The Minimalist

by Kailee Pedersen, Natalie Naudus (Narrator)

For fans of Tár and The Piano Teacher , this gruesome and unsettling psychological drama is a darkly lucid portrait of a classical composer’s descent into madness.

As the last and greatest student of famed minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield, Mia Voss’s rise to prominence in the insular world of classical music has long been assured. When Ryder dies unexpectedly, she inherits everything―including the unfinished manuscript of his final composition, the mysterious Death Music for Orchestra.

Haunted by memories of her tragic romance with Ryder’s late son, Oliver―like Mia, an Asian American adoptee―Mia leaves her girlfriend behind and returns to Ryder’s home to finish his last work. There, Mia is forced to confront her complex relationship with Ryder, who hid his Jewish and gay identities to become one of the most important twentieth-century American composers; her lingering guilt over Oliver’s suicide; and her own musical ambition as the manuscript begins to exert a disturbing, mesmerizing hold over her.

Drawn from the author’s own experiences as an adoptee and classical musician, The Minimalist is a harrowing examination of loss, torment, mental illness, self-harm, and artistic self-destruction.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Queer, Music, LGBT, Jewish, Thriller

7 pages, Audible Audio

Expected publication August 18, 2026

About the author

Kailee Pedersen writes haunted, unsettling speculative fiction. She graduated with a BA in classics from Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek. Kailee was adopted from Nanning, China and grew up in Nebraska, where her family owns a farm. She is the author of the queer poetry chapbook Pastorale and the novel Sacrificial Animals, which was named one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2024 and a finalist for Best Horror at the 2025 Libby Book Awards.

When not scribbling down her next book, you can catch her studying opera performance at the Mozarteum University, playing video games, or working as a software engineer in New York City. The Minimalist is her second novel. Visit her website at kaileepedersen.com.

Photo by Garland Quek (www.garlandquek.com)

Reviews

[Nikki Lee (Nikkileethrillseeker) · Rating 4 out of 5]

🎧Audiobook Review🎧

Mia Voss has inherited everything from the famed minimalist composer, Ryder Wakefield, after his death. She finds an unfinished manuscript of his final composition, Death Fugue and hopes to finish it.

She tells the story of her relationship with the composer and his son Oliver, whom she had a relationship with. As she begins her work, she starts to spiral into madness.

First, this book is not for everyone. It’s definitely a slow burn. It’s also geared towards people who have become obsessed with perfecting their work. In this case, writing music.

Natalie’s narration is perfection. She’s one of the best and if she narrates it, I’m listening. She does a perfect job with her decent into unhinged madness.

I enjoyed the audiobook and recommend it to anyone who enjoys slow burn literary fiction. Some parts read like a fever dream.

4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[⋆｡°·☁︎ sydney ⋆｡°·☁︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up because of that WRITING
WOW!
This book is really something. I loved the uniqueness and how it is unafraid to take on different ideas of identity, and even stranger ideas of self expression
I rarely ever think of piano composers, but this book will make them forever cross my mind in an incredibly gruesome dramatic way.
The story is equal parts vignette and gothic novel, combined with a very unique, grotesque writing style!!
Overall, a good read, but not an easy recommendation!

[Jillian B]

The two most important people in composer Mia’s life have always been her mentor, Ryder, and his son, Oliver. After Oliver dies tragically, followed by his father, Mia moves into their home and tries desperately to finish Ryder’s final composition, an experimental piece called Death Fugue. Mia is driven to the brink of insanity as she pours everything, including her own severed body parts (no, I will not be elaborating) into completing the piece.

This is gorgeous literary fiction with elements of body horror, and if that doesn’t make you immediately want to pick it up, we have very different tastes in books. It’s told across multiple timelines as we are drawn deeper into Mia’s all-consuming love for Oliver and drive to match Ryder’s talent.

I can’t wait for more of you guys to read this one!

Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!

[Wynter · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

This is an unrelentingly bleak story about a musical prodigy who finds herself unraveling after the loss of the two people closest to her.

Stylistically, this is told in nonlinear snapshots of Mia’s past as she recounts her life growing up as the adopted child of an emotionally abusive mother, finding and losing her first love, and becoming a burgeoning composer in the shadow of her harsh but brilliant mentor. At the same time, we see glimpses of Mia in the present, grappling with questions surrounding the circumstances of her closest colleague/ex-lover’s suicide, the recent death of her life long teacher, and the monumental task of finishing his final manuscript after his passing. What follows can only be described as a free fall into madness as Mia struggles to reconcile with her guilt, her trauma, and her vehement belief that self destruction is the only way to unlock the ability to compose a piece worthy of her mentor’s legacy. To put it bluntly, things get really, really dark.

