The New York Times Book Review - Ibi Zoboi
…Emezi's beautiful, genre-expanding debut young adult novel…defies genre, yet it is deeply familiar in its message that we have to believe a better world is possible, and that we create both our monsters and our angels…Pet is a nesting doll of creative possibilities, very much like children themselves, the angels among us.
Publishers Weekly
★ 06/17/2019
Carnegie Medal–nominee Emezi (Freshwater for adults) makes their young adult debut in this story of a transgender, selectively nonverbal girl named Jam, and the monster that finds its way into their universe. Jam’s hometown, Lucille, is portrayed as a utopia—a world that is post-bigotry and -violence, where “angels” named after those in religious texts have eradicated “monsters.” But after Jam accidently bleeds onto her artist mother’s painting, the image—a figure with ram’s horns, metallic feathers, and metal claws—pulls itself out of the canvas. Pet, as it tells Jam to call it, has come to her realm to hunt a human monster––one that threatens peace in the home of Jam’s best friend, Redemption. Together, Jam, Pet, and Redemption embark on a quest to discover the crime and vanquish the monster. Jam’s language is alternatingly voiced and signed, the latter conveyed in italic text, and Igbo phrases pepper the family’s loving interactions. Emezi’s direct but tacit story of injustice, unconditional acceptance, and the evil perpetuated by humankind forms a compelling, nuanced tale that fans of speculative horror will quickly devour. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
A unique science fiction tale.” –Essence
"Brilliant." –The Washington Post
"With great tenderness, Pet questions a society silenced by denial." –Observer
“By far the most striking of the [National Book Award] finalists is PET, a sinister morality tale by Akwaeke Emezi.” –The Wall Street Journal
“A riveting and timely work answering the questions about how you go about the world when the world around you is in denial.” –Out Magazine
"This soaring novel shoots for the stars and explodes the sky with its bold brilliance." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
"A compelling, nuanced tale that fans of speculative horror will quickly devour." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"A riveting and important read that couldn’t be more well timed to our society’s struggles with its own monsters." —School Library Journal, Starred Review
“Jam is also notable as a Black, trans protagonist in this important narrative that teens will want to read to gain some perspective on the modern political environment.” —The Bulletin, Starred Review
"Emezi’s characters are diverse in race, physical ability and especially gender.... Readers might see in Jam’s surroundings a version of a world that they, like Jam, might choose to fight for." —BookPage, Starred Review
“A haunting and poetic work of speculative fiction.” —The Horn Book
Library Journal - Audio
02/01/2020
Transgender teen Jam has grown up in utopian Lucille, where everyone is accepted and bad things don't exist, with her artist mom and easygoing dad. Jam is selectively mute and communicates mostly by sign language with her family and friend Redemption. But her gentle world changes when she accidentally bleeds onto one of her mother's canvases, and a creature is born out of the blood. The beast, called Pet, informs Jam that he is there to hunt a human monster that exists in Redemption's house. Jam helps Pet identify and capture the monster, and in the process, change idyllic Lucille forever. This work of speculative fiction is a National Book Award finalist and the first to be published in Christopher Myers's new imprint, Make Me a World, and so it seems fitting that Myers himself narrates the book. Myers handles the narration with ease, creating an atmospheric setting. Pet is performed in a deep voice, sometimes quietly, and at other times aggressively with sinister inflections. The more intense parts of the story—when the hunted monster and his crimes are identified—are properly expressed through his faster pacing and increasingly emotional tone. VERDICT This title will have plenty of crossover appeal; younger listeners may respond to the fantasy/horror aspect of the story, while more mature or thoughtful listeners will be drawn to the allegorical aspects of the story, with its themes of good vs. evil, bravery, trust, vengeance, and unconditional acceptance.—Julie Paladino, formerly with East Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill, NC
School Library Journal - Audio
03/01/2020
