Book Review: Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen

Rating: 4 Stars

I recently dove into Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen, and what an experience it was! This debut novel is a rich blend of personal history and supernatural horror, inspired by Pedersen's own journey as an adopted child from Nanning, China, growing up on a Nebraska farm. The story revolves around Nick Morrow, who receives an unexpected invitation from his estranged father to return home. After escaping an abusive household, Nick thought he had left the past behind him for good. But when he arrives back at the farm, the ghosts of his childhood—and a few new ones—start to resurface.

Nick’s brother Joshua, who was disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, also finds himself drawn back into the family's toxic dynamics. While Joshua quickly rekindles a connection with their father, Nick is left to navigate a burgeoning romance with Emilia. However, as their relationship deepens, Nick begins to sense that Emilia's interest may be tied to something darker and more ancient than he could have ever imagined. Interspersed with haunting memories from Nick's adolescence, the novel tackles themes of inherited trauma and the complex layers of familial relationships, all while keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Now, let me get into my thoughts about the book. Man, was this book full of purple prose and atmospheric tension and unease! Honestly, I enjoyed every minute of it. Yes, it was slow-moving at times, and the writing was definitely on the flowery side. But that’s part of what made it so captivating. The prose is meticulously crafted, creating a slow burn that builds an air of dread that lingers long after you’ve turned the last page.

The way Pedersen weaves together elements of supernatural horror with deeply personal and emotional storytelling is nothing short of impressive. You can almost feel the weight of the past pressing down on Nick as he navigates his return to a place filled with both love and pain. The atmosphere is thick with a persistent sense of unease that kept me turning pages late into the night.

Overall, Sacrificial Animals is a beautifully haunting debut that perfectly balances lyrical writing with an eerie narrative. If you’re in the mood for a slow burn that explores the complexities of family and identity against a backdrop of ancient mythology, then this book is definitely worth your time!

⚠️This review was written based on personal opinions and experiences with the book. Individual preferences may vary⚠️

This book was certainly unexpected for me. I will start with saying that I am usually not a fan of the horror genre and tried to read this book from the perspective of a true fan. I initially thought that I might become a vegetarian based on the overly detailed descriptions of animal deaths. Early on, I switched from audio book to regular format so I could skim past these scenes. Overall, the prose is flowery even when horrifying and overly metaphorical - just not the writing style for me. And the story is nothing but depressing in my opinion. However, I rated up by trying to read from the perspective of someone who really likes this genre and think that fans will enjoy the slow build, the tension and the unveiling of the traps that the characters make for themselves. The ancient Chinese fantasy and fables were an interesting element that I wished had been played up a bit more. Anyway, trying to keep all this in mind but this book was not enjoyable to me in any format.
Trigger Warning - explicit animal and child abuse and gory scenes.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for the early copy of this book.
This is more of a literary horror which is unfortunately not for me. I liked the story enough but it was not holding my attention as much as I would have preferred.
I enjoyed the unique setting in rural Nebraska and the story about the fox. The ending was satisfying and I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a slower-built family horror.

Nick and his older brother Joshua were raised by their domineering father Carlyle Morrow on his sprawling property in rural Nebraska. Their mother passed away while they were still very young and so they barely remember her, but Carlyle sometimes says that Nick reminds him of her, not that it causes him to be treated any better. To the contrary, the man clearly favors his first born and is grooming him to one day take over the estate. Though neither boy is treated with anything approaching affection, each existing at the whims of their father’s moods which range from near total apathy at best to violent rage at worst.

While away at college, Joshua meets and marries Emilia, who Carlyle instantly abhors presumably due to her Asian descent. He banishes the couple from his property and vows never to speak to Joshua again, which means that when Nick grows up and moves to the city, the old man finds himself alone with only his greyhounds to keep him company.

