In that rural stretch of Nebraska, Carlyle eked out a nice though isolated farm for himself and his family. Stag’s Crossing was 1000 acres at its prime. After his wife died, still carrying the third of their children in her belly, he wound up an even harder and harsher man than he had been. More set in his ways. Abusive, so he could raise his sons to be strong like himself and violent, too. Nick and Joshua have grown into men who have no real liking for their father and his violent ways. Joshua went and married the unacceptable Eugenia, a woman with Asian heritage. Nick stayed on longest but eventually struck out on his own, moving out of the country completely. They might not like the man, but they continue to make excuses for him. Overlook his roughest edges …

When Carlyle calls his estranged sons home (even inviting the hated wife of one of them), the two men’s suspicions are raised. Carlyle is sick, ready to hand over his personal belongings to his kids. When he chooses to leave the farm and half his money to Joshua, the eldest and father’s favorite though recently estranged son, Carlyle is shocked to learn he wants nothing to do with the farm or Carlyle’s legacy. Nick is the most likely to want it, but Carlyle cannot stand his softness—hating the man ever since his reservations, early on, for the way he botched dealing with a fox prowling their lands.

What’s more, Nick is seeing Eugenia in a new light, fascinated by her, enchanted. Will he move on his desires, and threaten to stoke his brother’s vengeful nature?

And what of Eugenia herself? She seems to have an agenda all her own, which she keeps close to the vest. Will her presence drive wedges even deeper between these men? Drama has invaded the Morrow family’s Nebraska homestead of Kailee Pedersen’s moving and unsettling dark novel, Sacrificial Animals. If it is to find some kind of resolution, mostly likely it will not be a peaceful one.

Some novels take pains to present a familiar and comforting world before injecting drama and darkness into it and then letting those antisocial elements tug at characters we’ve come to like. The Stephen King school of horror and dark suspense is typically focused on this kind of narrative movement. It’s certainly effective. However, Kailee Pedersen’s book has zero interest in emulating that model.

Instead, what we have is a midwestern gothic built upon open country and enclosed home fronts. Here, broken and bruised people whose proximity to one another will only cause more hurt are forced under a roof together. Half the book is spent on this homecoming and the hopes, desires, and fallouts that come from choices both good and bad. The other half, woven in alternating chapters, is historical material, flashes back to how these people came to be who they are today.

This is a book that is no stranger to cruelty both to the people who live here as well as the animals they encounter. In the opening chapter alone, we have a disturbing incident where Carlyle and Nick chase a fox, find its kits instead, and then the patriarch demands his son feed them to their dogs. How the two men react to one another as well as the event itself tells us a lot about the people they are and those they will become, but it can also be hard to read.

So, trigger warning for sensitive readers: this book is no kindlier to animals than it is to its humans. Everyone suffers.

Kailee Pedersen’s novel is an engaging and unsettling portrait of the kinds of men who call the rural American Midwest home. It’s a piece delivered with a distinct and clear style, reminiscent of the kind of prose Cormac McCarthy employed in works like Blood Meridian, The Border Trilogy, and Outer Dark. This is not limited to eschewing some grammatical marks (like quotation marks) but also a lean and muscular prose style. It serves the narrative nicely. If there’s any question about how deliberate a choice this voice and style is, the author weaves in some clever nods to that departed master, including calling the region of Stag’s Crossing “no country for young boys.”

Much of the opening of the book is focused on three men’s developing characters through chapters that alternate between contemporary times and flashbacks (employing a Then or Now alongside the chapter number to clue readers as to where we are in the timeline). However, the book really opens up in unexpected ways when Pedersen brings Eugenia onto the page.

Her presence brings Sacrificial Animals something sorely missing from much of McCarthy’s best works, an examination of the women as more than sounding boards, victims, or love interests. Eugenia is an opinionated, strong woman who doesn’t put up with Carlyle’s nonsense. She has known his racism, has no tolerance for his pretense that he’s turned a new leaf, and takes his sons to task for their own assumptions and behaviors as well. And the more we see of her, the more we start to wonder if she is playing a long game with these men, if she is something more than she seems, something as mythic as the landscape itself.

