinks made me laugh
3. That orgy scene

What I Didn't Like:
1. Writing style
2. Very political
3. A lot of parts just rambled about nonsense
4. Midway if feels so repetitive

Overall Thoughts:
There is a LOT of kinky stuff in this book.

This book was intense and someone else commented that they couldn't believe a major publisher published this - I agree. I'm shocked. This is like something that should be on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

Omg I think I just threw up... The worms and oral sex. Omg. Omg. Omg.

Omg omg omg they put fox shit inside themselves.

You reach a certain point in this book about the halfway mark where it just feels like you're kind of repeating the same stuff over and over again. There's no real story going on other than this person getting broken up with, another person that is obsessed with parasites living inside them, and there's a bombing. I wish there was more story to this book besides the over the top kink addition going on throughout.

There is so much insane stuff going on in this book that the peeing on someone seemed about the most normal thing that was happening. There was guy who eats shit. A pregnancy kink. And so so much more.

I did like how things tied up for the ending and it was Vanya's mother was the bomber.

Omg that weird incest worm scene that Frankie was dragged into.

Final Thoughts:
So this book is intense. There is so much sex that is outside the scope of what people call normal.

This book started out so good but I grew kind of bored from the obsession it felt to be over the top. In that way it reminded me a lot of John Water’s Pink Flamingos. You should check that movie out, some serious obscene things happen in it.

I did not care for the writing style. It never felt as though it flowed and at certain points it felt choppy and would just go on white rambling.

I did give it 3 stars because there were things that happened in this book that I found shocking and I thought added to the story and the characters.

After the orgy scene I raised it to 5 stars. Insane! Insane!

Recommend For:
• Eric LaRocca
• Extreme Horror

IG | Blog

Thanks to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, and Tor Publishing for this advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[inciminci]

DNF at 40%. This isn't the book I want to read right now, maybe at a later point when my head can take it all in.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award for Novels!!

She was angry all the time now. She spent most of her time on the laptop. She shouted a lot, she was quick to anger, she had worms in her brain, that's how Xavier thought of her: she had worms all up in her brain and they were driving her mad. It was easier to think of it in those terms than admit his mother genuinely hated him.

Of course this being a Alison Rumfitt novel, Xavier, a trans male teenager, is closer to the truth than he realises - his mother, who turns into a anti-trans terrorist, really has been infected by deliberately implanted Brainwyrms, a visceral metaphor for the insidious effect of social media campaigns.

Brainwyrms follows from Alison Rumfitt's provocatively powerful and deliberately disturbing Tell Me I'm Worthless. Appropriately I read both novels (in 2021 and now this in 2023) on Halloween, as this is extreme horror, but with a political purpose, with the underlying real-world horror the hostility experienced by transgender people from those who might be expected to be natural allies, here represented by a (entirely fictional) billionaire children's writer and a sit-com writer.

Compared to Tell Me I'm Worthless, this is a less intertextual book with less direct literary antecedents, and more outright story (and the brainwyrms themselves weren't a little too fictional to really be disturbing).

Rumfitt herself has said the book is in a "different register" politically, less confronting transphobic ideology - "I don't want to have to dismantle their idea" - and more playful subverting it, here strongly turning anti-trans cabal-like conspiracy theories firmly on their head. There's also an interesting perspective on fetish subreddits, and the dangers of division in and between queer communities.

The novel comes with one of the best mood's playlists I can remember: Brainwyrms Official Playlist.

The interview with Rumfitt from which comments above are drawn.

Not a novel I appreciated as much as Tell Me I'm Worthless, perhaps because I'm more prepared for what Rumfitt is doing, but nevertheless very worthwhile.

Both novels are published by and available from Cipher Press.

Cipher Press is an independent publisher of queer fiction and non-fiction. Our aim is to amplify queer voices and to champion LGBTQIA+ writers in the UK and beyond.

We want to publish authors who are creating a new literary canon by disrupting existing narratives and retelling them in new ways. We want to publish the many different stories that make up our community, and we want to make those stories accessible to everyone.