In the present day, both boys are now in their forties when they are called by their father to return home as he is dying of cancer and wants them all back together. Neither is eager to visit but they both find themselves going regardless, and while things seem strangely pleasant at first, the 3 men quickly find themselves falling back into their old roles. Joshua and Carlyle roam the property’s vast acreage hunting and fishing, while Nick is relegated to remain at home with Emilia, where the pair find themselves forming a strange and potentially dangerous bond. As deep-seated resentments and jealousies percolate back to the surface, Nick remembers the cruelties that were thrust upon him in his childhood and can’t help but feel as if the entire family is on an unavoidable path towards their own destruction.

Sacrificial Animals meanders along in beautifully extravagant prose, with borderline poetic descriptions of people, places, and events. The pacing is languorous to a fault however, making some sections drag. While the relatively short chapters that alternate between past and present provide some momentum, the dream-like atmosphere bogs down the story.

Inspired by Chinese mythology, there is a dark parable woven through the novel about man’s mistreatment of nature, but this is also a tale about the ways we can be cruel to each other, toxic masculinity, and the ripples of abuse through time. Most readers should have no trouble guessing exactly what is going on well before the characters do, but once things reach their violent conclusion it still feels satisfying. Kailee Pedersen proves herself a writer to watch, even if this first novel might have benefitted from some tighter editing.

Sacrificials Animals by Kailee Pedersen was an intimate portrayal of revenge. The plot was wound so finely that by the time you’re stretched to the highest tension, you’re perspective gets completely shattered. I loved the deeply pervasive folk horror elements, and the conclusive mythology of it all. So well written was this story that it rolled into my imagination like waves of eerie poetry, depecting the isolation and terrors of toxic masculinity and racial prejudice. I loved this story and I think anyone looking for a gorgeous literary folk horror will eat this up.

Truly truly found this to be a gorgeous and atmospheric book - not as much spooky in a traditional "horror sense" as atmospheric and exhilarating.

So let me start by saying that this is not my preferred genre. I went into this book knowing that it might not be my style. However, I did enjoy the book. It took me a little bit to get into it and some of the hunting was hard to read. While blood doesn't bother me in real life reading about the death of animals some of them quite gory was a bit much for me.

I was intrigued by the characters. I was hopeful that Nick might get the happy life he deserved. I thought that Carlyle and to some extent Joshua were jackasses. I was bothered by Carlyle's callous treatment of his wife and son's death. Once they were gone they were never mentioned again. Carlyle was cruel to both boys, but Joshua seemed to be unfeeling about Nick's neglect even as Nick felt for Joshua.

These twist in the this book was interesting. I felt this story reminded me of the Brother's Grimm fairy tales.


Thank you to St .Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen is really not my kind of book, in so many ways. Number one, it’s third person narration. Don’t love it. Number two, it’s about abuse, both physical and emotional. Don’t love that, either. Their mother died giving birth to their brother. That left them with their father. The older brother, Joshua, did better than did his younger, brother, Nick. His personality type is too different from his father’s. His father wanted to make a man of him. Nick didn’t see manhood the same way. He left home, planning to never return. His brother had been ostracized for daring to marry an Asian woman so he was all that was left. He kept in touch with his father. He didn’t enjoy it, but now his father is dying, bone cancer, he says, and he wants them to come home. They did. Joshua got on better with his father, as always. Then, things started getting strange.

I didn’t love it. I can’t deny the author has a way with words and that she has a story to tell. It is just not a story I want to hear.

I was invited to read Sacrificial Animals by St Martin’s Press. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #StMartinsPress #KaileePedersen #SacrificialAnimals

The pleasure I felt reading this book about a bisexual man embroiled in a failing family that's falling to pieces under a culturally unexpected malevolence...! If your mood says, "make it fast," move on to the next cookie-cutter thriller. If your mood says, "give me the literary equivalent of edging," you opened the right book.

The pacing of the read itself is fast. The way the short chapters propel your reading is not, however, equaled by the pace of the story unfolding. The relocation into different periods of time that unfold the wide fan of motives and motivations is much more deliberate. I was surprised by this at first, but in time found my footing in this technique of moving the pages at a different rate from the story itself. In the end, the mechanism I used for dealing with this mismatch was the same one I'd used eons ago when I watched All My Children...the stories moved slower than the episodes.

