If you know me, you know that I love boundaries, and Pet prioritizes respecting people’s boundaries. When Jam’s not ready to discuss something with her parents, they don’t push when she knows that Redemption is angry with her, she gives him space to be angry. The good: I loved the setting, and it truly was a balm to me to read a book in which everyone is careful and gentle with each other. But Pet insists that it’s so, and enlists Jam’s help to find who the monster is. Jam doesn’t understand how that can be, given that the angels of the revolution got rid of all the monsters. It explains to Jam that there’s a monster at her friend Redemption’s house, and that it’s a hunter come to find and destroy that monster. Jam, who rarely speaks and often signs, has two loving friends and a supportive school environment, and everything is hunky-dory until she bleeds on one of her mother’s paintings and a creature called Pet emerges from the drawing into the world. How exactly they managed such a revolution is not explained, as Pet is in setting more parable than futurefic. Lucille used to be like our world, with lots of suffering caused by not caring about each other, but Lucille had a revolution in the last generation and got rid of all that stuff. There’s a fundamental belief that everyone is trying their best and deserves the benefit of the doubt on that account.īut, okay! What’s the book about? Pet is set in a community called Lucille that has solved all of its problems. When I say that Pet is a kind read, I mean that its author is kind to its characters, and its characters are kind to each other.

Admittedly it’s dealing with a really hard issue - child sexual abuse - but it does so with such hope and tenderness. Imagine my surprise when Pet is the gentlest of reads. Because Freshwater was like, a really hard read in places.

But still, when I saw the announcement that Emezi would be releasing a YA novel, I was like, REALLY. Freshwater was one of my best reads of 2018 - the writing was brutal and gorgeous, and I felt elated to be reading the debut of an author of Emezi’s talent, and to know that they had a whole writing career ahead of them and I would get to read all those books. Hands up everyone who read Freshwater and thought “When will Emezi grace us with a YA novel? That is clearly their metier.” Because I freely admit that I was not among your number.

Pet akwaeke