Writing: 5/5 Plot: 3/5 Characters: 4.5/5

There are no Monsters left in the town of Lucille. Long ago, in a time not often spoken about, the Angels rid the town of Monsters and left the inhabitants with a peaceful existence. But when Jam’s mother, Bitter, paints a picture that comes alive when accidentally touched with Jam’s blood, it appears that perhaps not all of the Monsters in Lucille are gone after all. It appears that “Pet” has come hunting a Monster, and it is closer than anyone would like…

The book’s description did not prepare me at all for the vibrant, powerful, writing. It is vivid and visceral — the kind where every phrase says far more than its constituent words would suggest. Strong themes of righteous vengeance against evil combined with realistic and subtle explanations of what people do. “Monster” is the epithet for people who do bad things, but “Angels” and “Monsters” aren’t pretty or ugly like the pictures in a book: “It’s all just people, doing hard things or doing bad things. But is all just people, our people.”

The plot is actually a bit simplistic (aimed at a middle school audience), but the characters, writing, and themes make it impossible to put down. Emezi is going right on my “follow” list.

Some of my favorite quotes:
“Jam always felt lucky when she stood in the path of her father’s joy.”

“Everyone, everything deserved some time to be. To figure out what they were. Even a painting. Bitter finishing it was just her telling it what she thought it was, or what she’d seen it as. It hadn’t decided for itself yet.”

“You humans and your binaries, Pet said. It is not a good thing or a bad thing. It is just a thing.”

“It built a stone of guilt in her chest, and Jam added it to the pile that had been forming there since she told Pet to stay.”

“That’s precisely the point, little girl. Your knowing, you think it gives you clarity, sight that pierces. It can be a cloud, a thing that obscures.”

“Jam nodded, even though the fear was still a tangled necklace in her stomach, heavy and iron.”

“The creature growled low in its throat and changed its body language, small shifts that bled naked menace into the room.”

“But Jam could still feel the anxiety and fear like a spilled sourness soaked up by the floor, circulating through the house.”

“Not one of my concerns in this life, to be nice, to sound nice, what is nice.”

“Your world is unpleasant, your truths are unpleasant, the hunt is unpleasant.”

This is one of the most unusual books I've ever read. It's dystopian future crossed with magical fairy tale with some gigantic social issues thrown in. The characters are interesting and compelling. The issues they're dealing with-good versus evil, what does evil look like, what does good look like, transgender, and family dynamics. It's an amazing array of things wrapped up in a beautifully written story that's hard to put down.

Though PET was kind of on the short side, it packed a heavy punch. Excellent social commentary and I love the diverse representation within the book. I couldn't believe it when the story was over. I would like to read more from this author.

Pet is here to hunt a monster.
Are you brave enough to look?

Akwaeki Emezi is THE author to watch. I read one of my favorite books of all time last year, and it was the debut of Emezi's titled FRESHWATER. It spellbound me and cut me to my core. It was all-consuming and formative for me. PET is Emezi's young adult novel featuring the utopia town called Lucille. At this point, the world has been through a lot. America has hunted its monsters and provided justice to its citizens. No longer are there abusers and murderers and etc. The Angels, who were on the front lines of this revolution, made sure to stomp down all of the monsters until eventually they become unheard of all together, so far removed from people's minds that it's like "monsters" don't exist at all. They're a myth.

However, everything changes when Jam approaches a sinister painting of her mother's, accidentally drops blood on it, and it comes to life. It calls itself Pet, and it's in Lucille to hunt a monster. Jam doesn't believe that this could be true, because Lucille is supposed to be free of monsters, but Pet persists that it has something to do with her best friend Redemption's home. This devastates Jam even more, but she can't take a chance if it is true. Thus begins a hunt for a monster in an unsuspecting place, where monsters can look like anything.

I think this story is incredibly special. Emezi has a way with words and to make you think outside of the box. I love that this is a book safe for young readers. It's really important to understand that monsters can look like anyone, and so can angels. I really enjoyed reading this book. Highly recommended. I will read every single thing Emezi puts out there.