I will say, my own personal pursuit of knowledge on the topic of classical music ended after the 4 years of compulsory violin classes in school, so I felt like quite a bit of the opera and symphony references that were on nearly every page went completely over my head. I wouldn’t call the writing very accessible at all, but that’s what helped sell the characters as geniuses in their fields. If Kailee Pedersen didn’t write with such an absolute death grip on the English language, I might not have felt as compelled to finish this story as I did. I would absolutely read more from this author because she’s extremely impressive, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t know much about classical music or at the very least isn’t a fan of reading deeply about a topic they don’t know much about.

Thank you so much to St. Martin’s Press for my free advanced copy of this book!

[Becky Spratford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starred review in the June issue of Library Journal

Three Words That Describe This Book: Excruciating discomfort, Artist Descends into Madness, highly original

Draft Review: Too infrequently does a title perfectly set the reader up for the book that is to come, but in Pedersen’s second novel, minimalism, serves as the frame for this highly original, excruciatingly discomfiting tale of a young composer's descent into madness. Mia, 35, a critically acclaimed classical music composer, is left to complete her teacher’s unfinished final piece– Death Fugue– after his sudden death. Haunted by a life dedicated to music and her relationships with Ryder and his son, Oliver, as well as riddled with complex questions of identity as a Chinese born, American adoptee, trained to carry the Jewish legacy of her mentor, readers watch Mia spiral physically and mentally, as the pages of Death Fugue require visceral, disfiguring sacrifices of her. Told like one of Ryder’s minimalist masterpieces, Mia layers observations and experiences from her life, flowing in and out of past and present, repeating motifs, adding more detail, tension, and escalating dread with each repetition. Readers may think the frame will be too esoteric for them, until they realize they can feel (with all five senses) the obsessive horror of this tightly wound novel, throughout their entire body, whether they want to or not.**

Verdict: Clearly from a lineage begun by Robert Chambers in The King in Yellow, this is a novel for fans of the psychologically intense film Black Swan, and the extreme psychological distress, body horror, and disorientation of novels like Chlorine by Jade Song and The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.

I have NEVER used the word excruciating in a good way to describe a horror novel until now. It is the perfect word for you to understand how this book FEELS to read.

Other words– obsession, intense unease, discomfiting, visceral, body horror, terrifying, tightly wound, a slow burn that keeps you reading, classical music– so much detail that readers will want to pull up some of the pieces discussed and the cool thing is you can for some, but then there are the fictional pieces by the characters here and that is also discomfiting because they feel as real as the real pieces.

At first I was rating this book down because the frame is a little esoteric (and I am the mother of a child in music school who composes). But then I started to write my notes and I wrote this:

The topic may be a little esoteric but the way this book is able to make the reader FEEL the madness, obsession, disgust, the excruciating terror, discomfort, dragging out of the madness ect….that was done to perfection. You want to throw the book down and scream at it to move faster, but you don’t. You are stuck in this loop of obsession. The book is everything it tells you it will be in the title. Those 2 words seem so simple. But as you read you feel the power of minimalism to wrench every emotion out of you.

And another HUGE component of this story– identity. I didn’t make it one of the “words” because it is more of a theme, not an appeal. But Ryder is Jewish and gay but hid both those sides of himself for most of his life. The gay was because of the times. The Jewish, he lost so much sight of that when he tried to reclaim it in his music, it was too late. He is teaching Mia the ways of Jewish life and music and history though.

Mia is an adoptee from China – abandoned on the side of the road as 3 days old, adopted by her white American mother and raised as a white girl basically. She feels no connection to her Chinese-ness and yet is cited as an Asian American composer. Oliver is Ryder’s adopted Korean son. He is Korean. His mother was a student of Ryder’s. BUt she flees back to Korea and leaves Olver, the baby, with Ryder to raise. He is conflicted about his origins.

Carlos Gesualdo– you are going to want to look him up. Mia is obsessed with him. We learn early that she was always obsessed with him. He was talented but also famous for killing his wife and her liver in a particularly gruesome manner. It is mentioned and brought back many times. It was a great way to get readers invested in the dark side of the music world but also served to foreshadow what was to come in this book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_G....

Told only from inside Mia’s head from her present, in Ryder’s home, after he dies and she is left to go through his things and most importantly, finish his final work– Death Fugue.

Like a minimalist work for music– it is similar pieces repeating over and over, overlapping in ways that allow the entire story to grow but at an excruciatingly slow burn– excruciating being the key word here because this story is SO intense, SO uneasy, SO much tension that as it begins to be “released” it is both visceral and full body levels of upset– again excruciating.

Also like a work of classical music-- this story was technically perfect. Things were overlapped and ordered in a way that pulled out the most tension, emotion, and discomfort in the reader. The same story told in order, and with other protagonists does not hit the same way. It is not a horror novel if done differently.

This the the closest book I have seen to capturing how it felt to watch the film Black Swan. I remember going to the theater to see that artist goes mad, psychological horror masterpiece and I was riveted the entire time. And then when it ended, I could barely stand up. I had been (without knowing it) clenching all of my muscles with the tension. My body hurt.