The violence in the book is challenging, not because it’s written with the gleeful style of a splatterpunk weaving shock with social commentary or an extreme horror writer looking to turn a few stomachs but because it is given the same specific attention and carefully considered language as conversation, as matters of fathers and sons or wives and husbands or brothers to each other. There is a decidedly high level of casual cruelty in Sacrificial Animals, which leaves us to wonder just who are the animals and to what ideal are they being slaughtered.

Sacrificial Animals is an engaging and unsettling read. A lovely slice of literary fiction that also happens to be a meditation on rather gruesome topics. Kailee Pedersen’s writing is clean and evocative, poetic sometimes and straightforward at others. Never too showy and always inviting us to look a little deeper into the cadences and the subtext. The prose is playful without being light. The narrative is humorous without being comic and it is horrific without being self-indulgent. This is a deep, dark, and lovely novel in all the best possible ways.
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A special thank you to MacMillan and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen is a dark debut that oozes menace and made me genuinely uncomfortable while reading , which I am sure is what the author intended. Influenced by both Chinese mythology and the author's upbringing on a Nebraska farm, the first word that comes to mind to describe this book is ominous, even though it seemed like not much was happening I still found myself drawn back to the book and unwilling to put it down.
The writing style is quite flowery, there is a lot of purple prose, which personally I do not mind but I can imagine some readers will find off putting. The pacing is definitely on the slower side, especially for the first three quarters of the book, but when things start to happen it really picks up pace before a rather abrupt conclusion. None of the characters are particularly likeable, younger son Nick is the best of a bad bunch, but even he is not very sympathetic. I can't exactly say I enjoyed this book, but it was certainly an experience and I thinks fans of literary horror will find it worth checking out. I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Oof.

I probably should write more than that.

So... I didn't like this book.

The story is told in "then" and "now" timelines. The problem is that these timelines feel interchangeable. In the "now" timeline, the characters are obviously older, and we have the addition of the enigmatic Emilia. Otherwise, the dynamics are the same, and it doesn't feel like there's much of a (or any) character arc.

Through most of the book, nothing happens. It's all repetitive, slow nothingness told in overly flowery prose. None of the characters are likable, and honestly, they're barely even interesting. The father is abusive and hateful. The sons are jealous and hateful. And that's about it.

At about the 80% mark, something happens that's just weird. I mean, I wasn't all that surprised, but it just seemed tossed in with no real explanations as to the how of it all. And that's when the action and violence happens in this horror novel.

Then it's done. And I'm left wondering why I bothered.

I received a free eARC from St. Martin's Press, and a free audiobook download from MacMillan Audio. I started with the print, planning to alternate. Not only was I bored, but the author chose not to use quotation marks, and I was incredibly frustrated as I tried to sort when someone was speaking or thinking, or when it was exposition.

I switched to the audio, which was marginally better. At least I didn't have to think about what was being spoken aloud. The narrator did a good job.

*Thanks (and apologies!) to St. Martin's Press and MacMillan Audio for the free copy and download.*

While reading this book, I was deeply drawn in. The writing was very magnetic and had me coming back for more. The actual story I didn't find all that engaging. For a horror book, it just didn't strike the sense of dread I think it intended. I wasn't expecting jump scares, but I think I was supposed to get a daunting realization that something was just deeply wrong with this family and I just didn't. Even the "twist" at the end was not a shock to me. However, the quality of the writing was wonderful. I could probably read this author's grocery lists or daily routine and I still want more. Perhaps I wasn't reading it as intellectually as I was supposed to and maybe that's why I missed the horror aspect of the story. Don't get me wrong, the story itself was interesting enough, but it just wasn't what did it for me. I think if you like more of an intellectual horror, this is a book you would enjoy, or if you just like quality writing.

Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pederson is a darkly atmospheric story about a toxic family environment, mixed with Chinese mythology. The story tells about Nick Morrow and his relationship with his boorish, abusive, emotionally distant father. It also touches on his older brother who bullies him, then leaves him for college, a career, and a wife. The brothers relationship becomes equally strained as Emilia, Joshua's wife, is seen as an outsider bent on tearing the family asunder.
The book is very slow paced. It is described as a horror but it's not scary or horrific. It more an in-depth analysis of toxic relationships, coupled with abusive acts. It tells the story in two time periods, the past and the present. If you have knowledge of Chinese mythology then you know where the story is heading pretty early on. The last quarter of the book picks up the pace and rushes to the ending.
Kailee Pederson's writing shows off her intelligence as the book is littered with obscure and atypical wording. I found myself looking up quite a lot of words that I did not know before which made the pace of the book slower than normal. Her details throughout the story were graphic and she created the setting masterfully. It evoked a very gothic thriller feel to the story. If you enjoy stories with dysfunctional family dynamics, you will certainly enjoy this book.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy of the book. The opinions are my own.

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Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
Sacrificial Animals
by Kailee Pedersen (Goodreads Author)
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Review of the book: 2.75
There are many things I loved about this book but more things I didn't. Some parts of the plot didn't make a lot of sense, some parts were simply too long and repetitive, I wish it had been 50 pages left.
I was also very excited for the ending to come as it felt like the author put in place obvious hints but then there was no build up to the one big scene, and it was just "this happens, this happens, end", it fell flat and was quite disappointing.


Thank you for the opportunity to read this book.

"Inspired by Kailee Pedersen's own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up on a farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.

The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.

But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices. Nick puts the time to good use and his flirtation with Emilia quickly blooms into romance. Though not long after the affair turns intimate, Nick begins to suspect that Emilia's interest in him may have sinister, and possibly even ancient, motivations.

Punctuated by scenes from Nick's adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake."

Yep, here for the total family collapse.

I spent a decent amount of time deciding what to say about this book. Though it is not my lowest ranked of this year, it will be memorable because of how much work it took me to get through it.

I don't believe in writing bad reviews, as I know authors work tirelessly in many ways the public will never see. So let me start by listing what I did enjoy about this book:

• Something about this book is deeply evocative. You can feel the tendrils of it from the very beginning, and throughout the book, you can feel it building in the background. The mystery of what leaves you hooked enough to stay in the story.

• I’m always a fan of books that use animals as major plot lines. As this is a mythological, supernatural horror, it calls back to mythology and folk tales of ancient days.

• When we finally got to the big reveal of THE supernatural horror, I was beyond ready. It was cleverly done, and I really could read another book by this author, that goes more in-depth into this character’s backstory.

But for the sake of transparency, as this arc was kindly gifted to me, here was what I struggled with:

• The vocabulary was unnecessarily large. I’m fairly well-read, but I spent the first 25% of the book looking up at least one or two words per every page or so. Finally, I was able to turn off something in my brain that allowed me to just read without thinking.

• I would label this as literary with a horror aspect. The horror is an undercurrent that doesn’t show itself until the last 15% of the book. So if you’re looking for horror, that might cause someone to DNF. I almost did.

• I did feel as though much of the first 30% could have been condensed. I understood Carlyle’s violent disposition, the sibling unbalance, and life on Stag’s Crossing fairly quickly. Some of the actual story is necessary for the final pay-off, in a way that I didn’t expect (and did appreciate.) Overall, I struggled to read through the bits that felt repetitive.

• Lastly, the writing itself was difficult for me to find pace with. I finally realized that we were in the head of the main character - an emotional man (who is hiding it.) He’s a writer, who is viewing his childhood with a measure of brutality and romanticism.

I’m writing all of this out in detail because I do truly believe this book has a certain audience that will love it, the way that it deserves. I’m not in that particular audience, but over a section, just watching them have a good time. Go you! Enjoy your party!

*Thank you to Netgalley for sending me a copy of this novel*

Sacrificial Animals follows the main character Nick in two timelines: one in the past, when as an adolescent he lived in the farm with his father and brother and the second in the present, as he returns to the farm with his brother to take care of their dying father.