We’re entirely queer owned and run because we want the publishing industry to be more inclusive at every level. We have over a decade’s worth of bookselling, publishing, and editorial experience under our belts. We still don’t often see the kind of books we want to see on shelves, and we’d like to change that by finding authors who excite us and by publishing books that we love.

We’re especially keen to publish those who are further marginalised within our own community: people of colour, working class, trans and gender non-conforming authors.

[Willow Heath]

Alison Rumfitt’s second novel is a step-up from her first in multiple ways, but it has also solidified her unique blend of raw, disgusting horror with punk and aggressive political satire.

Brainwyrms follows Frankie, a twenty-eight-year-old trans woman living in the UK. In the novel’s first chapter, Frankie is at a kink party, and there we learn about her kink obsession with being impregnated.

At the party, Frankie meets the young non-binary Vanya, who has a dark and twisted kink of their own.

My full thoughts: https://booksandbao.com/best-horror-n...

[Sage Agee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gonna be haunted by this one for the rest of my life.

[Megan]

My review is now up at The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/bo...

Here's an excerpt:
“She had worms in her brain,” a character in Alison Rumfitt’s “Brainwyrms” decides when faced with his mother’s increasingly transphobic zeal. “It was easier to think of it in those terms than to admit that his mother genuinely hated him.”

Given the book’s title, it will not be a spoiler to reveal that this character’s mother is, in fact, host to a parasitic virus that is eating her brain. Is that better or worse than more familiar forms of virulent transphobia? Same difference, the novel suggests.

Set in a near-future Britain shortly after a ban against transness has been announced, Rumfitt’s second novel tugs on the current mess of anti-trans bigotry in the United Kingdom (and beyond), depicting transphobia as a ravenous brainworm that causes its hosts to go violently mad.

That might be enough of a draw on its own. But this is Rumfitt, whose debut novel, the brutal and terrifying “Tell Me I’m Worthless,” drew comparisons to Shirley Jackson for its slow-burn, paranoiac dread. Like its predecessor, “Brainwyrms” is smart, seething social horror that is forthright in its use of fiction to react to real-world terrors.

See full review here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/bo...

[Nina The Wandering Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I knew what body horror was but, good god, this right here was disgusting!!!! I'm not even sure who I can properly recommend this to. It's upsetting and triggering and kinky and horrifying and somehow...I still liked it. Do with this what you will, but be warned!

[Oliver Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still digesting

[maddie. · Rating 5 out of 5]

People who like to describe things as "elevated horror" talk a lot about the difference between horror and terror. You know, "the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse," as they say (or, ok, as Devendra Varma said, according to the "Horror and Terror" Wikipedia page...). What people often fail to mention is that a lot of so-called horror media is not really about horror, or about terror, but about disgust. More ick than eek. No more frightening than spoiled milk, no less upsetting.

Folks, this is prime example of what I'm talking about. Brainwyrms is gross. Brainwyrms is disgusting. Brainwyrms should not be read in times and places where it would be inappropriate to become violently ill. Very icky. Whatever the opposite of elevated is. Neither the smell of death nor the stumbled upon corpse but the maggots and piles of vomit left behind for the crime scene clean-up crew. I often asked myself, why am I reading this? why am I doing this to myself? It is the stinkingest turd of a novel I have ever read.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, as they say! And as turds go, this one was pretty polished. Rumfitt does a really fine job here of crafting a compelling narrative that neither under nor overplays its (unwashed) hand. The characters are well-formed, distinct, plausibly motivated to behave as they do. And the more straight-forward horror elements lurk persistently in the background, waiting patiently to be born. It has none of the flaws of Rumfitt's first novel, Tell Me I'm Worthless (which I found to be poorly structured, derivative, philosophically confused, etc.), or of Eric LaRocca's similarly premised Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (which was rushed, pointless, unbelievable, etc.). I doubt I will recommend it to anyone -- I try to avoid rendering my friends and loved ones nauseous -- nor can I say honestly that I enjoyed it. But if you're looking to have a bad time reading a good book: this is for you.