This is a book you FEEL in your whole body much like the first 2 readalikes-- For books, there is a lot of Chlorine by Jade Song here but our protagonist is a musician (not an athlete) and 35 during the present of the book, but there is a lot about her coming of age years. Also the weird body horror and disorientation of The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.

The King in Yellow– it’s lineage is CLEAR here. Best recent book for that is A Game in Yellow by Hailey Piper. This book is less erotic, but not without sex either.

[Cyndi Farfsing · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a beautiful and hauntingly raw exploration of grief, self-loathing, the cost of art, and perfectionism. The prose is beautiful, the atmosphere is unsettling, and the pacing is intentionally disorienting as you follow Mia’s descent into madness while she grapples with her past. The author does an excellent job of creating an increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere that mirrors Mia’s unraveling.

With that said, I wanted to love this book. The premise is intriguing, the prose is lovely, and the themes are thoughtfully explored. However, I often felt that the themes themselves were driving the story more than the plot, and I found there wasn’t enough narrative momentum to keep me turning the pages. I understood what the author was trying to accomplish, but it ultimately didn’t resonate with me. The plot often felt secondary to the thematic exploration, which kept me from becoming fully immersed in the story.

I went in expecting a horror novel, and that ultimately wasn’t the reading experience I had. It was certainly unsettling, but the horror often took a back seat to the novel’s literary ambitions. Readers who enjoy slow-burn, poetic literary fiction will likely appreciate this far more than I did. By the end, the frequent flashbacks began to feel like variations on the same emotional beats rather than revelations that continued to deepen the story. Personally, I need a stronger sense of forward momentum and discovery. This is a beautifully written novel with thoughtful themes, but in the end it simply wasn’t the right fit for me.

[Stacy (Gotham City Librarian) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous. I’m so glad I ended up with an ARC of this. It was dark and disturbing and by far one of the saddest books I’ve ever read.

Main character and narrator Mia at first comes across as pretentious and vain, but also very self-aware. Maybe TOO much so at times, as her self-reflexive musings tend to repeat themselves. Conversely, Mia is also overwhelmed by grief and self-loathing, consumed by the task of finishing her beloved mentor’s final composition. She is determined to score the rest of it, even (or especially if) it kills her.

The overall tone of this novel is quiet. The unsettling parts really sneak up on you, like blood dripping silently onto piano keys. It’s obvious that the author really understands music, because the writing flows like an instrumental piece in this way. A gentle whisper that gradually builds to something startling. The violence will surprise you. And there were moments that broke my heart, as well. I was especially impressed by the dialogue between Mia and Ryder, which tended to come across as harsh a lot of the time but had a lot of emotional depth beneath it.

I wish I could see a live performance of “Death Fugue,” the piece that Mia is obsessively trying to complete. It transcends music and becomes a disturbing art piece, like something that Marina Abramovic would do if she wanted to destroy herself. I was fascinated. In a much, much milder way, “The Minimalist” almost feels “American Psycho” adjacent, except Mia’s violence is directed back at herself.

One thing worth mentioning is that there are no quotation marks on any of the dialogue, a tactic that usually doesn’t bother me but did become problematic this time. The story also jumps all over the place between past and present with no sense of transition and can be disorienting. (At times I wasn’t sure at first if something was a flashback or if Mia was meant to be hallucinating.)

If you are in a dark place mentally or emotionally, I might advise you to tread carefully with this one because it goes to very dark places. (And it’s well written.) Though I can easily see horror fans losing patience with it. The way it jumps around in time can be confusing, the constant naming of composers and music pieces can be a tiny bit monotonous and the pace is slow. But trusting the process is so rewarding. This was a gorgeous and visceral experience that I will be thinking about for a while.

4.5 stars rounded up.

Thank you to Netgalley and to the Publisher for this early copy in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own.

TW: *Suicide/Suicidal ideation, *Self-harm, Disordered eating, Racism, Slurs, Sexual harassment, Domestic abuse

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me take a few days to combine my notes, look into the music themes more and come back with a review. This was so up my alley but what a gut punch

[Hadyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A performance, no matter how beautiful, can only have so many encores.”

My gosh this was written poetically. So many moments of tenderness against moments of pain - I felt it was almost a memoir rather than a novel.

This would have been a 5 star read if I had a background in music, as some of the information was hard to understand. I truly wish I had a soundtrack to listen to during this and would be interested in how the audiobook works through any of this.

At first I did not enjoy the back and forth of the time jumps, but I do think it added to the sense of her descent into madness and the repetition of her thoughts and memories.

I loved the writing and would 100% read this author again.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Jess Reads Horror · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martins Press for the eARC.