That said...the story is very familiar. Using this technique helped a Gothic romance-cum-horror tale feel more exciting than that description does. Emilia, the exoticized Other, gets the modern reader's sympathy at first. She's rejected and devalues based on her Otherness. We respond to this behavior nowadays with complete sympathy for the Othered, as goodness only knows it was long past time for us to do as a default.

...but what if that could be used to wreak havoc...?

The author, an ethnic Chinese adoptee into Midwestern culture, decided she would use this very, very clever repurposing of the wide paranoid streak in US culture to create a Gothic story of supernatural entities causing havoc for, apparently, the hell of it. The nine-tailed fox of East Asian folklore seems, more often than not, to just do stuff to see what'll happen next. That seems to me, when attributed to conscious entities, like a wicked, immoral, rotten-souled thing to do, as it is guaranteed to hurt someone who does not know what they're getting into when they fall for the fox-spirit's lures. One can argue that, really basically, Nick fucking his brother's wife for any reason at all is just cause for everything that follows.

I agree.

But everyone else? They didn't ask for this.

So runs my usual horror-themed read response. Like Walschots's Hench, I've always seen super"heroes" as agents of chaos and misery; I watched Poltergeist and asked my then-date, "what the hell are these people gonna do when their insurance won't replace the house?" (He broke up with me a few weeks later.) It doesn't help that I do not believe in The Supernatural, or spirits, or gods. (The vastness of just measurable spacetime isn't awe-inspiring enough for you?) That's one steep hill of disbelief to climb for one little story.

Where I got invested in Author Pedersen's iteration of it was back to that soap-opera technique of unfolding the fan behind the shadowplay of the story. I was constantly thinking "what's that going to mean?" and "what's his zipper doing down?" not focusing on the action in the moment.

For some of y'all, that's the nail in the coffin right there. Good. This will not be a good read for someone whose story in-the-moment expectations are to move fromcause to effect and ever onwards, kicked i the hindquarters by heavt boots of Action. A more satisfied reader will come from the ranks of the curious ones who climb hills to look around from the top, then walk down to look at the top.

Satisfying reading, though not in the easy, ordinary way.

This story is told in third person in a now and then format. It follows Nick as he returns to the family farm in Nebraska at his father’s request since he is dying from cancer. Nick also calls his older brother Josh and convinces him to visit as well since their father insists that he wants to reconcile. While I thought the story was well done in parts, it really wasn’t a read that I enjoyed all that much and yet I kept going to the end. The audiobook was expertly narrated by Yung-I Chang. He did a fantastic job telling this story of two brothers caught up in their desire to please an abusive father. I primarily listened to this read, only checking the text to verify a few things.

Carlyle pitted his two sons against each other from a young age, telling Josh that he would inherit the farm and Nick that he was weak. He was a bitter about the hand life had dealt him and abusive in many ways, both physically and emotionally. When Josh marries a Chinese woman, Carlyle disowns him and Josh leaves with his new wife. Nick was also fascinated with the wife, Emilia, and the fascination continues into more in the now timeline. The now and then format was a little muddled. I often couldn’t tell which section I was in due to Nick’s reminisces in the now timeline.

There is a secondary subplot about a huli jing, a nine-tailed fox from Chinese mythology. I thought the concept was fascinating, but I didn’t like the way it was incorporated into the story. I felt like it justified Carlyle’s derogatory thoughts and actions. Also, despite the fact that I had no particular love for Josh or Nick, I also felt like they were abuse victims and while the story did a good job of showing perpetuating cycles of abuse, there was a sins of the father visited against the sons theme here that I wasn’t comfortable with given the situation. While the abuse story was well done, the mythological part didn’t work for me in context though I would love to know more about it.

Recommended to horror lovers that enjoy dysfunctional family dynamics and Chinese mythology. Watch any trigger warnings about abuse, including animals.

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for a copy provided for an honest review.

Kailee Pedersen's debut novel Sacrificial Animals is described as gothic horror. The Nebraska setting is bleak, the language stilted, old-timey.

