This book was really not my cup of tea, It was boring and pretentious and not at all interesting, It could have been more effective as a 15 page short story, but it was overwritten and trying to be something it wasn't. It took me two and a half months to read something that should have taken a few days. I found that almost nothing happened until the 80% mark and by then it was much too little much too late. This novel could have really used an editor and really simplify the writing so the story was more of a central focus. There was absolutely no tension, no characterization, and no humanistic elements. I couldn't connect with any character and couldn't connect to the story. It didn't delve deep into the themes of generational and systemic trauma, only brushed the surface and I was unsatisfied.

I'm not sure I will read anything else from this author.

Here is my full review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6585567694

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's press for the EARC.
This was a wonderfully written story that is a bit slow at times. It has a great sense of mystery on what is truly happening. There's hints all through on what Emilia is but the pieces aren't so easly put together.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to be able to read and review this book!

This was so interesting. I couldn’t put it down.

2.5 stars

Was this a bad book? No, not exactly. But it was written at a high reading level and with all the stress of this year's elections, I just had a hard time focusing on this book, as evidenced by how long it took me to finish it. The story moves back and forth in time, and while the story is told from Nick's point-of-view (I'm not sure I could have handled multiple POVs), there is enough overlap between what he felt then and what he feels now that I couldn't always keep track of where we were in time. Moreover, I didn't like any of the characters, although I suppose in some ways, Nick was the most potentially likable character there was. But the damage wrought by his father and brother, as well as the loss of his mother left a broken and not very likable guy.

I liked the melding of horror and Chinese mythology, and I've read other stories of the nine-tail fox (the most recent of them being Red Winter by Annette Marie, which I loved), so it was interesting reading Kailee Pedersen's take on the myth. This was much darker in many ways, and there were moments when I wanted to yell at Nick to run far, far away (although I'm not so sure that would have helped).

I mentioned earlier the prose, and while it was beautifully done, I'm grateful I was reading this on a kindle when I could hold down the word to look it up because this happened often. Perhaps I just needed to be in a different frame of mind, but while I respect the author's writing (it really is well-written), it just didn't connect with me in a way that made me want to keep on reading. I am glad I did persevere, because I appreciated the ending, and for that, I rounded up in my rating. But overall, this was not really my cup of tea. I suspect, based on the mixed reviews, that people either love it or are bored by it. I wasn't bored exactly, but I didn't feel connected the way I was expecting to. Still, I am glad I gave it a try.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a very interesting read that I liked but didn't love. I think it lands with a 3.5 stars rounded up.

Congrats to the author on her debut novel; writing and publishing a book is a remarkable achievement.

I was really hoping to love book this but sadly I did not. Folklore and horror combined sounds great but the story and characters were a bit predictable (for me at least). None of the 3 main characters had any redeeming qualities and I disliked all of them. The story started out with terrible animal cruelty that made me accurately and correctly guess the end of the book and really the whole story. The story was monotonous and drawn out, very very slow moving.

I will probably give the author another chance with her next book.

**Thanks to the author and publisher for the e-arc I received via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.**

An interesting premise with an eerily sinister tone and foreboding for days, this atmospheric horror novel creatively incorporates Chinese mythology into the story. If you're a fan of graphically gory fiction, past and present timelines and rich, complex writing, you might enjoy this one.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for access to the e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was not a fan. Very tedious to read, very monotonous, didn't like Nick AT ALL. Same themes, and literally nothing happened until the very end of the book. I almost didn't finish, but the synopsis sounded so good, I was like, something has to happen right? Right?????

The same themes just kept repeating over and over: abusive dad, a crazy connection to stags crossing, dad favors Joshua, Nick slept with a man, and he's never been able to forget about it. Just to sprinkle in something positive, the time shifts were well done. Sometimes authors get things jumbled up when it comes to time jumps, but she did a good job here.

Overall disappointed because I was so looking forward to this book.

This one got kicked down my TBR list and took longer to read than I expected. It wasn't fantastic, but it was enjoyable. I'd love to read another work by this author.

This was not a pleasant read for me. I thought the premise was intriguing but I was not a fan of the flowery writing. I hated the characters. Nick was just miserable and he constantly felt sorry for himself, his father was an abusive a-hole, his brother Joshua was another a-hole.

There is a lot of animal death in this book, which I did not like. It is gruesome, especially the deaths of the baby foxes in the beginning.

The story moved very slowly, and the action did not pick up until the very end. I was so ready to dnf the book multiple times, but I pushed on through. The ending is what made me change my rating. I was going to rate this 2 stars but the ending moved it up to a 3.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an eARC of this book via NetGalley for review.