Mia was adopted from China as a baby, and she came to the United States with a unique talent for music. Under Ryder Wakefield’s guidance and teaching, she has since risen up in the world of music, with some critics saying the student has surpassed the teacher. With both Ryder and his adopted son Oliver deceased, Mia has to pick up the burden of completing Ryder’s final work.

3.5 stars rounded up. Starting off with what I did enjoy: the atmosphere, the intensity of the emotions, the vivid descriptions, and the music lessons I never knew I would have enjoyed. It felt very claustrophobic for me, not necessarily due to the physical aspects, but more due to Mia’s world, the way this book is basically a whole rundown of her thoughts and memories. Mia fits the tormented artist perfectly, and this can be seen throughout the whole book.

Mia working on and attempting to finish Ryder’s final
piece definitely threw her down the road leading to… something. Everything she did and experienced during these days felt intense, emotional, and raw. With that, I do wish there was more of an expansion on this work as it felt like such a huge part of the story. Like one of the triggers of everything else that followed.

I really did enjoy learning more about the classics, even though it did bring up some of my unpleasant memories around pianos. I also greatly appreciate the author shining a light on experiences for adoptees. I rarely come across these in books.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I just finished reading this and am floored by how hauntingly beautiful this was! The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen is written beautifully, and written with care despite the dark themes within. Overall this is an exploration of identity, and follows the main character, Mia. The story goes back and forth between the present and memories from Mia’s past. Typically I find this confusing and sometimes disjointed but how Kailee writes these scenes, I find are seamless. The story is also a bit slower paced but picks up quickly and soon I couldn’t put it down. I love this writing style as it emulates the spiral into madness.

Recommended to those who like slow burn descents into madness, explorations of identity, race& relationships, visceral body horror, overall bleak story. It’s definitely a specific recommendation but I will be recommending it when I can!

Thank you, thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC in exchange for review!

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Minimalist was disturbing descent into madness, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Absolutely beautiful writing, dense in a way that makes you feel smarter just reading it. I loved all the references to real pieces of music and composers, it grounded the story in reality even as Mia’s life spun out into unreality. Mia’s mind is an excruciating place to be. This was a harrowing read. I am definitely going to check out Kailee Pedersen’s other work after this!

[Donna McCaul Thibodeau]

I gave up on this. I didn't care for the author's style of writing, and nothing seemed to be happening. DNF.

[Trisha]

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

[frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to St. Martins Press and Net Galley for a copy of this arc

Do you know that meme of the ogre trying to read James Joyce and failing to grasp the greater concept ? Thats how this book made me feel.

There is certainly interest in The Minimalist. The writing though purple, is captivating.

I couldn’t shake the sense that if i understood music or greco roman art i would enjoy this far more.

Unfortunately i am … dumb.

The stylistic choice to forgo quotation marks did not work for me nor did I enjoy the nonlinear narrative though i think thats personal taste. I switched to an assistive screen reader and that was helpful.

I think fans of Natural Beauty and The Perfection and horror lit fic in general might find more enjoyment in this book.

[Trevor Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclosure Statement: I received an ARC of this novel from the author. My thoughts and opinions of it are entirely my own and have not been influenced by either author or publisher.

Sacrificial Animals put Kailee Pedersen on the map for me, but it's The Minimalist that has cemented her as a master craftsperson in the world of psychological horror.

To begin, it's an intensely intimate psychological thriller blending together allusions to classical music and to broader questions around identity, class, race, and the need to be loved. Like any good fugue, and in reference to its specific musicality, the book works on multiple parallel tracks, juxtaposing its composition against highs and lows, competing for space as they contribute significance to the central character history in construction. Each parallel thought, taken from protagonist Mia's perspective, gives shape to the melodies, counterpoints, calls and responses the novel introduces, showcasing not one specific entry wound, but the multiple blows that contribute to its ode to a process of identity-making fraught with pain and misgiving.

This is a resolutely unhappy book, full of disastrous, suicidal reckoning, a book that isn't content to wear its heart on its sleeve but to pull it beating out of the chest for examination. And that examination is both admiration and horror, it is death and decay but also the virtual element of life itself. It does not know how to separate the beauty of a thing from the pain involved in making it, and overwhelmingly it centers on a conflict that results from a life lived in pursuit of perfection--perfection of self, perfection of identity, perfection of craft, all of which cannot be perfect.

And as the book exposes all of its conflicts, it also reflects on the contemporary history of both music and musicians, acting as metaphor to a broader, fundamental problem of racial bias and classism and sexism pervasive through our society. Classical music cannot escape the problems of racism or marginalization seen in any other aspect of our world, and the novel exposes that like self-inflicted wounds.

