Title: Pet
Author: Akwaeke Emezi
Publication Date: September 10, 2019
Publisher: Make Me a World
Format: NetGalley eARC

I’ve really been in a dystopian mood, which is what first drew me to this, because I love seeing “perfect” societies fall into ruin.

Maybe I just enjoy watching perfection collapse and burn while I sip tea and perfect my villain laugh in the background. Does that make me evil? Surely not.

Pet is the story of a girl who lives in a perfect city where monsters were driven away years ago … or so they thought. It’s a story that reminds us that monsters can have many faces.

I seem to be in the minority here, but to me, Pet was an okay read that had potential but almost seemed like it tried to do too much and somehow, at the same time, did too little. I loved the idea and enjoyed the mystery and the hunt, but other than Pet, I just couldn’t connect to any of the characters or even the world.

❧ I’m just going to come out and say this: if you’re a Conservative, you may not enjoy this book as much, or at least not until the story really gets going.

Even as someone who considers herself pretty liberal … the story is a bit much, okay? It’s a lot to swallow all at once. Imagine everything on the liberal ticket suddenly becoming true. Everyone lives together “peacefully”. Civil War statues have been taken down. Guns are banned. Health care for all. It matters not if someone is gay, transgender, has multiple spouses, etc. This is very much a stereotypical, unnuanced liberal utopia.

The point of the story is that, ultimately, even the most “perfect” ideal city … isn’t. And at some point, that becomes obvious. However, you still have to make it past a lot of monologues about how wonderful things are now in Lucille compared to the past.

Despite the fact that I actually support a lot of this, the monologues became a bit much for me and really felt like they were pushing an agenda hard. Personally, I’m not a fan of reading books with a heavy-handed agenda, but I didn’t have a hard time sticking through until the actual story became the focus. I could see, though, how it could definitely turn some readers off right from the bat without giving it much of a chance.

❧ There is a lot of diversity in this book, in many different forms.

I mean, see that cover? It’s a little black girl! Which in my day, was really hard to find. Yes, the protagonist is a little black girl, who also happens to be transgender. Her parents are immigrants, whose speech is influenced by where they’re from. Her mother, Bitter, is from “the islands,” which I’m assuming is meant to be Trinidad, since she refers to Jam as “doux-doux” and I definitely get the impression of French Creole slang when she speaks. Her father, Aloe, is from Africa, but I don’t think it got any more specific than that. They both speak a form of Creole, essentially, with foreign words sometimes thrown in, and I personally thought it was a great way to show other cultures. It may be difficult for some younger readers to follow, but I didn’t have a problem, personally.

Jam’s best friend has three parents, all married to each other, one of which is non-binary and uses the pronoun “they”. The librarian just happens to be wheelchair bound. I mean, this had a little bit of everything, not necessarily in a way that particularly highlighted or focused on it, but these were just people living their best lives as their best selves.

What I thought was particularly neat was that Jam was a selective mute, which meant she often signed rather than verbally speaking.

I don’t see this a lot in books, and while I don’t think it was handled all that great in this book, it was definitely an interesting aspect that I appreciated. Signing is a complex language and hard to capture in the written word, but I’m always glad to see the attempt.

❧ This book raises a whole slew of moral questions, which I loved, and would be a great jumping-off point for many conversations.

Angels are obviously the good guys, right? Everyone should want to be an angel because they’re perfect and light and good, yeah? WRONG! Angels are still humans. They’ve seen some stuff. They’ve done some stuff. The book doesn’t shy away from pointing out that the line between angel and monster isn’t as vast as one might think.

This book raises so many questions and really encourages critical thinking and delving into some complex issues.

My favorite thing, personally, is the idea that monsters didn’t simply go away. People just forgot what they looked like. They forgot to look for them. And that thought is so freaking chilling, but also so very accurate, and I just loved that so much.

❧ Pet is an absolutely brilliant character and definitely the highlight of this book for me.

Pet is an angel. No, not that kind of angel. There will be no white wings and halos and beautiful gold curls here, thank you very much. Actually, the description of Pet sounds very much like what one might expect from a demon, and I’m a big fan of subverting expectations, so I’m all for this. Plus, the whole point of this story is looks are deceptive.

Pet has one ultimate goal: hunt the monsters. Destroy the monsters.

