Pet
The award-winning speculative YA from the Sunday Times bestseller
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3.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?
She stumbled backwards, her eyes wide, as the figure started coming out of the canvas
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She tried to be brave. Well, she said, her hands only a little shaky, at least tell me what I should call you.
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Well, little girl, it replied, I suppose you can call me Pet.
There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson all her life. But when she meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colours and claws, who emerges from one of her mother's paintings and a drop of Jam's blood, she must reconsider what she's been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption's house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth.
In their riveting and timely young adult debut, acclaimed novelist Akwaeke Emezi asks difficult questions about what choices a young person can make when the adults around them are in denial.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Serious yet Hopeful
Truly one of the most impactful YA books I’ve ever come across. So particularly relevant right now.