Gr 9 Up—Transgender teen Jam has grown up in utopian Lucille, where everyone is accepted and bad things don't exist, with her artist mom and easygoing dad. Jam is selectively mute and communicates mostly by sign language with her family and friend Redemption. But her gentle world changes when she accidentally bleeds onto one of her mother's canvases, and a creature is born out of the blood. The beast, called Pet, informs Jam that he is there to hunt a human monster that exists in Redemption's house. Jam helps Pet identify and capture the monster, and in the process, change idyllic Lucille forever. This work of speculative fiction is a National Book Award finalist and the first to be published in Christopher Myers's new imprint, Make Me a World, and so it seems fitting that Myers himself narrates the book. He handles the narration with ease, creating an atmospheric setting. Pet is performed in a deep voice, sometimes quietly, and at other times aggressively, with sinister inflections. The more intense parts of the story—when the hunted monster and his crimes are identified—are properly expressed through his faster pacing and increasingly emotional tone.VERDICT Younger listeners may respond to the fantasy/horror aspect of the story, while older, more thoughtful listeners will be drawn to the allegorical aspects of the audio, with its themes of good vs. evil, bravery, trust, vengeance, and unconditional acceptance.—Julie Paladino, formerly with East Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill, NC
School Library Journal
★ 07/01/2019
Gr 7 Up—The only world Jam has ever known is that of Lucille, a town where the angels have ostensibly banished the monsters and dismantled the structures that allowed monsters and monstrous deeds to pervade. Lucille is a post-prison, post–school shooting, post–police brutality society. A society where someone like Jam, a selectively mute transgender teen, can live with complete acceptance, support, and love. Still, she can feel the hard truths of the world, can sense them in the air, hear them in words unsaid. When Jam steals into her mother Bitter's painting studio and unleashes Pet, a winged, horned, eyeless creature and monster hunter, from one of the paintings and into their world, life as she's known it begins to dissolve. Jam must confront the harsh realities of her world as she tentatively partners with Pet and ventures forward to avenge a wrong not yet discovered. This is a heart-stirring atmospheric page-turner, a terrific and terrible yet quiet adventure. Emezi spins a tale that defies categorization as strikingly as their characters, forcing readers to deeply rethink assumptions about identity, family structure, and justice. VERDICT A riveting and important read that couldn't be more well timed to our society's struggles with its own monsters.—Jill Heritage Maza, Montclair Kimberley Academy, NJ
OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile
Akwaeke Emezi makes their young adult debut with a gut-wrenching story on audio. Narrator Christopher Myers leads the listener through the serene town of Lucille, where teenage Jam lives in a world supposedly purged of evil. In this idealized future, Jam’s generation is raised to believe that the social problems of the past have been eradicated and bad people—“monsters”—are no more, run out by the revolutionary “angels.” Myers skillfully inhabits the story’s different characters, infusing his voice with subtle but distinct differences in pacing, tone, and cadence. Myers shines as Pet, a strange creature who has arrived in Lucille to hunt a monster. He infuses Pet’s resonant voice with a fierce and visceral protectiveness and a hunger for justice that will lead Jam to the truth. H.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-06-23
Teenager Jam unwittingly animates her mother's painting, summoning a being through a cross-dimensional portal.
When Pet, giant and grotesque, bursts into her life one night, Jam learns it has emerged to hunt and needs the help of a human who can go places it cannot. Through their telekinetic connection, Jam learns that though all the monsters were thought to have been purged by the angels, one still roams the house of her best friend, Redemption, and Jam must uncover it. There's a curious vagueness as to the nature of the banished monsters' crimes, and it takes a few chapters to settle into Emezi's (Freshwater, 2018) YA debut, set in an unspecified American town where people are united under the creed: "We are each other's harvest. We are each other's business. We are each other's magnitude and bond," taken from Gwendolyn Brooks' ode to Paul Robeson. However, their lush imagery and prose coupled with nuanced inclusion of African diasporic languages and peoples creates space for individuals to broadly love and live. Jam's parents strongly affirm and celebrate her trans identity, and Redemption's three parents are dedicated and caring, giving Jam a second, albeit more chaotic, home. Still, Emezi's timely and critical point, "monsters don't look like anything," encourages our steady vigilance to recognize and identify them even in the most idyllic of settings.
This soaring novel shoots for the stars and explodes the sky with its bold brilliance. (Fantasy. 14-18)