When Carlyle Morrow was a young man, he left his home in South Carolina, and headed west to Omaha, Nebraska. There, he found a wife, bought land, and built a home, Stag’s Crossing. Soon, they had two sons: Joshua--the eldest--was like his father by appearance and temperament (wrathful and impatient), and Nick—three years younger--was like his mother by appearance and temperament (introverted and caring). When she died after giving birth to a stillborn son, Carlyle blamed the doctor whom he considered an outsider, and developed a decidedly aggressive dislike for Nick.

Joshua was a hunter like his father: delighting in the violence, and exhibiting a natural savagery. Nick, was a natural fisherman: patient and deliberate. Carlyle trained his eldest (and favorite) son to take over the homestead. But when Joshua defied him by bringing the home his future wife, Emilia, Carlyle disowned and banished him from Stag’s Crossing for breaking the one, solid and steadfast rule: never allow a stranger to enter the home.

The narrative is from Nick’s point-of-view with chapters alternating between Then and Now. The Now chapters occur twenty years later when Carlyle calls for his sons to come home, allowing Joshua’s wife to come as well. By breaking his own rule, is Carlyle inviting the proverbial fox into the hen house? Someone who—like the doctor attending his wife’s labor—will cause his second, fatal error?

There is an overarching feeling of the mythical in the telling of this story. First, it felt like I was reading a modern rendition of Nordic/Germanic folklore, filled with the natural world (forests and animals); huntsmen; tragedy; violence; and magic. Second, Emilia brings the magic of the huli found in Asian tales. The lack of quote marks added to the surreal nature of the narrative.

So, who are the sacrificial animals? Are they the deer, rabbits, and foxes hunted and killed by the Morrows, or are they people like Nick, Joshua, Carlyle, and Emilia? Read and find out.

I would like to thank St.. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this novel.

Carlyle Morrow is raising his two sons, Nick and Joshua, after the death of his wife. He is determined to raise them in his own image: racist, violent and paranoid. Both escape their father, but are called back when Carlyle is dying.

This story is told through Nick using both past and present timelines. It is unsettling and disturbing. The story builds slowly as the drama builds to its conclusion.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Publishing for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Available August 20, 2024.

Sacrificial Animals was very sluggish for me. I don’t know if it was because of the two time lines or not. Nothing happens until in the book until you reach the 70th percent mark and when it does . It’s not much to tell about. Just disappointed with this novel.

hank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Kailee Pedersen for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC for Sacrificial Animals coming out August 20, 2024. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I really enjoyed the Chinese folklore about the nine-tailed fox. I think it brought something new and fresh to the story on the farm. The writing was really good. I liked the story. I think it was a little too much of a slow burn for me. I was thinking there would be more horror from the start. So I wished for more action before the last act in the book. I would check out future books by this author because I love horror books.

DNF @ 4%

I couldn't get very far into this because the prose is just so purple and over-bloated. I also can't keep reading because of the subject matter, but depending on your own triggers, you might be fine.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley, for the free E-copy for review.

This gripping read delves into the darker realms of sibling rivalry, woven together with mythical Chinese lore.

We follow Nick, the second son, as we explore his tumultuous childhood. Always feeling inconsequential in his father's eyes and bearing the brunt of his cruelty, Nick dreams of escaping his childhood home when he’s old enough. It’s a visceral experience as he navigates the push and pull of trying to make his father proud while grappling with his distaste for hunting.

Kailee Pedersen masterfully infuses just the right amount of suspense, employing an interchanging timeline that builds toward a shocking climax. The incorporation of Chinese mythology adds an intriguing supernatural element, with some scenes so viscerally gory that they left me gasping.

Sacrificial Animals is a powerful exploration of belief, family dynamics, and vengeance.

It would be hard to say I enjoyed this book - the trigger warnings are real and shouldn't be ignored. That being said, there are still many things to appreciate about this novel. The writing is solid and flows well, the pacing is good, and the story is compelling.
I would recommend for fellow horror readers, with trigger warnings.

I am not sure what to say about this book. I did not finish it because it was too much for me but I"m not sure completely why. Perhaps the very abusive father?

The writing at times is spectacular and I was drawn completely in but I kept getting pulled out. The lack of quotation marks made it hard to follow the dialogue as well.

This is more of an intellectual horror that has deep themes and I wasn't and perhaps never will be ready for it.

2.5 stars.

