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Summary
Summary
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER * ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by The New York Times * Time * Buzzfeed * NPR * New York Public Library * Publishers Weekly * School Library Journal
A genre-defying novel from the award-winning author NPR describes as "like [Madeline] L'Engle...glorious." A singular book that explores themes of identity and justice. Pet is here to hunt a monster. Are you brave enough to look?
There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors 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, and the answer to the question --How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?
A riveting and timely young adult debut novel that asks difficult questions about what choices you can make when the society around you is in denial.
"[A] beautiful, genre-expanding debut" -The New York Times
"The word hype was invented to describe books like this. " -Refinery29
Reviews (2)
Horn Book Review
A haunting and poetic work of speculative fiction-the first for young readers by adult author Emezi. Jam, the adolescent protagonist, is a transgender hearing person who communicates selectively, using both sign language and vocal speech. She was born after a revolution in which human (and some non-human) "angels" rid her now-utopian town of monsters (monster being a catch-all term for oppressors and manifestations of evil). When Jam trips over a painting made by her artist mother, she is cut with blades embedded in the work. Jam's blood hits the canvas, and the grotesque figure her mother created (described as having goat legs, a twisted torso, feathers, horns, and human hands) churns to life. The creature's name is Pet, and it has come to hunt a monster. Worse yet, this monster is said to live in the house of Jam's best friend, Redemption. The plot moves steadily as Jam investigates Pet's claims, and the story intensifies to a startling climax. The lyrical, philosophical text includes cultural markers from the African diaspora (Jam's caregivers lovingly use the French term of endearment "doux-doux"; she listens to soca music while styling her hair in twists). Its theme of deeply examining self-proclaimed bias- or harm-free spaces has contemporary relevance, yet the engrossing, open-ended narrative (with somewhat nebulous world-building) carries a universality separate from any specific place or time. A thoughtful, indelible story about truth, justice, and remembering: "Forgetting is how the monsters come back." Elisa Gall November/December 2019 p.86(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
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) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