Told from the perspective of Nick Morrow we begin in the past (the novel alternates between "Then" and "Now" chapters) when he's a child of thirteen, tracking a fox with his father Carlyle. The fox is after their chickens and Carlyle won't stand for that. The violence that ensues, in that first chapter, was so upsetting that I almost didn't finish. This novel contains some brutally cruel imagery.

Pedersen methodically ups the tension with each chapter. It's a slow burn, filled with family drama. I kept waiting for the horror, thinking that maybe the abuse Nick endures at the hands of his sadistic father was the horror. Nick and his brother Joshua are called back to the family homestead when Carlyle tells them that he's dying and wants to reconcile (Carlyle disowned Joshua when he married Emilia, a woman of Asian descent and Carlyle hasn't seen them since they left home).

The four of them under one roof is unsettling. Odd things are happening, weird behavior. It's only towards the end (about 80%) that the real horror kicks in, and you can't miss it. Subtlety goes out the window and we're caught in a violent frenzy. The family will never be the same.

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC.

I'm not sure if I've ever read a slow-burn, supernatural horror, literary fiction based on Chinese mythology, set in Nebraska on a creepy 1000-acre plot of farmland owned by a child-abusing asshole of a dad and featuring two timeframes, the "then" of the past sharing with us the queer coming of age of an abused boy just trying to survive his hellish childhood and the "now" of him at 43 coming back for a final visit to answer the call of his dying father looking for reconciliation, joined by his golden boy brother who was disowned for marrying a Chinese woman and said Chinese woman who is beautiful and beguiling and maybe a little of something else that kept me turning pages even though I really wanted the horror part to kick in and then at 80% when it did it was actual perfection and the ending was full of stunning retribution and actually made me gasp out loud, but if not now I have and I probably never will again.

First, I want to give a huge thank you to St. Martins Press publishing for providing me an ARC copy via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Although I didn't love this book like I really wanted to, I can appreciate it. I got through the first few chapters and was ready to call it quits. It started off really slow and to me almost read like a poem. As I continued reading, it got better. It picked up pace a little bit, but I still was struggling to keep reading. This book is definitely a slow burn, like many others have said. Some thought the ending was worth the wait. I unfortunately disagree. For me it was still really lackluster. Nothing really exciting happened, and it just happened suddenly within a few chapters. Nothing really came together and made sense in my mind. Then it just ended so abruptly, and left me even more confused. I feel this book would've been great as a novella or short story. There were so many extra back stories and details that I didn't really feel made an impact on the story. Although I didn't love this book, I'm still glad I read it. It was an interesting concept and theory. And I did love that there was some Chinese mythology involved. 2.5/5

Thank you NetGalley!

This is a very slow burn horror book. I really liked the twist and the infusion of Chinese Mythology. I wish there was more action but the ending made it all worth it. I’m excited to read more from the author in the future.

This book unfortunately was not for me. The trauma and gory details are huge triggers for me. Going into this book, I didn't know this.

Thank you to the publisher for the book.

Sacrificial Animals by Kaylee Peterson, I did not like this book about a man raising his two boys Nick and Josh and he loves Josh and was abusive to Nick but he disowned Josh who marries an Asian American while away at college leaving Nick to suffered the aftermath. The book was told with to POV’s, past and present and at times I was confused as to which one I was in while reading the story. It said the book was inspired by her being adopted in China and raised on a farm and since that is not a storyline you hear every day it is why I requested the book, but sadly that isn’t at all what the story is about. #NetGalley, #KayleePeterson, #SacrificialAnimals,

In Sacrificial Animals, author Kailee Pedersen blends horror and Chinese mythology to create one blood soaked, violent, suspenseful, and completely compelling debut novel. Set in Nebraska on a thousand acre farm owned by cruel and despotic widower, Carlyle Morrow, who rules over his domain and his two sons, Nick and Joshua, with an iron fist, showing more kindness to his dogs than to the boys, especially Nick. The story is told mainly from Nick’s perspective and is divided between then and now, ‘then’ describing Nick's teen years after his mother dies and after Joshua leaves for college and ‘now’ is thirty years later. The horror throughout most of this story is the kind to be found in real life and the monsters are almost all of the human variety.