Nick Morrow left rural Nebraska behind many years ago and never expected to return to the difficult and traumatic past he experienced living with his father, Carlyle. Joshua, Nick’s brother, was disowned by Carlyle for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent. When Nick and Joshua each receive an invitation from their father to return home, they know it is an invitation they cannot refuse. Joshua and Carlyle quickly return to their old dynamic, leaving Emilia and Nick to their own devices. What starts as a simple flirtation quickly escalates to something more between the two, but Nick soon starts to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may be more sinister than he believed.

SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS is a debut novel written by Kailee Pedersen and is inspired by the author’s journey of adoption from China in 1996 and growing up on a farm in Nebraska with supernatural horror and ancient Chinese mythology weaved in.

This novel has an interesting inspiration and a compelling synopsis but unfortunately, didn’t quite live up to my expectations. I initially found the story difficult to get into due to the lack of punctuation used for dialogue, while this was a simple annoyance and confusing, I soon became accustomed to the author’s writing style which is quite verbose.

SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS is told in the POV of Nick in alternating timelines, the present time, and the past (something like 20-30 years ago when Nick was a child). I enjoyed learning about Nick’s life experiences through this alternating timeline, although his character does experience some terrible and traumatic things. Nick’s narration is somewhat monotonous and flat which is paired with a slow burn development of the plot making this feel like a long way to get to the heart of the story. It’s an unsettling read that focuses on family drama (including abuse).

I wish I had looked more closely into the trigger warnings for this book because while I do not have many triggers, I do not appreciate reading about animal abuse in the novels I consume. The animal abuse contained in the beginning of the story was graphic and hard to read. I am grateful that these scenes were few though and limited to the first few chapters.

I loved the infusion of ancient Chinese mythology within this story. I am not super familiar with Chinese mythology but did pick up on these elements from the beginning of the story. I was rewarded with an interesting ending, and one that I wasn’t entirely expecting and was easily the highlight of this book! The ending is somewhat open-ended and leaves some interpretation up to the reader.

Overall, while this wasn’t entirely my cup of tea, it is certainly an interesting debut!

<i>I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, of this advanced digital copy for the opportunity to read this novel in exchange for an honest review! All opinions shared are my own. </i>

Have you ever heard the term Purple Prose? I think this book explains very well what that means. I found myself focusing on what on earth the author meant by "a vile quirk of his smile" rather than paying attention to what was actually going on in the story line. I was really excited about the premise of this book, but at this current time in my life of chasing young children and only having a bit of time to myself, this was a lot for my brain to process. I think it will hit better when I have time to really get into the meaning and nuance, but for now it was just a little too much.

Thank you to NetGalleyand St. Martin’s Press as well as the author for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

#NetGalley #St.Martin’sPress #Sacrificial Animals #KaileePedersen

Title: Sacrificial Animals
Author: Kailee Pedersen
Format: eBook
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: August 20, 2024

Themes: Father/son relationship, Brother/Brother relationship, Chinese mythology/folklore, familial drama, LBGTQ+, slow burn

Trigger Warnings: child abuse, hunting, graphic animal death, cancer, familial abuse/estrangement,

This book is so beautifully written! What a talent this author has. No one has written familial abuse this well since “Flowers in the Attic” by V.C. Andrews. This book tells the story of Nick and his relationship with his father and brother. After growing up with an incredibly abusive and cruel father, the last thing he expects is to be called home by his father to be at his deathbed. Also, he’s expected to call his estranged brother, who has been disowned by their father because of his marriage to an Asian woman, and ask his brother and his wife to come home to bury their father. Their father receives Nick’s older brother warmly, while Nick and his sister-in-law are ignored. As Nick gets to know Emelia better, he begins to suspect that her intentions may not be benign as he had assumed.

This is an author who is talented. There’s no doubt about that. Her prose is lovely and descriptive. The story is also quite compelling. I love the blend of western and Chinese folklore. I learned a lot about both and I was fascinated. It is, however, simply too slow. Not much happens until the last third of the book. That last third is really fun, but this book should have been WAY shorter. It does a great job of building tension through a lot of nothing happening. It does require time and patience. It turned out to be worth it, mostly.

The audiobook has a great narrator. I had a much easier time listening to this one. The narrator is very expressive, yet soothing. I found that I could listen to it while I did housework and it was easier to handle the slowness rather than sitting down to read and endure the grueling build-up.