But perhaps more important to me than any of that, it is also a story about power and its abuses, about gatekeepers and how they condition a new generation of practitioners. Far too many of the elements of this novel that give it its deepest hurt feel torn directly out of my own life, out of my own mentorships in the art of literature, its composition, and its criticism. I may not be Mia, but our paths are not different enough for her story to not resonate chords within my own memory, to bring out all of the same hurt and all of the same violence I've felt and suffered in my own life. On a deeply personal level, this book knows and understands what it means to have to build an identity through adversity and perversity both, to have to hurt and yearn and work and still be reviewed critically over and over again as an act of disempowerment and exploitation.

The fact that this book exists at all is astonishing. It is powerfully intimate, even in its most self-destructive impulses. And may God bless Kailee Pedersen for giving voice to all of this bitter ache, because I need the vocabulary to address my own.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Encapsulating the idea of the suffering artist, The Minimalist is a blend of contemporary body horror and psychological thriller.

This book references a lot of self-harm, so if that’s a trigger for you, avoid this book, please.

I’m torn about this book because I totally understand what it was doing, but I also wasn’t super compelled by it.

The story is a sort-of descent into madness, but Mia already had a lot going on before the story starts. It’s very artsy, told in a stream of consciousness style where she moves back and forth between memory and the present. It’s not hard to follow and explains why she is having mental health issues. The main issue for me was that the backstory - especially with her and Oliver - was a bit dull and repetitive. I found it hard to really care or connect with that part of her breakdown, so those parts were, to be honest, a slog.

Mild spoiler here:
It’s also almost too easy to see why Mia is suffering - there’s no real revelation or twist. It’s clear from the outset that she feels unwanted and unloved, that she is too focused on achieving outward happiness (recognition, acclaim, others loving her) vs feeling it inside. She hurts herself - either physically or by engaging in unhealthy relationships - to try and wrestle with this. She does the same thing with her composing - she does it to try and win accolades, to impress her teacher, to show the world (and her parents, both adopted and birth) she has value; she’s not doing it for love of artistry or compulsion to create. And this self-loathing is compounded when her teacher dies. She doesn’t let herself connect with those who would actually be good for her in the outer world, because she doesn’t feel she deserves it, due to her feeling unwanted as a child. And then locking herself up in her teacher’s house makes her feel this all the more, displacing her frantic thoughts onto this orchestral piece, until it’s finished and she has no idea what to do.

The reason I say this isn't a spoiler is that's her deal from the get-go. The issue is that these ideas just keep circling and repeating without really building, and then when she has a chance to really do something cathartic, she chooses not to, so you wonder what the point is.

I think this book might have worked better as a novella. It also didn’t help that Mia doesn’t come across as sympathetic. She’s a disaster yet quite pretentious.

That being said, the author has beautiful prose and clear, concise language, so when I was engaged with the story, I was entranced, but, unfortunately, that was only some of the time. I give this a 3.5 stars.

[Annelise · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the death of her mentor and father figure, Ryder Wakefield, Mia Voss has inherited both his home in Santa Fe and his unfinished composition, entitled 'Death Fugue'. It's a sign of trust and respect for him to want his protegee to finish his final work, but the pressure that Mia is under to complete his work in a way that honors his life and studies leads to her mental deterioration. Haunted by the suicide of Ryder's son Oliver, her childhood friend and occasional lover, as well as by her status as a Chinese orphan adopted by white American parents and lacking any connection to her race, Mia turns to self-harm as an outlet for her feelings.

'The Minimalist' is, without a doubt, one of the most stressful books I've read this year. Between the constant criticism that undercuts Mia's life and the graphic self-harm that she inflicts on herself, I was white-knuckling my way through this book. I was also incredibly invested in what came next, and as horrified as I was I didn't want to put this book down. I normally do a lot of reading on the subway, but this one was a difficult subway read on account of how visceral it was. Mia's life is not a happy one, and even when she isn't slamming a piano's fallboard into her fingers, it's not easy to read about her relationship with her mother or her girlfriend without your heart hurting.

While Mia is the focal point and the one whose downfall is at the center of 'The Minimalist', she's far from the only tragic character. Ryder Wakefield was a strict teacher who was more likely to put her down than to compliment her, but he was someone whose similarly disconnected from his identity as a gay Jewish man, in fear of it affecting his career. His son, Oliver, was not blood related, but was left in his care by a Korean student who didn't want to live with the shame of being an unwed mother, and is weighed down by his desire to know where he came from and feeling inferior compared to his father and Mia, two composers who seem more entrenched in music than he could ever be as a pianist. Both characters are deceased by the start of the book, revisiting Mia through flashbacks and her own delusions.

Themes of not belonging to one's identity and being unable to measure up run throughout 'The Minimalist', and perhaps cause even more anguish to the reader than Mia's self-destructive actions. Pedersen's poetic writing voice and knowledge of classical composition make this a beautiful read, even when it's content makes it a difficult one. I don't think I'll be giving 'The Minimalist' a second read anytime soon, but I'll definitely give it a recommendation.

[Ckelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hauntingly beautiful and disturbing story. Mia is a composer. Her mentor is the adoptive father to Oliver, who is probably the only true love of her life. When Oliver dies, Mia and Ryder, her mentor, have their works upended. Years later and aging Ryder also passes sway and Mia is left alone with Ryder’s last, great composition to finish. Finishing this drives Mia deeper into her self and madness.

I’ve come to realize that I really do enjoy poetic writing in a novel. Some of my favorite this year were written by authors who primarily focus on poetry but have now written novels. The emotion that is drawn from each page pulls you into Mia’s conflicted mind. The jumps from present, back to how she got to this point in her life and even looking back at Ryder’s life and coalescence into a moving story that just builds on the discomfort.

Early in the book is a short passage:
“I have no interest in correctness, Ryder said. Music is not correct, it is beautiful. Begin again—make it radiant. Make it rich and vulgar and expressive and terrifying. Make something that would rouse the skeletons from their very graves to dance among us. Make something that would drive even the most indifferent man to a ruinous obsession.”

I think this really sets the stage for Mia’s descent into her own struggles.

There’s also a section later on the book that’s a countdown from present to Ryder as a young boy. The construction of the passage was absolutely incredible and a stand out for me.

If you like horror that is really just impending dread and discomfort this book is for you. If you love beautifully poetic writing this book is for you. If you have a deep background in music and music theory this book is for you.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the arc.

[Rach]

The Minimalist follows classical composer, Mia, as she grapples with the death of legendary minimalist composer, Ryder Wakefield. Mia was his last student, inheriting both his estate and the unfinished manuscript of his final composition, following which she immerses herself in his house to complete the piece. She is confronted by memories of his late son, Oliver, whom was a former lover of hers and died by suicide, and finds herself ridden with ongoing guilt over his loss.

Mia was such a multifaceted and interesting character – themes of perfectionism and obsessiveness, all-consuming love + mental anguish and ill health definitely came into play here. I also loved the complex and fascinating dynamics and relationships that she shared with both Ryder and Oliver, exploring how they played different roles in her life.

I found this to be dark, unsettling, and at times gory (hello, teeth), which is where I suppose the horror comes in, however, it seemed to be a lot more psychological/ trauma-based exploration (and less thrilling) than I was expecting for a book of this genre. I have only ever read a few other horror books, so perhaps this is a misconception on my behalf. While I found the writing to be beautiful and, in a way, haunting, I wasn’t quite sold on the storyline (perhaps due to the heavy focus on classical music, which isn’t really an interest of mine). I do think it would appeal a lot to readers who are more familiar with the minutia surrounding music and composing. I loved the narration, without which I think I would have struggled to keep engaged, so props to Natalie Naudus for doing a fantastic job with this!

Thank you to Brilliance Publishing, Kailee Pederson and NetGalley for an ALC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are books that make you love reading and ones that make you love writing- just as there are novels that make you love stories or ones that make you love storytelling. This was very much the latter on both counts.

Wow.

It's very rare that I finish a novel and just feel this sense of overwhelm and awe, but this book had me stunned. This may be one of the best written stories I have ever read. The pacing, the beautiful lyricism of the prose, just everything about this author's way of storytelling had me absolutely entranced. I have never highlighted lines in an ebook before, ever. But I felt as though I had no choice with some of the metaphors, they demanded attention and I undoubtedly will be returning to re-read some of the most haunting lines, because, well, wow.

One of my favorite elements of this story was how rich it was in allusions. So many fantastic operatic and orchestral works were referenced and used as storytelling devices to elevate the emotional impact, which was absolutely stunning. The use of Apollo and Marsyas to develop the growing madness was genius. Honestly? The entire book was genius.

I also found the relationship between Oliver, Mia, and Ryder to be heart-wrenching and particularly well written. Especially the connection between Oliver and Ryder, which reminded me a lot of Jude and Harold's relationship in 'A Little Life'- one of my all time favorite books.

Finally, the time jumps were incredibly well done. It's very difficult to move scenes and time periods as well as Pedersen did, and it truly felt effortless in this novel. I absolutely loved the emotion that was brought with the well-timed flashbacks, and this unique narrative structure has cemented this author on my favorites list. I will be reading the rest of her works, and anything new to come.

It is very impressive that a book with no quotation marks was so encompassing, and I devoured every page. There is no doubt that The Minimalist is a novel that will plague you long after finishing the last page, though from its haunting story or lyrical honesty I can't say.