P.S. Thanks NetGalley! This book should come with an anti-emetic!

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

PopSugar Reading Challenge 2024: A book from a genre you typically avoid (Extreme Horror / Body Horror)

I got this as a Blind Date with a Book from Golden Hare Bookshop in Edinburgh. This was before I saw the US cover. Can I just say THANK GOODNESS I didn't unwrap a copy of the US version, because I'd probably have hurled it across the room by reflex. The HORROR!!!

So after seeing the more graphic US cover, I approached with trepidation...

The body horror was actually nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, the sex got pretty grotty, but I'm by no means traumatised. Rumfitt could have taken the parasite themes further and I'd have coped. Probably.

In fairness, I had been told to expect many worms, so that likely softened the blow.

Rumfitt has a compelling way of telling a story, that feels a bit like watching performance art. The style is experimental and I blazed through it. Sadly, the final third lacked plot and didn't grip me like the beginning and middle. I was expecting the dread and contagion to continue building, but I gradually became less engaged, which was a shame.

Also, the satire felt cartoonish and unsubtle to me. There are strong political and cultural themes throughout: transphobia is explored in its many guises, for example, but the writing is polemical, not rhetorical. Plus, the explicit sex and worminess is far too distracting for this book to be taken seriously as a tool for attacking the system.

So all in all, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I was hooked in by this bizarre little book, but then disappointed when the pace didn't hold.

It's been an interesting foray out of my comfort zone, and I'm contemplating reading Tell Me I'm Worthless as a follow up.

[spicykatzreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

stunning

[Ruxandra Grrr [in a slump :(((((] · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was. A. Lot. I personally think it was brilliant, but I cannot recommend this to anyone - well, two people, but one has already read and loved and the other one plans on reading it. It's loaded to the brim with trauma and parasites and disgusting shit. It has alllll of the content warnings. Some of it I had to dissociate a bit from while reading, tbqh. It's a fascinating iteration of cosmic horror.

capitalism wanted everything it wanted the queers it wanted to market vodka to trans girls it wanted fetish weekend breaks but it had been brought about through alliance with a resurgence of right-wing religious Christian zealotry & these two forces once aligned somewhat were now starting to rub against one another creating painful friction because those zealots hated the degenerates but those capitalists were like the degenerates are a valuable market share you didn’t want to be part of that

But yeah, brilliant, claustrophobic, fucked up and extremely funny. There are so many JKR & HP references that are just genius and oh man, does Rumfitt escoriate the TERFS, extremely warranted. But just like in Tell Me I'm Worthless, there is some manner of understanding about why TERFS TERF (It's funny, re-reading that review of TMIW, I wrote practically the same disclaimer in the beginning). This book traces our current political climate and echo chambers, it's very astute about how these things (these parasites) spread from place to place. It knows how trauma can fuck you up really badly.

I now must go and process wtf did I just read ad think about it some more.

4.5/5 (rounded down, for now)

6/31 reads in 31 days for January.

[Chris Eberhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm never reading this book again. This book made me feel worse than any book I've ever read before, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since I finished it. This is a compliment.

Now, I love a book that makes me feel bad in new and exciting ways. J.G. Ballard's Crash is a perennial favorite of mine, and I think it primed me pretty well for reading at least most of this. If you're familiar with that old internet 'blowfly girl' story, and can handle that without getting queasy, I think you'll be fine with regards to the worst of the gross content. I think a lot of readers can kind of get lost in the sex/kink/gross stuff, which, you know, fair. It's not for everyone, and that's okay. The thing that got to me wasn't the worms or the fox or anything like that. It's a lot simpler, actually.

Brainwyrms made me feel bad in an old and familiar way, in a blindingly, horribly, devastatingly REAL way, and I'm kind of surprised that I don't see more people talking about it.
In my opinion, the worst thing a horror author can do to you, and the mark of a true great, is to make you care, make you hope against hope that things turn around. They won't. You know they won't. But you can't help yourself.

