Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**4.5-stars**
Angels can look like many things. So can monsters.
Wow, this book is a lot to swallow. It is heavy; there is so much here to process.
Pet is a wildly creative story following, Jam, a black transgirl, living in a sort of metaphorical utopian city called, Lucille.
In this futuristic-feeling city, the angels have gotten rid of the all the monsters. There are no monsters left, or so they say.
Jam lives with her parents, Bitter and Aloe. They are so loving and supportive of Jam. She is content.
That is until when night when she is alone in her Mom’s art studio, Jam accidentally cuts her hand and drips blood on one of the paintings.
Okay, no big deal, right? Her Mom won’t get that mad.
But then the painting starts to come to life!
A being is literally crawling off of the page and coming to life. He’s big, he has horns, he has claws; Jam can’t believe her eyes!!
This mess is certainly going to require a bit more explaining then a few drops of blood on a page.
Jam begins communicating with this new being. His name is Pet and he is here to hunt a monster from the House of Redemption.
How can this be? There are no monsters left and Jam knows Redemption.
He’s her best friend. She knows his whole family; there are no monsters there!
Pet is insistent though. He is not wrong and Jam begrudgingly agrees to help him in his hunt. She doesn’t think he will find anything, but she’s goes along with him anyway more to appease him than anything.
Jam and Pet work together to try to weed out the monster hiding among them.
As mentioned above, this book is heavy. Initially, I was under the impression that this was Middle Grade for some reason, but that can’t be correct. I would definitely classify this as YA and maybe the marketing even does that, I’m not sure.
Dealing heavily in metaphor, this story lays out a horrifying reality for Redemption and his family. I was moved by where this went and the vigilante justice that followed.
If you are looking for an impactful, unique, moving story to pick up this summer, with a ton of great rep and beautiful, metaphoric writing, you should ABSOLUTELY pick up Pet!
I am looking forward to reading more from Emezi!