<b>A refreshing #OwnVoices story offering a highly relevant take on the concept of angels and monsters, <i>Pet</i> proves that Akwaeke Emezi can write for younger audiences just as well as they can for adults.</b>

<b><i>Pet</i> is, at its heart, a story about finding and eliminating evil, even—or especially—when that evil goes unnoticed by most.</b> Jam, a selectively-nonverbal black trans girl, finds herself caught in a moral quandary when a terrifying creature climbs out of one of her mother’s paintings and into the real world. This creature, who calls itself Pet, tells Jam that it has come to hunt a monster. Jam is confused at first, because in the town of Lucille, all monsters—the abusers, the corrupt billionaires, the racist police officers, the sexual predators, and so on—have been eliminated. There should be no monsters to hunt; the mere existence of one means that the supposed safety of her home is a lie. Even more upsetting is the fact that Pet says the monster resides in the house of Jam’s best friend, Redemption. How could there be a monster in such a happy household? Should she tell Redemption about it? And <b>how do you hunt a monster when you don’t even know what, or who, it is?</b>

I did feel a little misled by this book’s categorization. <b>It’s listed as YA, but it felt very much on the young side of that age bracket.</b> Yes, the protagonist is sixteen, and there is some mention of mature topics like child abuse and rape, but the discussions tastefully avoid most details, and Jam herself feels pretty naïve for a teenager. Some of that, I’m sure, is a result of the safe and sterile society she lives in, but I couldn’t help feeling that this novel would be better suited for a late middle-grade reader.

Now, don’t take that the wrong way. There were plenty of things I loved about this book. For one, <b>the diversity is spectacular, both in its inclusivity and in its handling of intersectional identities.</b> The fact that Jam is trans is not just casually dropped once and never mentioned again; she has multiple moments where she realizes her estrogen implant feels cold, or when she thinks about how her life could have gone so differently if her parents hadn’t allowed her to transition when she first insisted, at age three, that she was a girl, not a boy. It isn’t aggressively forced on the reader, nor is it a focal point of the book, but it is a facet of her character that is just there for token diversity points. <b>This is the kind of trans rep I want to see more of: where trans characters can have stories that don’t center around their gender identity, but that also don’t ignore the ways that identity impacts them.</b>

Racial identity is also dealt with exceptionally well; Jam’s parents speak English with distinct linguistic patterns that echo their immigrant status, and when they cook, they make traditional Caribbean dishes. Again, Emezi is able to make sure that <b>characters’ identities are not forgotten but also not exploited.</b> And there are casual allusions to other varied identities as well: Redemption has three parents, all married to each other, one of whom is nonbinary; and the librarian, Ube, is in a wheelchair.

Emezi’s use of language is what really allows this tale to flourish. The imagery is vivid without being excessively flowery, and Jam’s thought process is introspective without feeling self-indulgent. All the characters’ voices come across distinctly, from Pet’s tendency to use circular, repetitive language, to the dialects of Jam’s parents, to Redemption’s use of AAVE, to the distinctions Jam makes on when to sign her thoughts and when to voice them. That final element, Jam’s frequent use of sign language, brought an especially interesting element to the narrative, as she decided when and what was significant enough to necessitate the use of her voice aloud. Sometimes, things got confusing—Emezi did not have a good way to indicate the difference between Jam signing things and thinking them in her direct telepathic link to Pet—so the use of italics made it a little vague as far as who was speaking. That said, without using an outright different font to indicate thought-communication, I don’t know that they could have handled it any differently.

One more positive note: <b>Jam’s relationships to everyone and everything around her are fascinating and fully realized, multi-dimensional connections.</b> Her relationship with Redemption is seriously friendship goals, full of trust and the sort of instinctive understanding that comes with knowing a person for most of your life. Jam’s constant uncertainty on how much to involve him in the monster hunt, her acute awareness of how any of her choices could impact their friendship, felt incredibly real. Similarly, her relationship with her parents, including their unconditional love for each other, how readily they accepted her being trans even as a child, their willingness to talk about anything and everything, and her guilt over not telling them about her ongoing hunt, is both pleasantly simple and surprisingly nuanced. Jam’s psychic connection with Pet, and their frequent disagreement, presents an interesting exercise in self-awareness. And the odd connection Jam feels with her house, able to sense when things are wrong simply through vibrations in the floorboards, is a nice touch that enhances her intense connection with and innate understanding of the world.