The story begins when Nick, second and least favoured son, is thirteen and it isn’t long before things devolve into blood and violence, the kind of violence to be found in any rural area, involving a fox, but it is a foreshadowing of what is to come. A few years later, Joshua leaves for school and eventually returns with a wife, a beautiful woman, Emilia, of Chinese heritage. But Carlyle, racist that he is, meets them at the door, refuses them entrance, and disowns Joshua. They won’t return for thirty years when Carlyle calls Nick, telling him he has cancer and wants him and Joshua to return, even extending the invitation to Emilia.

It isn’t long before old rivalries and jealousies arise between the two brothers as Carlyle displays his old favouritism towards Joshua. At the same time, Nick finds himself drawn more and more to Emilia, who despite all the years, looks as young and beautiful as she had when Nick first saw her all those years ago. It is here in this final section of the story that mythical elements begin to rise in the story providing an extremely grisly ending to the tale.

It should be noted that this is not always an easy tale to read despite, or perhaps because, much of the violence described in the story can be found anywhere in real life including cruelty to animals and child abuse. More than once, I had to put the book down and almost marked it as dnf although I’m glad I didn’t. Overall, despite this, it is a well-written book that kept drawing me back despite myself, with plenty of chills and a hell of a shocking end that I have no doubt will keep even the most jaded horror fan glued to the page.

Thanks to Netgalley and St Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

Ummmm well that shit was wild. I just idk. I mean there were a lot of things.

I feel like these kinds of horror books always make me think to not fuck with animals.

It’s also possible I couldn’t explain to somebody what this book was about if I even tried

Thank you to the St. Martins Press Early Reader Program for the gifted copy!

Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen mixes a dark ancient Chinese Mythology reminiscent of the huli jing with trauma and slow burn drama.

Though this has a speculative horror twist I felt the focus was more settled in the human experience. Brothers who come from an abusive past are summoned back to their childhood home at their father's final request. The story is told between a Then and Now timeline through the eyes of Nick. I personally preferred the present timeline that had more of an atmospheric tension that gets under your skin.

The past experiences are drawn out in a prose rich style with an almost cloying feeling. Even though some of the events felt repetitive in the past it still built a generational story that feeds the present timeline.

The last 15% is where everything comes crashing together in a vicious and vengeful glory. It's the poetic cap to an author whose melded personal and cultural with a arterial spray of folklore.

The audio is read by Yung-I Chang. I liked the mellow reading tone but would've enjoyed a smidgen more emotion for some areas. Overall, I enjoyed jumping between both platforms and found myself reading the present and listening to the past.

DNF @ 18%

Thank you to the author Kailee Pedersen, publishers St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS. All views are mine.

I imagine the publisher was attracted to this manuscript because it comes from such a unique perspective, as the author was born in Nanking and was adopted and raised in Nebraska. Unfortunately, I can't find my way to agree that this is either a well-written book or a story told interestingly.

Reading notes:

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. Some really grisly animal cruelty in this book, which is a horror trope I don't like.

2. A few style issues. Hyperbole can be a great literary tool. But sometimes, it just causes clarity issues. Like here, on page 23:<i> Without the gun he has no power in this house. His father could strike him dead where he stands.</i> It really had not been established that this was a household where murder was a danger. At least not yet. Also, if every event in a book is described as a calamity, every meal as a feast, every feeling as a flood, it gets not only repetitious for the reader, but inauthentic. The syntax is unnecessarily complex: <i>Years from now, when he is man enough to stand taller than his father, the garden will not rise to bloom again; it will lie fallow and barren as their family tree.</i> p24 Also, the lack of quotation marks doesn't appear to have stylistic meaning, but does cause clarity issues. I'm finding this a miserable read. Was that the point of this curmudgeonly style? I just can't finish it.