Not because anything about their behavior or descriptions gave them away, but because the world we live in today is one where the revolution is only just beginning to recognize monsters for what they are. I knew who the monster’s victim was less than halfway through the book. Now, here’s the most brilliant part of Pet: I knew who the monster was from the very first time they were described on the page.

The question at the heart of the novel, then, is How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

Which makes it all the more terrifying when Jam accidentally summons Pet, a righteous being of horns and claws and fur and smoke, who tells her it has come to hunt a monster in the house of her best friend, Redemption. The children of Lucille, a generation or two removed from the monsters, can grow up in a world where they don’t need to worry about these people any more. The premise is such: there are no monsters left in the city of Lucille, ever since the revolution swept through and dismantled the police and the prisons and the system allowing billionaires to profit off of underpaid labor. A novel that addresses how a family can have so much love for their child that they inadvertently cause the child harm when they choose to listen to their own need to care and protect over the voice of the child themself. A novel packed with Black people and queer people and queer Black people in a committed polyamorous relationship. A novel where a boy can be a trained fighter for no reason other than the thrill of being alive, and at the same time be casually affectionate with his best friend-who-is-a-girl. A novel where a largely nonverbal transgender girl-whose transness and neurodivergence are made clear early on, and that the reader is continually reminded of in small ways-can go on a hunt for a monster with the terrifying creature who emerges from her mother’s painting. I cannot tell you how rare and beautiful it is that a novel like Pet exists.

Pet akwaeke emezi review