There's an air of dissociation and disconnection when horror gets sufficiently extreme, this...reminder that this is a story. It's words on a page, right? It can't hurt you in any appreciable way. There's an excitement to see where this is headed, to see how bad shit goes sideways at the end. I found my stride with the text, and I was burning through Part II, starting to have fun (if you can call it that), starting to feel that little scritch-scratch of hope, for Frankie, for Vanya and their family. And then we switch to Xavier, and I stopped having fun.

It's so simple. It's so, so simple. It's something you've seen a million times before, in books, in movies, in real life. On the news, dramatized in true crime. And it fucking got me.

Xavier's and his father's murder is a full-strength backhand to YOUR face SPECIFICALLY, the kind that leaves you dizzy, a brutal reminder of where we are and why we're here. Rumfitt has spoken to You [the reader] before, she's aware of You. This, too, feels like a look into the camera, unacknowledged but hitting like one of those stupid asshole trucks' grills pulverizing your ribcage at a crosswalk. All artifice is dropped: this is the end of this ideology, radicalization metastasizing into terminal hatred. Here it is. Come and see.

He was innocent, his father was innocent, a reflection of the real world and the violence against trans youth that cuts way too fucking close to home. You aren't allowed to take comfort in the fact that it's just a book anymore, because it's not, is it? There was joy, there was happiness, and it was eliminated mercilessly. It's a grim vision and a stern warning. It's too fucking real. Take a good, hard look at what this path gets us.

I had to stop and go sit outside for a half hour. It's the absolute worst a book has ever made me feel, and it's warranted. I came back and limped through the rest, nothing feeling as purely apocalyptic as that one moment. Honestly, I'm still processing. This book has been the only thing I can think about for a solid day and a half. Maybe it just hurts more because I'm trans, but that just makes me sadder that other people can't see it.

It's the furthest thing from an easy read, but past all the grime and the worms, I think it's an important one. Fantastic work; I'm never touching this thing again. 5/5.

p.s. As a certified Maker of Playlists for my own work, I gotta respect a fellow freak on this front. If I may be so bold as to nominate a song, I'd put forward Burrow Your Way To My Heart by Darkest of the Hillside Thickets for consideration, but, as it stands, it's a goddamn banger.

[Netanella · Rating 4 out of 5]

And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

- Edgar Allen Poe

I am . . . slightly stunned, to say the least. Disgusted. Disturbed. Astounded. Amazed.

I read somewhere, just now, that Alison Rumfitt is an important voice in horror. Extreme body horror, that is. This is not an easy book to read, with clear parallels to modern political paranoia and extremist hatred against trans peoples and their rights.

There were several times that I wanted to put this book down in disgust. And equally, there were several times I wanted to reach out and offer my love to a broken character. The ending was intense, almost a deus ex machina fantasy ending that I am not sure is real or not.

This book will stay with me for a long, long time.

[Briar Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tighter, more cohesive book than TELL ME I'M WORTHLESS, which means it's more satisfying as a narrative but also seems more limited in scope despite its apocalyptic climax. The characters all turning out to be connected with one another, and the story's reliance on coincidence, were fun insofar as they're handled well and produce some very satisfying "OHHHHHH" moments, but they definitely also contribute to the book's "smaller" feel.

That said, I enjoyed this one more than TMIW! Vanya is a one of a kind, unforgettable deuteragonist with more depth/dimensionality than most of Rumfitt's characters-- it would have been easy to make them a fairly one-note "enby in trouble" noir archetype, and indeed they don't really "subvert" or evade that character archetype in any way, but it's all about the details and the expansive, frenetic, conflicted interiority they're given: they feel like a real, specific person. The wild postmodern experimental flourishes and extremely blunt, extremely vicious satire/social critique I liked in Rumfitt's debut are just as prominent in this sophomore effort, but are deployed with more confidence and artistic discernment. The body horror here gets into really silly gross-out territory at the end, in ways reminiscent of both the movie SOCIETY and, like, some shit that would happen in Goosebumps, if Goosebumps was pornographic. For me, that's a plus! And I do think Rumfitt is aware of the silly aspect-- she's milking it, walking the line between horror and comedy with natural grace.