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.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio for sending me an ARC of this book! I’ve decided to DNF this book at 61% because I don’t like the writing style. The story is too slow. I don’t care about the characters or what’s going on in the story.

Meet the Morrow family. Carlyle is the patriarch of the clan, a racist man who intimidates and terrorizes his sons, Joshua and Nick. Nick, the youngest of the two, faces a majority of the violence and rage from his father. The family lives together at Stag’s Crossing, a grand estate built on a large parcel of land, but when Joshua falls in love with and decides to marry an Asian woman he is quickly disowned by his father and sent packing. Years later, when Carlyle is knocking on Death’s door, Carlyle allows Joshua and his wife Emilia to return to Stag’s Crossing, but this isn’t the happy family reunion some had been hoping for.

Sacrificial Animals is a supernatural horror novel whose roots can be found in Chinese mythology. It is a novel that explores not only mythology but race and family drama as well. I was intrigued by the premise, but it moved a little too slow. I also feel like there needed to be more of a focus on Emilia. The narrative jumps between timelines, taking the reader on a journey both within the present and to the past, which is a literary device I often enjoy, but I feel like Pedersen was trying to do too much and this would have worked better as a novella.

The audiobook for Sacrificial Animals was well done, however I really began to enjoy the audiobook more at ¾ of the way through the novel because that is when things really started to pick up. The pacing and inflection were good and I was drawn into the novel as much as I could be at various points within the narrative, but being a slow-burn novel I struggled to maintain focus on the audio at times, especially when I did not have the book in my hands.

SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS
Kailee Pedersen

AITA or is it hard to find good horror books to read? It took me all year to find only a handful of reasonable contenders, and this was one of the top ones I read this year.

In SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS we are following Nick. Nick was living his life, that what it was, minding his own business when he receives a letter from his estranged abusive father. He must return home as he has responsibilities and things to do and take care of. It is the last thing he wants to do right now, but it is the only thing that seems like the right thing to do.

The only relationship more complicated than the one between Nick and his father is the one between Nick and his brother Joshua. They lived a long and hard childhood together. They might be the only ones who know the bounds of their father's abusiveness, If not for Emilia, who knows it the most.

What will happen when all three of them return home and are made to live again in the confines of the only hell they have ever known? Only time and SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS will tell. And you’ll have to read it to hear the story yourself.

This was great. I had a good time reading and I did not guess the twist. I love when that happens. This is my first Pedersen, and I hope it won’t be my last.

The writing is fierce and quick, and the character development is strong. The writing and the characters are not my only favorite things about SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS. The storyline, which I’m sure sounds familiar to you is like revisiting an old friend. Except the friend has changed and morphed into something unrecognizable. Something wicked and terrible.

If you’ve been waiting for something to impress you and haunt you, look no further. SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS is it.

Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin's Press, and Macmillan Audio for the advanced copies! I loved this on audiobook.

SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Many thanks to the publisher for my copy - all opinions are my own.

This is such a beautifully crafted book that slow burns the simmering intensity from beginning through end, and haunts you right through the final pages.

I love a well done moving POV and this book serves up that format perfectly. Moving between past and present, each chapter peels back another layer to the secrets and horrors and traumas that lie beneath the surface. The characters are fascinating and nuanced and you absolutely want to see where everything lands in the end.

Overall this is a hugely unique take on literary horror and well worth the read.

“To grieve is to rot from the inside out,” (Pedersen).

Estranged from his family for twenty-years, Nick Morrow returns to Stag Crossing, his family’s farmhouse in rural Nebraska, after receiving a call from his abusive father telling him he’s dying. But Nick isn’t the only one invited back, his older brother Joshua and wife Emilia are also welcome back after Joshua was exiled out of the family for marrying an Asian woman. But tensions are high between the Morrows as they return to their homestead, and as Nick comes to term with his past he also becomes familiar with Emilia in dangerously frightening ways.

I’d heard a lot of great things about Sacrificial Animals on Goodreads, and yes I was lured in by the description. I was shocked and thrilled when I got the email from NetGalley that I was given early access, and once again I was fooled.

Let’s start with the good, I guess, the novel is incredibly atmospheric. It feels almost Gothic in parts and I loved the tension that Pedersen created, as well as the visuals around Stag Crossing, the farm, and the town. Pedersen created an incredible tension and uneasiness throughout the novel and it was very easy to visualize the setting where the story was taking place. Pedersen is an excellent writer, and it would be interesting to see what she writes in the future.

