Queralt✨'s Reviews > Sacrificial Animals

Sacrificial Animals is a slowburn horror literary fiction featuring daddy issues, toxic masculinity, and Chinese folklore. In the story, we follow Nick and Joshua as they go back to their hometown after getting a call from his dying father. He wants to be forgiven for all the things he did to them. Nick, Joshua, and Emilia (Joshua’s wife) go back to seek reconciliation. (CW: child abuse, animal abuse, racism).

This is the classic ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ situation. This book gives slowburn a whole new meaning. It takes a long time until the horror starts and until then all we get is an unsettling and disgruntling literary fiction about family drama and daddy issues. Both things are stuff I don’t enjoy. It was just very slow and reflecting. I’m the kind of person who loves a good character study or character-focused books, but this was just reminiscing about one’s effed-up past and it’s just not my thing. The two timelines of then/now also made it feel slower to me.

Around the 80% the story picked up super quickly and it became AMAZING. The ending was crazy fun and it made it all worth it. (I'm team Emilia woop woop).

I don’t have much to say other than the writing is beautiful (if you enjoy literary fiction) and that I loved the ending. 3.5 stars because of that (but I can't round it up because it just was brutally slow).

* I received the ARC for free, this hasn't impacted my review.