However, I did get the feeling sometimes that <b>this story was a rather predictable, parable-like tale.</b> The plot was incredibly linear, none of it particularly surprising; even the identity of the monster, while not necessarily expected, is still not <i>un</i>expected. As a narrative about the deceptive nature of evil and the blurred lines around who is truly bad and who is just misguided, about how even someone who seems so good can have dark secrets, it fulfills its function perfectly. But for a novel of two hundred pages, it could stand to have a little more substance, or some plot twists along the way.

As a whole, I highly recommend this read to anyone interested in #OwnVoices representation, the difficulty of discerning right from wrong, and the nuances of relationships. It is not a long read, nor is it perfect, hence the four-star rating, but it is certainly impactful. And, <b>in a time when so much in this world is confusing and scary, where there are monsters at every turn and even in high political offices, it is a necessary reminder that we are the ones who need to take change into our own hands.</b>

<b>TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNINGS: child abuse, rape, mention of racism and police brutality, graphic violence.</b>

Emezi got an incredible amount of work done in so few pages. The narrative voice was succinct and distinct, with a cast of secondary characters that the reader bonded to easily through Jam. Jam's selective mutism and her transgender identity were well woven into the story's dialogue without this book being about those issues.

Instead, the novel's focus is on monsters: abusive police officers and billionares, sure, but also the insidious, quiet monsters that creep in when we're not paying attention. The town of Lucille grew complacent. They spent decades building their new world, reforming and rehabilitating monsters into upright citizens. All the adults assumed the work was done, until Pet came through that painting. This story focuses on the different kinds of strength we need to confront adversaries and loved ones, and how to listen even when our loved ones aren't speaking.

**Disclaimer: I was given an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

"Pet" is short, but such a powerful and important read. The beginning is a bit confusing with the names of the different characters in Jam's life (Bitter, Redemption, Aloe, Ube, Hibiscus, Moss, Glass, Malachite...), but the story definitely takes a turn shortly afterwards. It's definitely a thought-provoking story about who/what is really a monster.

The one thing that really bugged me, but is an easy fix, is the internal dialogues. Sometimes the dialogue is italicized and sometimes it isn't??? I didn't understand why.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke
I loved this book. The friendship between Jam and Redemption was amazing. The language in this book is beautiful. This book will leave you thinking.

I received this book for review from Netgalley and and Random House Children's (Huge Thank You)

We follow our main character Jam, a black trans girl with selective mutism who lives in Lucille, a town in a future version of America that would look like an utopia to us. Not only the people around Jam accept all of her as she is, Lucille as a whole doesn’t have “monsters” anymore: no police to fear, no hoarding billionaires or evil politicians or backstabbing bigots. Evil has been defeated, people say, but as Jam soon discovers, that’s never really the case.

The way this book handled the concept of angels and monsters was very interesting. There are angels that look like us and then you have Pet. An actual factual biblical style angel, who she summoned from a painting she had.

The whole book is a metaphor of whats happening today's world. This book is a must read for all ages.

Akwaeke Emezi went there, and I am excited to see what she has in store for is in the future.

This is by far the most unique young adult book I think I have ever experienced. Thank you Netgally for the opportunity to read and review this excellent work. The genre is fantasy which is my least favorite but I thought the writing of Pet was was incredibly rich and imaginative.

