Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

I listened to the unabridged audio version of Pet by Akwaeke Emezi, which was richly narrated by Christopher Myers. 

Pet has been on my reading wishlist for ages!! I am so happy to have finally read this young adult novel as it is spectacularly well written!! Pet is also a work of speculative fiction and deals with lgtbtqia+ elements.

One of the many reasons, I finally decided to read Pet by Akwaeke Emezi is that it is Banned Books Week. Pet by Akwaeke Emezi has been banned/challenged "in some Texas locations and pulled from some libraries due to its LGBTQ+ themes, particularly its transgender girl protagonist, Jam."

I don't know about you, but banned/challenged books usually make the BEST reads, in my opinion, and Pet does not disappoint!

I loved the writing, characters, and storyline for Pet. Pet is set in a utopian city called, Lucille. In the city of Lucille, crime has 'supposedly' been obliterated by angels. However, crime hasn't been obliterated as a most evil scenario has gone unchecked for a long time that an intervention occurs. 

I think the following sentence from the publisher's summary sums it the best. "What really makes a monster, and how do you save the world from something if no one will admit it exists?"

Pet is an engaging read that captivates your attention from start to finish. I don't want to spoil any more of the plot at this point. So... just go read Pet already!!

As a side note, I often feel like both the young adult and children's genres are kind of undervalued at times. As an adult, I find reading novels like Pet to be excellent in containing thoughtful, teachable messages that are very relevant despite the darker topics sometimes discussed in these types of books. Despite the fact that Pet may be a young adult novel, it's still a good read for adults too.

Pet marks my third read for the month of September.

Below is the publisher's summary for Pet by Akwaeke Emezi from Chirp's website:

National Book Award Finalist

Stonewall Book Award Winner

“[A] beautiful, genre-expanding debut…Pet is a nesting doll of creative possibilities.” (The New York Times)

The award-winning, genre-defying novel by the New York Times best-selling author of The Death of Vivek Oji that explores themes of identity and justice and asks: How do you share the truth when the world around you is in denial?

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 the lesson that the city is safe for everyone. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature who some might call monstrous but, in reality, is anything but, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has emerged from one of her mother’s paintings to hunt a true monster - and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. No one has encountered monsters in years, though, and Jam’s quest to protect her best friend and uncover the truth is met with doubt and disbelief.

This award-winning novel from a rising-star author asks: What really makes a monster, and how do you save the world from something if no one will admit it exists?

I am giving Pet by Akwaeke Emezi a rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!

The Seas by Samantha Hunt

 

I listened the unabridged audio version of The Seas by Samantha Hunt, which is well narrated by the author. Samantha Hunt is a new to me author. I enjoyed reading The Seas very much and look forward to reading other books by Samantha Hunt.

The Seas was my 10th read of 2025 and what an excellent read it! It's also a very quick read too. Essentially, The Seas by Samantha Hunt is a coming of age story with an unnamed and unreliable narrator as the protagonist. Throw in some magical realism and you have an almost perfect read with The Seas. I think The Seas may be my favorite fiction read so far for 2025.

Below is the publisher's summary for The Seas by Samantha Hunt, I found on Chirp's website:

Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She’s often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid. True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior. The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend. With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls listeners into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.

I'm giving The Seas by Samantha Hunt a rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

 I listened to the unabridged audio version of The Sentence by Louise Erdrich and narrated by the author. This is my first experience with anything written by Louise Erdrich. 

I'm so grateful that I finally took the step to read a novel by Louise Erdrich!! Louise Erdrich's writing is amazing and The Sentence covers a lot of ground, so you're in for a good ride.

What did I like about The Sentence? Just about everything. The writing is great and so is the storyline. I loved the characters for this novel as well... I especially loved the main character, Tookie! I enjoyed the indigenous bookstore set in Minnesota. The bookstore is a haunted bookstore as in that it's haunted by a difficult, former customer named, Flora, who had passed away recently. Flora makes the most problems for Tookie throughout most of the novel. Tookie and the rest of the staff try to figure out why Flora is haunting the bookstore and help her cross over to the other side. We read about the lives of those running the bookstore and a few of the customers as well as about Tookie's friends and family, which make for a great read.

The time period for The Sentence is an entire year from November 2019 to November 2020. So, the Covid-19 pandemic is front and center for much of the novel and how it effected people's live. Additionally, the George Floyd murder and riots to follow were also front and center. Not to mention the lives of Indigenous Americans were also front and center for this novel. Louise Erdrich writes about each topic so well and interweaves each topic together in such a way as to be seamless to the storyline, including the haunting of the bookstore that we read about throughout the novel. 

Louise Erdrich also appears as a minor character in her own novel. Also, I can only assume that the bookstore in the The Sentence is somewhat based on the author's own bookstore.

Below is the publisher's summary for The Sentence by Louise Erdrich from the Goodreads website:

In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention", must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

I am giving The Sentence by Louise Erdrich a rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!

Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn

 

Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn is a novel that had been on my reading wishlist until recently. I recall learning that Sharks in the Time of Saviors was one of Barack Obama's favorite novels in 2020. The title of this magical realism novel was catchy enough to capture my attention initially and the plot sounded captivating. So with that said, it was an easy decision to add Sharks in the Time of Saviors by to my ever growing reading wishlist.

I listened to the unabridged audio version of Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn. The audio version is narrated by four different narrators, which I thought was great as each narrator brought their own voice to the character they read for in the novel.

I really liked Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn. The storyline was well laid out, the characters strong and distinct, and each chapter featured a point of view of one of the main characters... However, we only hear from Augie Flores' (the father) point of view in the last chapter... Whereas the rest of the chapters are told from the points of view of the other immediate family members.

Below is the plot summary for Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn from Chirp's website:

Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a groundbreaking debut novel that folds the legends of Hawaiian gods into an engrossing family saga; a story of exile and the pursuit of salvation from Kawai Strong Washburn. In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, 7-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods - a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family’s legacy. When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawaii - with tragic consequences - they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.

I am giving Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn a rating of 4 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!