Pet (Pet, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Apr 11, 2020 Nadine in NY Jones rated it liked it

Shelves: tween, young-adult, fantasy-and-sci-fi, angels-and-demons-and-good-and-evil, new-fairy-tale

The first step to seeing is seeing that there are things you do not see ...

I picked this book up three times before I was ready to read it. Emezi’s style is difficult if you’re not in the right mindset. But once I was ready, I flew through this book and read it in one day.

This is a dark allegory with a complex presentation and a very simplistic writing style. Emezi says she wrote this for a YA audience, and I can see how she changed her style and left out disturbing details, but I’m not sur ...more

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Jul 13, 2022 Sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Read this book for the:
• Representation. The MC is a black trans girl who is selectively verbal and uses sign language. She is wholly accepted by all for who she is. There is also a character who uses a wheelchair, and a poly family which includes a non-binary character.
• The prose. While some have said the book is too simple to be YA and too complex/violent to be middle grade, it has such beautiful, metaphorical prose that I think it has tons of adult appeal.
You want many things, you are ...more

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Feb 17, 2020 Tanya rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2020, genre-young-adult

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I had a hard time with this one - particularly the violent ending. While it’s important for all people to be able to see themselves in a book, I am not sure this is the book I would want them to read if in the same position as Moss, Redemption’s younger brother. I had a hard time keeping track of all names and which character went with which name initially. It created a bit of a disconnect for me right from the start. The artwork having glass pieces in it too was just so off putting though it’s ...more

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Feb 15, 2021 Astrid Lim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, lgbt, africa, popsugar-2021, afrofuturism

3,5 stars!

It's a bit hard for me to adjust to the tone of this book, since I've never read afrofuturism before. The story is very vague, with hints and references to "olden days" that were so bad, full of "monsters" and horrible things. It never been mentioned clearly, though, what those bad things are.

The setting is in Lucille, a fictional town that is already cleared from all the monsters, but one day, a creature named Pet showed up and told a girl, Jam, that there is still one monster that ne ...more

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Jun 12, 2021 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: z-read-gelesen-2021, a-reviewed, author-trans, author-nonbinary, author-ofcolour, genre-ya, world-india, world-nigeria, author-hybridnation, author-queer

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. My feels are all at two stars but because this is well written, because the topic is worthy, because the main character is trans and because I liked the author's Freshwater very much, I award it the extra star.

Content warning: child abuse, on-page physical violence.

My copy has a back cover blurb by / from SLJ: "...forcing readers to deeply [sic] rethink assumptions about identity, family structure and justice..." It did not make me rethink deeply. The opposite was true for me: I kept waiting for My feels are all at two stars but because this is well written, because the topic is worthy, because the main character is trans and because I liked the author's Freshwater very much, I award it the extra star.

Content warning: child abuse, on-page physical violence.

My copy has a back cover blurb by / from SLJ: "...forcing readers to deeply [sic] rethink assumptions about identity, family structure and justice..." It did not make me rethink deeply. The opposite was true for me: I kept waiting for the twist but I got stereotypes and entirely what I expected.

Personally, I also have a gripe with the words 'safe' and 'hurt', and they occur in this story a lot. The words are symptomatic of the worldview: there are 'monsters' (in the novel's parlance), and they are not redeemable. There are inmocents, and they are victims, and their kin either repress or go into a righteous rage because their loved one was hurt and was not safe.

The three stories that have got under my skin about child abuse are: M (the 1931 film by Fritz Lang), the novel The Bone People by Maori author Keri Hulme, and the harrowing novel Die Züchtigung by Austrian writer Anna Mitgutsch. These three stories engage with the psyche of the abuser, with love and trust of victim for abuser, with the witch hunt of "normal" people for the othered abuser, with the long scars left by abuse, and they delve deeply into the harrowing minutiae of abuse.

To be fair, Pet is a YA novel so one cannot expect too much harrowing detail. But I do expect complexity and in the end, it is young adults and children who experience the abuse. The contradiction (publishing dilemma?) reminds me of Erich Kästner's point in Das doppelte Lottchen which is a children's book about divorce at a time when divorce was a no-no when speaking to children; Kästner tells the (possibly apocryphal) story of Hollywood child star Shirley Temple who was not allowed to see the films she starred in because she was too young. The point is: children suffer violence but must be protected from violence in their books and films.

Pet does address the issue of innocence and repression. And the metaphor of the creature / terrible angel from another world erupting into a post-revolutionary utopia to uncover its repressed secrets is a good one. Ultimately, though, it did not click for me. I did not care for the abused child; the child is barely introduced as a character. There was no foreshadowing of the abuser and his reactions and the reactions of others was too predictable. I did not even particularly care for the MC and the MC's best friend. And it was never explained why this MC was chosen to be an accomplice in the hunt for evil.

Also, I feel unease at the ideology informing the ending: society must be more vigilant at rooting out evil. It smacks of the ending of M where mothers are exhorted to look out for their children (but without M's pre-Nazi menacing undertones). My view is: an abuser is not "evil" and is not a "monster"; it is dangerous to dehumanise criminals; one cannot stamp out child abuse by removing the abusers; one can only address child abuse by removing the causes for child abuse: that is, policies and reforms that aim at rehabilitation, integration and, above all, prevention. We never learn why the abuser in Pet abuses but there will be a reason: abused himself, childhood neglect, poverty, drugs, mental health issues.

Anyway, this short novel got me riled up. I bought it for its reputation, its author and its gorgeous cover (art by Shyama Golden). ...more

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