This novel promises to be horror mixed with mythology but for the most part of the novel the mythological elements are so subtle you can almost miss them. I did not like that the synopsis spoiled most of the novel; some of the things, such as Nick's affair with his brother's wife, do not even happen until around 60-70% of the novel.

I also think (as many of the comments that I have already read around here) that this novel would have benefited from a shorter format. It seems like not much happens in general, in the past nor in the present. The novel feels repetitive because the scenes of the past are so similar to the scenes of the present, to the point that you can only know where they are because the character of Emilia is there.

I didn't really connect with the characters and they were pretty unlikable. Although this alone is not a reason for me to dislike a novel, as sometimes I enjoy reading about unlikable characters. If I had to choose one character it would be Nick, as I enjoyed reading about his past the most. Alas, I didn't like him in the present. I was rooting for his evolution and for his growth to be reflected in the relationship with his father, but he acted the same as a 17 year old and as a 37 year old. Plus, his relation with his brother's wife felt so creepy.

I liked the writing overall but the animal cruelty was too much for me. I will be checking out further releases from this author tho!

3.5
Not sure how to define this one. Interesting story and good use of past snd present. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

Sacrificial Animals
Kailee Pedersen
8/20/24

Rating: 4.5 / 5

Ok, so ...

This gothic/supernatural horror novel of generational trauma, toxic masculinity, and revenge is absolutely dripping with darkness, atmosphere, and a constant sense of uneasiness prevailing over all.

Kailee Pedersen's writing is elegant and descriptive, with prose that's almost lyrical, even while she's describing some pretty terrifying scenes.

I really, really enjoyed this horror novel. It's told in flashbacks and present day, and I was really invested in both timelines, which made it a page turner for me...
(Although some of the flashback scenes did became a bit redundant... and maybe the book could have shaved off 30 pages or so.)

But other than these tiny "issues" that have more to do with my personal preferences than anything else, I'd be hard-pressed to think of any other critiques. I truly loved everything else about this novel.
And that last quarter ... Wow. *chef's kiss*!
I love a horror novel that sticks the landing... and this one nailed it!

I highly recommend this one.

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin's Press, and Kailee Pedersen for this ARC eBook and audiobook in exchange for my honest feedback.

*Full review on publication date

I am obsessed with chinese folklore. I did three years of Chinese History classes in college for no reason other than folklore.
However, I didn't realize that this was based on one of my favorite stories until I got closer to the end and I was blown away! At first this story seems like an unrelatable story of a boy with a cruel father and then his issues coping as a man. I loved child Nick and his softness. I was so heartbroken over the way he was treated and the things his dad made him do, BUT I had to talk to myself about it all because I am a city girl and even though I have chickens, I have never had to do anything to defend them. Cities are nice that way. We only worry about neighbor dogs.


This is one of the deepest and most profound stories I have ever read. Also that ending! I will be raving about this one for months. It blew me away.

Kailee Pederson's first novel, Sacrificial Animals, is a beautifully written story reflecting ancient tales from Chinese mythology in a very slow burn sort of fashion. While there are notes of everyday horrors throughout the story (toxic masculinity, racism, death of loved ones, etc.), the tension the horror genre is typically known for doesn't hit until a good 3/4 of the way into the book. If a slow build-up is something you love, then this book is for you.

I predominantly listened to this book in audiobook format, but did occasionally follow along with the digital copy. The narration of this book on audio was very well done. The narrator switched between the characters well, making it easy to tell the characters apart from one another when there was dialogue. I chose to speed up the audio to 2x speed as I felt the original recording was too slow, and the narrator spoke clearly enough for this not to interfere with my comprehension of the story.

For a first novel, I felt this was very well done. However, I did feel it was a bit bland for my liking. I struggled with whether or not the flat tone was something done purposeful by the author as a means of who Nick was, or whether it was a sort of flaw within the writing itself. I'm personally leaning towards it being a sort character flaw with Nick as the overall vibes I was getting from his character put me on the edge of discomfort that felt somewhat intentional. I found myself often wondering when the story was going to pick up, and when it finally did it felt slightly predictable. I did appreciate the role Chinese mythology played in the story as I feel that is an area of void in my reading.