I also appreciate that there's a BRAINWYRMS playlist. I think more authors should make mixes for their books, I'm always saying this.

[Stay Fetters · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Mummy… oh God, Mummy. It’s your birthday, so Mummy’s got a little treat for her little whore."

Tell Me I’m Worthless was one of my favorite reads of last year. There was something so disturbingly traumatizing about it that it haunted me. So I was excited to see that Alison had a new book out and that it would blow my mind in a different kind of way.

This was a whole lot different than her first book and I’m glad she decided to lead away from that. They were both extreme and unsettling but this one had a deeper meaning. While it did discuss major subjects that are currently happening, I found myself pulling away from this one. None of the talk or disturbing scenes bothered me, I really can’t pinpoint what made me like this one less.

Brainwyrms was an okay read and nothing like I was expecting. It contains extreme horror and use of language that could upset people. Tread lightly with this one. If you’re a weirdo like me then you’ll coast right through.

[Allyson Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was initially drawn in by the cover. I feel like the internet has desensitized me to most disgusting things so I didn't have a hard time with that aspect of this book at all. What I did have a problem with was the writing style. This book was way too hard to follow. I am not an expert when it comes to writing so I'm not really sure of the correct terms but the book would switch character perspectives but also switch between I, she, you, etc so often and I'm just not a fan of that. At the beginning of every chapter I would have to try to figure out who this point of view was from and how it fit in with the rest of the book. There were some parts that I thought were really good and actually felt like a statement on how trans people are treated with cruelty and violence but it was just all over the place and thrown in at random times. Also I hated how the end of the book made the whole thing into something completely different. The other thing I noticed is how the descriptions would come off so juvenile. For example she would say something like - they were hugging so tight they were shaking like a dog taking a shit. Uh, what?

Another issue I had with the book is right in the beginning she says that any similarities between real people or real situations is coincidental but I call BS. I found a lot of things that seemed to be direct references to people and events that actually happened. One that I found to be in particularly poor taste was what seemed to be a reference to the death of Bianca Devins. And honestly that whole part could've been left out because it was just supposed to be an example of how being internet famous is dangerous which I feel didn't even fit anyways.

[Raegan · Rating 1 out of 5]

-Disclaimer: I won this book for free through Goodreads giveaways in exchange for an honest review.-

You gotta be a certain kind of person for this.
I aint that person.

Things in the book:

Piss play, a tick, shit, graphic sex, says cunt all the time, pregnancy fetish, bad writing, & worms in places they shouldn't be. Dumb & nasty.

Altogether, it is just graphic for the sake of being graphic with no greater cause.

Worst book I've ever held.

[Rach A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no words (or should I say worms…)

———

A 'shocking, grotesque, and downright filthy body horror novel' from Alison Rumfitt, okay just imprint on my soul before this book is even out then fuck

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars I liked it

This was extreme, and even though I do read a lot of extreme/splatterpunk horror I was not prepared for this to be as extreme as it was coming from a major publisher. There is a lot of sexual/kink content, so definitely check all the content warnings if you need to. IMO, this is more intense as Tell Me I'm Worthless.

I love the cover and after reading it makes me that much more uncomfortable. This book is repulsive, kinky, disturbing, impressive, shocking, bizarre, political and puts you in the shoes of what it's like living as a trans person in Britain. The struggle of the everyday life, living with trauma, internalized self-hate, and relationships. I could not put this book down, I read it in two sittings, but I did have to take pause at a few parts in the story because it was so disgusting, I'm not mad about it though.

It did feel a little repetitive and kind of just felt like ramblings at some parts. I get the main points of the book but I think I might be missing the point of it as a whole, that's why I took some stars off but overall I enjoyed it. I loved TMIW more though.

Do I recommend this book, yes totally! Anyone who has read and enjoyed Tell me I'm Worthless, or reads extreme horror and splatterpunk.

Thanks to netgalley and Tor Publishing Group, Tor Nightfire for sharing a digital copy for me to read and review, as always, opinions are my own 🤘🏻💀🤘🏻