Jam is a trans teenager who lives in the town of Lucille. I believe Jam is deaf because she signs. Lucille is a city that that long ago has been purged of “monsters.” No one can imagine such creatures returning, so it's little surprise that Jam and her family are shocked when Jam releases a beast from one of her mothers paintings.
Through this monster, Pet, Jam begins to realize what the adults refuse to believe: evil--and monsters--still exist. The Angels may have gotten rid of them once, but now a monster is back and evil has returned to Lucille. All the adults refuse to believe in monsters so how are Jam and her friends supposed to defeat the new Monster and save the town?

Kudos to a creative and talented writer.

Pet is a very well written fictional comment on the state of things in the world today, but it's like your looking at today from a little ones eyes in the future. Someone trying to understand a past they weren't alive to see. I enjoyed the book even though it is not really something I would normally choose to read. I prefer fluffier, humorous novel when I read fiction. I like to escape the real world in books. That being said this was very well written and even though its set in a fictional future you can see many things that coincide with our world today and where it's heading.

The premise intrigued me. With so many choices of stories about how the world is going to be terrible, it's nice to read about how the world will be healed. At first I was a little concerned that the diversity was being forcefully shoved into the story, but after a chapter or two it felt natural. I like that so many characters are intersectional in their identities. And Pet the monster/angel was amazing! What a character! Not a lot of my students will read this, but it will be powerful for those who do.

I received this book for review from Netgalley and and Random House Children's (Big big thank you)

This book was a rollercoaster of a ride. The awe, the frustration, me being impressed at the changes made. This book was amazing! I am ecstatic that I was given a chance to read a book with a trans main character of color. What a time to be alive!

This is a book about monsters, but not the kind you think. They look just like us and you might be friends with some of them. Since the Revolution monsters have thought to have been 'eradicated'. So, when Jam's late night trip to her mother's studio brings news of monsters, everyone is understandably skeptical.

The way this book handled the concept of angels and monsters was very interesting. There are angels that look like us and then you have Pet. An actual factual biblical style angel. I always like to hear descriptions of angels and how inhuman they look.

Although I was a little frustrated with how Jam was making her decisions, I understand that she is child that was thrown into a chaotic situation. The outcome of her decision certainly justified the journey it took to get there.

All in all, I highly recommend this book. It was wonderful and it will make you think about how you approach situations. Do the means really justify the end?

Holy moly. I don’t even have words for what I just read, but it’s unlike any story I’ve experienced before... in the best possible way.
The residents of Lucille think that over the years, they’ve banished all evil, but Jam inadvertently calls forth a creature— an angel? a hunter—who knows that a monster still lives among them.
The way that Akwaeke Emezi spins words into a magical parable is stunning. The way they incorporate a full spectrum of abilities and sexual identities is super refreshing.

My one quibble— the current cover looks juvenile, and this is very much a YA and up book. I hope future covers capture the essence and the audience more effectively.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to read this before the pub date via the electronic ARC!

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi was not at all what I expected even after I reread the description right before I read the book. I read this whole in one day because even though I had somewhat mixed feelings about it, I still could not wait to find out what happens. Emezi built a world that seems so socially relevant right now, a utopia that many want to build. But instead of everything being perfect and safe, she shows what happens when people put blind trust in those who are supposed to be their saviors - their angels. While I enjoy the representation in this book, it also felt like the author shoved as many different identities as possible into just two families. The story also felt a little rushed to me. Overall though, I think this is a very socially relevant book that combines a dystopian-ish utopia with inclusivity and some magical elements that represent important real-world issues.

This book definitely took me by surprise! It was deep! It was complex and thought provoking, and left me wondering about so many things! I would definitely recommend it to anyone!

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

This was unexpected and surprisingly quiet for such a huge topic. I think that's why it worked. Isolated in one family and a friend, a huge monster that tended to waiver between good and evil...really interesting premise I think young adults will be drawn to

Having been a ridiculously-crazy-mind-blowing fan of “FRESHWATER”, by Akwaeke Emezi’s debut autobiographical novel - It took seconds to request a copy of “PET”, the moment I saw the book on Netgalley.

I love the “About the Book”, sentence....created by the advertising folks:
“PET IS HERE TO HUNT A MONSTER. ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO LOOK?”