Overall, this was an interesting read that I would recommend to a certain number of readers. Not one I would be begging others to read in order to have someone to discuss it with, but I would be interested in trying out other works this author creates in the future.

Thank you St Martin’s Press for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Trigger Warnings: animal abuse, birth trauma and infant death, child abuse, generalized violence.

Sacrificial animals is a highly atmospheric, dread-inducing story of a family wracked by paranoia and ruled by a cruel patriarch. Summoned home as the father of the family is dying, the two sons of the family grapple with expectations, a difficult childhood, and the arrival of a fourth player; Emilia. Emilia is the wife of the elder son, but the attraction between her and the younger son is palpable and destructive.

The prose of this book has an interesting staccato, a brief, arresting rhythm. It’s notable as well that the author has made the choice not to use quotation marks when writing dialogue. This gives the book a somewhat stylistic feeling, which does give it a highly distinctive voice.

I thought that the last 30 or so pages of the book were by far the most vivid and interesting. However, the build up to the payoff is very slow. For a reader that doesn’t have a lot of patience, this could be a great turn off. The first 220 or so pages of the book have Dickensian levels of misery without any of the requisite charm. This is explained in the quick and violent ending scenes, but I could see this being too daunting and exhausting for many readers. I somewhat anticipated that this was a slow build of dread to a larger crescendo, but I’ll admit that this took me a long time to get through and I found myself losing motivation. I think that’s the greatest issue of this book. While suspense building is critical to good horror, it takes far too long to get there, without many small indications of where the story is going.

My final thought was that the use of very unusual vocabulary words stuck out to me throughout the book. Often times the author seemed to stick unnecessarily sophisticated words. I’ve never seen the word “anodyne” appear so many times in a single mass market novel.

It took over halfway through the book for the plot to start picking up and the slow-burn aspect to disappear. I do wish there was more of a focus on Emilia since she was the ‘problem maker.’

The story was interesting; I did find the use of extremely uncommon words unusual. The pace was incredibly slow, which made it hard to pay attention.

Sacrificial Animals is a slow-burn literary horror that blends Chinese mythology with midwestern white America and cycles of familial abuse. It took me a bit to get into but ultimately gripped me up through the pitch perfect ending. The author drew on her experiences being adopted from China and growing up on a farm in Nebraska in the late 90's.

Alternating between past and present timelines, we follow Nick Morrow, the younger son of a racist, paranoid, and violent man who has only become worse since the death of his wife. He tries to raise his sons in his own image, pushing them into fishing and hunting. Nick is secretly queer and deeply traumatized by the violence he experiences as a child. As an adult, his father says he is dying. So he asks his children to come home. Including Nicks older brother who was disowned for marrying an Asian woman. Past and present wind together, as dread and horror slowly build. Again, it may be slow to start and it definitely leans literary, but I thought it was brilliant. The audio narration isn't my favorite but it's okay. I received a copy of this book for review via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This was just a great read. I was just drawn in to this story so thoroughly. I just had so much fun reading this story.

Sacrificial Animals follows two sons of a cruel father, Nick and Joshua. Decades after leaving their Nebraska farm home, their father has asked the boys to return as a deathbed request. Upon arriving, Joshua grows closer to his father while Nick and Joshua’s wife warm to each other. But does Emilia have alternative motives for their affair?
This book goes between two timelines - then and now - with the youngest brother as the main character. We see Nick as a child growing up in his father’s household and now as a 40 year old. I definitely prefer the now chapters. Though the then chapters provide some good backstory for the readers to understand the family dynamic, it was a lot about hunting and felt a bit repetitive.
The book is a bit of a slow burn, but picks up in the last quarter. Then it becomes terrifying and intriguing. If you know anything about Chinese mythology, the direction this story was taking was a bit obvious right off the bat, but it was still a fun ending.
I typically like horror, but I found that this book used such a sophisticated language, especially in the beginning, that I had to work harder to understand what the author was trying to say.

I appreciate the invitation to read this book, but although it sounded good in the synopsis I just can not connect with this writing style and am choosing not to finish reading it.