… wait, is that two goals? Technically, he just wants to destroy them, and hunting is a necessary evil in that, but whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You know what I mean. He’s very much a morally gray character who’s bristling with impatience and sarcasm, so really, it should be no surprise why I like him.

❧ If I give any sort of trigger warning, it’s going to be a massive spoiler, so I’ll just say that it has some pretty dark content towards the end.

I mean, the whole point of the book is hunting a monster, right? And there is a monster at the end of this book. I was still surprised by just how dark it got. I mean, yeah, I expected they were looking for someone who had done something horrific, but … yikes. Not what I had expected. This book has some great messages, but I’d also caution younger YA readers as to whether or not they’re ready for such heavy content.

❧ This book is listed as YA and recommended for 12+ on Amazon, but the writing feels younger than that (older mid-grade, maybe). At the same time, the content feels more upper YA.

This book definitely didn’t feel YA for me, and I read a lot of YA. Probably too much. I’m 75% YA at this point, masquerading as a functioning adult. There’s definitely a place for younger YA, so I’m not complaining about it reading younger, per se. I’m complaining about it reading younger with more mature content, which sort of just … muddles things?

This book is recommended for grades 7 – 9, but I personally wouldn’t necessarily give this to those readers due to the content. My sister, for example, is in seventh grade and reading mostly upper mid-grade books, and writing-wise, this would be about the right level for her. Content-wise, though? I would steer her away from this book.

She’s just not mature enough for the things that happen at the end of this. It’s not graphic, no. Everything is alluded to and hinted at, but it’s freaking dark. Not exactly what I expected going in, and not anything I would personally want to expose her to, because she’s just … not ready. So there feels like a disconnect between the writing level, which feels more immature, and the content, which I would recommend a reader being more on the mature side before reading.

❧ There’s a disconnect between Jam’s age and how she acts and how people treat her. I’m not sure why she wasn’t younger.

Let’s be honest, Jam acts about 10 – 12, which would be perfect for the target audience of this book. She also seems to be in this stage where she’s starting to question the world around her, and her parents are telling her not to grow up too fast, etc. But according to the beginning of the book, she’s supposed to be 16? Which … I have concerns. I mean, she acts like and is treated like such a kid, even to the point where her mother carries her to bed after she falls asleep. From my point of view as a parent, this is concerning to me, because I wouldn’t want kids thinking this is how someone should act or be treated at 16. I had to keep reminding myself that she was supposed to be older, because she just didn’t strike me as 16 at all.

❧ I read an ARC version, so this may not be a problem in the finished version, but there’s no consistency with formatting thoughts, which becomes confusing.

Jam communicates with Pet through thought sometimes, as well as having her own inner thoughts. Sometimes inner thoughts are italicized. Sometimes they’re not. Chat with Pet is often not italicized, which is kind of confusing, but then sometimes it is. The back and forth was sometimes hard to follow. To add to all of this, signing is also italicized. The formatting really could’ve used a little more work to make it clearer.

❧ There’s not really much character development or growth, which was a bit of a disappointment.

Given how ridiculously naive Jam starts, one might think that would leave plenty of room for her to grow and evolve, and she kind of just … doesn’t? I mean, there’s some change in both her and society and a bit of a loss of innocence, but I didn’t really feel like she was overall changed by this journey. There definitely wasn’t much of a character arc to speak of.

❧ It feels like there’s so much left out of this story, and what’s hinted at and not discussed is what I want to read, because it sounds like that is the real story.

I don’t want to give too much away because of spoilers, but Jam’s parents, Bitter and Aloe were alive before the monsters were driven away. They lived through the revolution. They saw what had to happen. Also, they’ve met Pet before. WHAT EVEN IS THIS STORY? WHERE IS IT? Because that sounds like a hecka fun story to follow. I want to know more about this.

Even though Aloe and Bitter seem like there’s so much more behind them and so much more depth to the fantasy elements of this story, they’re ultimately just swept under the rug to focus on the here and now.

There’s pretty much no world-building as far as history goes. It’s mentioned here and there sometimes, but then dropped like it doesn’t matter, when it so clearly does. I kept thinking it’d come back up and Jam’s parents would finally break down and tell her what they know, and it just never happened. Unfortunately, I was much more interested in that story than Jam’s, and we never got anything more than a brief teaser.

Have you read any really good dystopian books this year?