Yes...yes...yes....I put on my ‘brave’ hat, wrapped myself in my new gorgeous ‘brave’ blanket ( made by my wonderful-moon-friend) - snuggled into my ‘brave’ chair- and started reading.....BRAVELY.
I KID YOU NOT....a reader must be ‘brave’ to read anything by Akwaeke Emezi. Her books are exceptionally experiential > filled with wisdom - insights - and depth. Emezi has the ability to tap into our personal inhibitions to experience both a fascinating tale and a moving transformation.

The wonderful blurb folks gave us this to ponder too:
“HOW DO YOU SAVE THE WORLD FROM MONSTERS IF NO ONE WILL ADMIT THEY
EXIST?”

Another question is.....”COULD WE EVER LIVE IN A WORLD WITHOUT EVIL?”

We meet Jam - a black transgender teen who lives in a town called Lucille. She has loving parents: Bitter and Aloe.
Jam was taught that all the monsters in the world have vanished....ie: murderers, corrupt politicians, sex offenders, rapists, injustice, prejudice, and all types of abusers.
In Lucille -The town of Utopia - Angels are known, but not evil.

But.... perhaps not all monsters are really gone?/!
Perhaps children discover truths before their parents do.

It’s so tempting to want to share the page-turning creative-details - but I’ll be good...
so instead the characters with their thought-provoking names:
Jam, Bitter, Redemption, Aloe, Ube, Hibiscus, Moss, Glass, Malachite, and PET are waiting to meet you...( they will be happy to fill you in and give you a job to do)....

You are being invited come face to face with PET, a magical creature who feels human, who is roughly the same height as Jam ( PET calls Jam ‘little girl’.... her mother calls her ‘doux-flux’), other than PET has dark red horns and smoke wafting out of his mouth, smelling like ash.

PET, who was painted into life, doesn’t care what Jam or her parents want - only the truth of ‘what is’.
“The truth does not change whether it is seen or unseen”.

Sometimes it’s easier not to see… not to see what is happening. This is why you must be brave while facing the truth.

Jam remembers her mother, Bitter, telling her before the revolution had ended- Angels as hunters had to do dark things, hard things. They, too, had to be brave.

PET may need to do hard things, too.
Jam may have to do dark things....
They need your help readers...
Don’t be afraid ...
Put on your Sunday best brave clothes-of-armor....
And remember...
“All knowledge is good knowledge”!

A fantastical young adult book... one that adults will enjoy too.

Teachers, parents of middle age kids... this is a terrific book choice to read together.

Akwaeke Emezi is sooo brilliantly creative - SUCH A UNIQUE writer....I admire her extraordinary talent.

Thank you Netgalley, Random House Children, and Akwaeke Emezi

Beautiful, haunting, captivating, with a touch of magic and a touch of fantasy, just brilliant! The message throughout this story is so timely. The town of Lucille is sure it is rid of the monsters, corrupt politicians, child abusers, murderers and other monsters. Jam, a young transgirl, lives with her loving parents. She and her best friend Redemption, have grown up believing there are no more monsters. Jam’s mother, Bitter, paints a picture which comes alive and presents itself to Jam. It, Pet, tells her that there is a monster in Redemption’s house and Pet is here to hunt it. A wonderful story which will stay with you for some time. This book has made it to my ‘best ever’ book list.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

In the town of Lucille, everyone says that monsters have been eradicated. But when a girl named Pet accidentally summons a monster from a painting, she learns not only that monsters still exist, but that they've existed all along in plain sight - sometimes in the form of someone you know and trust. And when the adults around her are in denial, how can she deal with monsters?

This YA debut is beautifully written, as I've come to expect from Emezi. I also appreciate the metaphor here for violence, abuse, and prejudice, and how to address those wrongs when so many people refuse to acknowledge them. It's very cleverly done, but I do wonder how I would have felt about this book as a young person. I suspect I wouldn't have appreciated the style and metaphor quite so much as I do now. But I hope Pet makes a big impact on young readers, and I look forward to hearing how it's received by them.