And now the not so good. Sacrificial Animals just drags, it’s boring. Told between “Then” (twenty years before) and “Now” the novel just sort of trudges along with it’s atmospheric setting with the hope that readers will stay just for that. And it works, for a little bit, but there really is such little progression until the last few chapters where everything happens all at once, and by that point the novel becomes predictable. The original summary I read mentioned Nick’s sexuality and his affair with Emilia, but both of these don’t occur until halfway through the novel making their inclusion in the summary a bit bizarre. The novel takes so long creating tension, sprinkling hints about the fox that’s terrorizing the chicken’s at Stag’s Crossing and the difficulty of catching it that I wanted a resolution much sooner than it was given. I also have an issue with some of the word choices, like anodyne three times by chapter five and mien four times overall, which is too often for such uncommon words.

This would have been an amazing short story or novella. If the tension and plot had been more concentrated Pedersen could have successfully made the point and garnered the feeling she was hoping with her debut. As it is, Sacrificial Animals is rambling and repetitive. Pedersen does have talent as a writer though and I hope reader’s will get to enjoy that with her next book.

So many things did not work for me when it comes to this book. The prose and sentence structure was so over the top. It kept taking me out of the story. There were no quotations for dialogue. The animal abuse/hunting scenes were too much for me.

I would say that this book felt more like a literary fiction story and family drama for much of the book. We go back and forth in time following Nick through his youth and in the present day. The relationship with Nick’s father and his own questioning of the life his father is pushing him to lead is complicated and well defined. The horror does come in later in the book, but I personally would have liked that to come in sooner.

This was a really interesting read and a quick audiobook to consume as well. I think if you go in expecting a slower story and more of a character driven book, this is one you may enjoy!

SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS by Kailee Pederson. Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publisher, @macmillanaudio for the audio-ARC.

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Nick's old, abusive, curmudgeon of a father has invited him and his older brother Joshua, including his wife, Amelia back to Stagg's Crossing where they grew up. His father Carlisle is dying and though he has barely spoken to his boys for years, he seems to be itching for a reunion. Nick treads lightly assuming a trick or deceit from his father who has played games with them his whole life, when the real deceit has been lurking in the shadow for decades.

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This book was just ok for me. I kept going back and forth as to whether I was enjoying it. I appreciate the sentiment/message of this story but it was REALLY slow and almost too nuanced for me- while I generally enjoy this specific folklore trickster trope, it was not even apparent where the story was going for much of the book. I wanted a little more uncanniness or action but didn't really get that until the last couple of hours of the audiobook.

If I hadn't read the synopsis, I would have thought that this was a contemporary novel following a dysfunctional family and perhaps I would have enjoyed it more, but they had to say that it was supernatural horror with Chinese folklore and well, that's what I expected from the beginning of the book. I was very wrong.

Even though my expectation prevented me from enjoying much of the book, it has good points: the narrative is descriptive and, although at times it feels heavy, there are some phrases and thoughts from the characters that seemed intelligent and thoughtful. I found Nick's psychological construction remarkable, but other than that, no other character shined. Josh was the archetypal golden boy and firstborn, and Carlyle the racist patriarch who I can only focus on living through his firstborn.

The parable of the prodigal son comes into play and mixes with the revenge story that, I must say, I saw coming from halfway through the book. The truth is, by the time I got to the climax, I was already so disappointed and wishing for it all to be over that when the horror set in, it didn't even seem worth the 280-page wait.

I love horror stories built on cultural folklore, and Sacrificial Animals seemed right up my alley. As a debut author, I was additionally intrigued by the author's background and how her perspective would drive the creation of her story. I do think she wrote what was close to her heart... growing up on a farm in Nebraska, her LBGTQ+ experiences, her Asian ancestry, and her academic love for literature. I appreciated her weaving of these themes within her story. Unfortunately, for me, I found the writing style to be too academic. I consider myself an intelligent reader. I have a doctorate degree, and I love reading to learn and building my vocabulary. I don't mind looking up a word here or there or a historical or geographical reference, but at least in the first 50% of the book, the flagrant use of 50-cent (probably $5 with inflation) words multiple times per page was distracting and even came off as condescending at times. They were easy to look up on my Kindle, but had I been reading a physical book, it would have been much more than a mild annoyance due to the interruption in reading flow. The average American reader would likely be alienated and probably would succumb to the dreaded DNF. Much of her prose is in fact quite beautiful, but it takes a certain type of reader and the right mood to appreciate it. It seemed like the prevalence of these words dropped off in the second half, but the tone had already been set, and I did not connect with the story as much as I would have liked.

I must say, though, that this book cover is one of the most captivating I have seen in a while. It definitely reflects the mood and mystery of the story.

Actual rating 2.5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.