A huge thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[lorenzodulac · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this, but I didn’t really see it as a pure horror novel. I wasn’t scared at any point, it felt more like a creepy literary fiction. Like horror is a secondary aspect of it. It’s very unsettling though, I will say that, the body horror elements were strong, some parts were insane. But I personally wasn’t scared.
Being in Mia’s mind was a journey. Her descent into madness clear from the get go. It’s a story of loss and what that can do to people. She’s such an interesting character.
She’s Chinese, but adopted, and because of that situation she feels no connection to her ethnicity. She has a particular relationship with Ryder, an important composer, and when his son Oliver (a feel low Asian adoptee) dies and his father soon follows suit, all she wants to do is finish Ryder’s incomplete composition.
It’s a very short book, almost a novella. That’s probably what’s preventing me from giving this book more than a four star, the length. I wish it was longer. It could’ve gone in a million other directions while still keeping its structure. But I do see why it had to be as short as it was.
The writing though! Man oh man was it good. Really enjoyed it. Even through the more intense bits, you couldn’t help but feel immersed in the story. Really really good.
I know I said it wasn’t scary, but please check trigger warnings. Maybe I’m just used to scarier stuff. There were definitely some gross parts.
Overall, I would recommend, but not to everybody. If you like the kind of horror that’s about perfectionism, where there’s body horror, that’s lit-fic leaning, with grief exploration, that kind of horror, then I’d probably recommend. It’s a pretty niche genre. It’s a four star.
Audiobook notes: The narrator really did the writing justice. Very good narration, I was fully immersed, no notes.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

[Gabby Hurley · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5/5

Thank you NetGalley, St.Martin’s Press, and Kailee Pederson for gifting me with this ARC to review! Now I struggled to get through this one and I was expecting to love it and I’m disappointed it just didn’t work for me.

Liked:

-the concept of an artist slowly going insane while dealing with grief and composing a masterpiece. It’s such an intriguing plot for a book. Mia was definitely taking the self harming to a whole new level which I was completely horrified by.

Disliked:

-lack of quotation marks. I hate this style choice so much! Everything gets jumbled and I have to reread paragraphs because I don’t know when inner thoughts end and speaking starts. I’m sure it works for certain genres but I don’t think it was the best fit for this novel. It came across as unfinished and rushed.

-the flashbacks. They weren’t linear which doesn’t usually bother me too much but for some reason it kept taking me out of the story when a flashback would happen. It makes sense for Mia’s memories to come back to her non linear but again it just didn’t feel cohesive to the rest of the story.

-everything is just a bit underwhelming. The Death Fugue masterpiece wasn’t preformed for an audience (which I think should’ve happened and then we can cut to the ending the author had for Mia). Mia’s obsession felt fake in a way because it was just very sudden. The ending was okay but I wasn’t shocked or interested in it.

[Stephen Reyes-Lawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty good! Definitely a step up from Sacrificial Animals. Just again similar to that book, this is like barely horror. I do see how this could get classified as that because some body horror does pop up in a pretty gruesome way, but this is 90% just about the narrator and her relationship to music and the people around her. I did like it, but the pretty minimal horror and the fact that it is ridiculously nonlinear kind of dinged it a bit for me. I would still give it a 3.5. I listed to the audiobook for this, and the narrator was fantastic, but I just keep in mind that this isn't an audiobook that you can casually listen to while doing chores hah. I can't stress the nonlinear timeline enough. I like doing audiobooks for ARCs sometimes specifically so that I can get through them while doing other things, and I found myself very lost quite a bit because a time jump happened super abruptly while I tuned out for like 30 seconds. That's on me, I'm not gonna knock the book for that, but I did feel like the one jumps became a little excessive. Still, the story's pretty solid and the writing was great. I've seen some people call this purple, but I thought that it was pretty straight forward. Nothing felt excessively written to me. After two novels, I definitely know not to expect like HORROR horror if Kailee Pedersen writes another horror novel. She's definitely got a noticeable style, but I'd be curious to see what she does next.

[Jensen McCorkel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me just say right off that the writing in this novel is absolutely beautiful. It’s dark, introspective, and quietly unsettling. The atmosphere is one of the strongest aspects of the book for me. Much of the story unfolds in isolation, trapping you inside Mia’s mind which makes it feel very claustrophobic. Mia’s inner world is intense and convincing, you can feel her grief and guilt. Making her unraveling though gradual still very believable.

There are so many heavy themes tackled such as anti-semitism, homosexuality and grief making this novel emotionally heavy with little to no relief. With constant psychological pressure and few moments of warmth or levity it can become exhausting rather than gripping.

If you like moody, introspective, slow psychological horror, this will probably be an amazing read for you but if you prefer clear plots, faster pacing, or grounded realism, it may feel too inward, too heavy, or too ambiguous. The ambiguity is another double-edged sword. I appreciated not being spoon-fed answers, but at times it felt like the story was withholding clarity rather than deepening its mystery.

Overall, this is a thoughtful, moody read that will really resonate with the right audience, but it didn’t completely click for me though I found the writing beautiful.

[lyraand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having been sent to an orphanage, unwanted, I had no father—but if I had one, it would have been Ryder. Yet he was also my teacher, and what passes between teacher and student is not love; it is something entirely different. Admiration and terror, envy and hatred. I was all he had left in the world; not only that, I was all that would be left of him.

