Sarah O'Connor

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“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.

Publication: August 20 2024
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pages: 320 pages (eBook)
Source: NetGalley
Genre: Fiction, Horror, Queer
My Rating: ⛤⛤.5
Summary:

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.