All in all, the reader/listener needs to go into this story knowing that this is a time commitment and not an easy read. Fans of Ally Wilkes and V.C. Andrews are likely to get it. I had mixed feelings but I’m glad I read and listened to it.

I would not recommend this book to others. It has an interesting premise, but the premise is buried under familial violence and a coming of age digression. I also found the lack of quotation marks around the dialogue hard to track. There were often exposition beats within the dialogue, but you couldn't tell without tags around the actual dialogue. As a result, I had to go back repeatedly to find out what was said and what was done.

I have to say, I'm really disappointed, though. The ATB sounded like a different story. The one that got buried. The actual story this might have been about, that was interesting. Bloody good, actually. Unfortunately, it came across as the sub-plot, not the real story as it should have. This book would have been a DNF if it hadn't come from NetGalley. And I never DNF books.

An intense and dark novel that creeps up on you. It moves back and forth in time between "then" and "now"- 30 years apart, to tell the story of a family, mainly through Nick, whose father Carlyle wants to reconcile with both Nick and his brother Joshua. Joshua, in the present, is married to Emilia, a Chinese woman who becomes an object of fascination for Nick. Animal lovers should know that the killing of foxes is key to the story as is a nine tailed fox spirit. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. Hard to describe and sometimes to read, this packs a punch.

This must be the year of novels featuring fox spirits because this is the third I've read this year (by the way, I'm not complaining; it is just something I noticed.) I started the year with "The Fox Wife," then there was a fox spirit in "The Emperor and the Endless Palace," and now this one. In her thrilling debut novel, "Sacrificial Animals," Kailee Pedersen takes readers on a slow-burn journey through a rural Nebraska farm, where family secrets and ancient mysteries collide.

The book focuses primarily on Nick Morrow as he navigates a complicated homecoming to Stag's Crossing - the family farm - to visit his ailing father, Carlyle, with whom he had a tenuous relationship when he was a kid. Carlyle calls Nick to tell him he is dying of cancer. Carlyle would like to see his sons - both of whom he's had little to no contact with over the years. When Nick arrives, it seems maybe the temperamental and often abusive Carlyle has changed, but when Nick's older brother Joshua shows up at Stags Crossing with his alluring and mysterious Asian wife, Emilia, it doesn't take long for Carlyle's racism and abuse to resurface.

Throughout the novel, Pedersen weaves together past and present, delving into the depths of family dynamics and the devastating effects of intergenerational trauma. Carlyle is an awful human being, and while he treats Joshua as a prince, he is very abusive toward Nick because he thinks he is too soft. Not only is he physically abusive, but also mentally and emotionally, as he forces Nick to hunt and kill the foxes that keep killing their chickens. Little does Nick know that this violent act will haunt him and his family for years to come.

The complex relationships between Nick, Carlyle, and Joshua are expertly crafted, drawing readers into a world where love and violence are intertwined in heartbreaking and mind-blowing ways. As Nick grapples with his past and present, Pedersen slowly builds tension while uncovering the dark secrets buried beneath the farm's surface.

Through Nick's reflections on his past and his relationships with his father, brother, and Emilia, the author explores identity, sexuality, and how violence and abuse contribute to our trauma. Pedersen's beautiful prose paints a vivid portrait of rural Nebraska that is as beautiful as it is haunting. Her attention to detail brings the farm to life, making it a character in its own right, with its secrets and shadows looming over the Morrow family.

While I enjoyed the story's slow burn and the beautiful writing, I will admit that the story held few surprises. I had a clear sense of where we were headed, but that didn't detract from the journey. What did bother me, however, was the author's decision not to use quotation marks. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. It seems to be more and more prevalent in books these days, and I honestly don't understand why it's necessary. It adds nothing to a book.

Not only did I read this book, but I also listened to an ALC, and I was truly impressed with the narrator. Yung-I Change does a phenomenal job of capturing the characters and manages to hit the highs and lows perfectly, enhancing the overall reading experience.

While not overly shocking, I found this to be a mesmerizing and thought-provoking read that carries a hefty punch. With its richly drawn characters, atmospheric setting, and spine-tingling suspense, this novel is sure to captivate fans of dark literary fiction and psychological thrillers. I knew exactly where this one was heading from the beginning, but I still enjoyed the ride.

"**Sacrificial Animals**" by Kailee Pedersen struggles with a disjointed narrative and underdeveloped characters that hinder its overall impact. Despite its intriguing premise, the execution fails to fully engage or resonate with readers.

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.