This book has lacerating things to say about what it is to be a student to a mentor you have a complicated relationship with; about transracial and international adoption; about difficult mother/daughter relationships. I’m not sure how well it works as a novel, specifically—there isn’t much of a plot—but it says things that pierced me.

I liked this because it’s the kind of thing I like, but it definitely needs a certain kind of reader. I have a high tolerance for purple prose, so I mostly liked the prose here, but I can imagine many readers finding it too pretentious. (Also, there are no quotation marks.)

Content notes: Self-harm. Suicide. Disordered eating, including pica and purging. Vomiting. Workplace sexual harassment. Adoption. Emotionally abusive parenting.

Rep: Main character describes herself as a bisexual woman. She has had relationships with men and women. She is ethnically Chinese and was adopted from China as an infant by a white American mother.

[Maria Azmon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been a while since I read a book and thought, ‘Is anyone happy in this story?’ lol. I’m not saying this as a negative but as a warning: this story is DARK. You should see the number of trigger warnings that I set on Fable: grief, violence, misogyny, child abuse, relationship abuse, gore, child loss, homophobia, etc., etc., etc. Seriously, if you are depressed or facing a hard time in your life, I would postpone reading this book to a better time. HOWEVER, the writing is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I marked like 15 quotes on my Kindle. As a music fan, I found this book so heartbreaking but realistic. Music can represent happiness, but pain too. I’m sad about some of the FMC decisions (from a feminist point of view), but I get it, this is not a “fairytale”. I would highly recommend this story to any music fan out there, and to fans of dark stories like “Black Swan”.

And just for reference, why “Minimalist”? “Minimal music (also called minimalism) is a form of art music or other compositional practice that employs limited or minimal musical materials. Prominent features of minimalist music include repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmony, and reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units.” I did some quick research about the concept before I started the book, and it helped me understand better some dialogues and situations. I highly recommend it if you are not that familiar with classical music.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC opportunity.

[Karleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a musician, the premise of The Minimalist pulled me in immediately and delivered something far more intense than I anticipated.

Mia is a prodigy composer and the last student of the late, great Ryder Wakefield. In the wake of his passing, not long after his son and Mia’s former lover, Oliver’s suicide, Mia inherits Ryder’s home and his unfinished final manuscript. Haunted by memories of her years under his tutelage and the weight of her tragic relationship with Oliver, Mia descends into madness as she works to complete the composition.

The writing is harrowing and genuinely haunting. Pedersen pulls you so deeply into Mia’s unraveling that you feel the edges of it yourself — that particular dread of not being entirely sure where the art ends and you, the artist, begin. The pacing and tone are perfectly calibrated throughout, and the themes of grief and loss are cleanly woven into every page. The artist’s descent into madness is a well-worn trope, but Pedersen delivers it uniquely.

A word of warning: this book is not for the faint of heart. If body horror, self-harm, or graphic depictions of mental illness are not something you can sit with, this one isn’t for you. For those with the mettle for it, The Minimalist is absolutely worth it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Annabell · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 ⭐️

Blurb:
Mia Voss descends into madness in this unsettling psychological drama. When her instruction suddenly passes, she inherits everything, including his unfinished composition. Mia dropped everything and is forced to face her complex and dark past, slowly becoming overtaken by her own self-destruction.

Thoughts:
I binged this book so quick because of its addictive writing style! It is so unique and it has such immersive story-telling qualities I couldn’t get enough of. There are no quotations and some of the longest sentences you will encounter in modern-day literature, but it just feels so right.

This book is heavy, and there are a lot of things to consider before diving into it if you have any content areas you avoid. Seeing where Mia was at the beginning versus the end of the book is jolting. She slowly succumbs to her mental illness and is grief stricken, but it is shown through such a poetic way that it almost makes it beautiful (please don’t hate me guys).

I also want to note that although there are a ton of classical music references, I, a non-classical music connoisseur, understood this story so deeply and connected with Mia.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc!

[Madeline Church · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars! The Minimalist was a very different read. It leans heavily into the musician side of things, but that is what made it so enjoyable. I do not know much about the details and knowledge of music. When reading this, I was completely immersed in it. I was learning about it as I read.

Honestly, the dark themes made this book. We see areas such as mental illness and loss. The author did not shy away from these topics at all, and it added to the allure of the novel. I loved how the title was very prevalent in the story, also.

The writing style was one I love. The style felt slightly complex and sophisticated. There was a lot of description. However, a stylistic choice was made in this novel that is one of my biggest book pet peeves. There are no quotation marks. This novel would have probably been rated slightly higher if there were quotation marks. This is completely a personal preference, but it irked me so badly.

Thank you NetGalley, St Martin's Press, & Kailee Pedersen for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The Minimalist is released on August 18, 2026!