Publication Date: July 1st, 2014
Read: February 3rd, 2024
Rating: 1/5 stars
It’s amazing how I managed to entirely wipe this book from my mind, and yet when I saw it on Kindle Unlimited, I felt a glimmer of recognition nonetheless. Because I read this book. I don’t know when I read it, or even if I finished it at the time, but I know that I read this book.
And now, I have read it again.
Great news! It’s bad.
The premise of this book is: What if there were some congressmen who had campaigned tirelessly to make it legal to keep genetically engineered petite teenage girls as pets? Specifically so they could abuse these girls with absolutely no consequences? Wouldn’t that be messed up?
And then the plot of this book is: Wearing pretty dresses, eating lentils, and sitting on the edge of the pool & yearning for literally the first human boy you’ve ever laid eyes on.
Human pets aren’t taught to swim, apparently – not even doggy-paddling, which seems like…y’know…an oversight. Since they're otherwise treated like dogs.
It's amazing how boring this book manages to be, considering its wild premise. You’re telling me there’s a group of mega-rich Americans who are adopting pet human girls because it’s the new and trendy thing to do (and because they want to abuse them), and all you wanted to do with that premise is write about tepid forbidden love between two bland teenagers? Really?
There are a lot of disturbing things about this premise, but most of them are left implied. Perhaps this is because this book is YA, and thus the author didn’t want to delve TOO deep into the realities of what life would be like for sheltered/ignorant girls who literally don’t seem to have human rights. I do not think this book should have been a YA book, but I’m also on the fence on whether it should have been…a book. Like maybe we didn’t need this one, guys. Maybe it’s okay for there not to be a dystopia about human pets.
Through the course of the story, it is implied that pretty much every human pet (except for our precious main character) is being sexually abused by their “owners.” The family who adopts Ella, our lead, had to send a previous pet back to the kennel (yes, it is really called that) because she got pregnant. It should be noted that at the beginning of the story, Ella does not know what kissing is. This is horrifying. The implication is that the real purpose of human pets is to provide gross rich men with the perfect victim to predate on – someone young, waifish, incredibly naïve, and with absolutely no legal recourse for abuse.
But also, if the not-so-secret purpose of pets is for them to be innocent sex slaves (I hate using that term but I literally don’t know what else to call it), then how did they legalize it? If the pets are genetically engineered, why even give them reproduction capabilities? What does it MEAN that they’re genetically engineered, actually? Is Ella legally a person, or is she legally an animal? Can she legally consent? IF pets are not legally people, shouldn’t having sex with them be considered statutory rape or even animal abuse? I have so many questions about the status of pets in this world, and this book answers none of them. I refuse to read the sequels, so I guess I’ll just have to wonder.
It's also literally baffling that this book has the gall to bring up actual historical chattel slavery. Kate Birch really thought she was doing something there, huh.
As for the story and characters, I want to emphasize that they are not that interesting. Ella is very much a YA protagonist of her time. She doesn’t have a lot of personality traits beyond supposedly being passionate about music, wistfully yearning for her love interest, and thinking fake deep thoughts about life. I definitely don’t think every lead character needs to be feisty or outspoken, and I think it makes sense for Ella to buy in to what she’s been taught her entire life, but I do kind of take issue with how little her viewpoint changes over the course of the book. I get the sense that if not for her “owners” not letting her be with the guy she likes and threatening to “spay” her, she would have been content to be a pampered and powerless pet for her whole life. When she gets a chance to see the outside world, it’s honestly just hilariously sad. She can’t read, so she can’t even order from a fast food menu. It basically just reinforces her view that she’s better off as a pet, even though…you know…the whole thing where basically every pet is abused and taken advantage of.
A main character who genuinely believes that they’re better off as a human pet, because at least they aren’t being subjected to the harsh realities of poverty and whatnot, is interesting in theory, but it makes Ella kind of infuriating to read about, especially since this aspect of her character is not executed especially well or consistently. It really feels like she would not have taken action at the end of the book if not for the threat of being "spayed."
And we have to talk about that, actually, because what does it mean to spay a human pet in this world? The other characters talk about how spaying Ella will make her behave and not make any further escape attempts. Is there like, some kind of lobotomy component to being “spayed,” or is the assumption just that being reminded of their lack of bodily autonomy via forced invasive surgery will demoralize pets enough that it kills any sense of rebellion they have? I have SO many questions for this book and no answers whatsoever.
(And also, again, there are groups of people who have been subjected to forced sterilization and hysterectomies, historically, but this book doesn't seem to know or care about that. It's all about how bad this would be if it happened to a white teenage girl, hypothetically. It is very bad! But it's not hypothetical!).
We also need to talk about the love interest, because I hate him. His name is Penn, and he’s the teenage son of the senator who “owns” Ella. He initially comes off as very broody and angsty, and you kind of think that maybe he’s this way around Ella because he recognizes that human pets are obviously wildly unethical, because…duh. But no, he just doesn’t like human pet girls because they’re “plastic girls” who are “playthings” for his dad’s midlife crisis. But don’t worry! Ella is different, because she likes music and is therefore worthy of attention/compassion/etc. Here's a quote!
"And I guess I thought you’d be another plastic girl, one more plaything for my midlife-crisis dad, or something, and it made me sick. But then I met you…"
Even Ella isn’t sure how to take this when he says it, for the record.
Penn just sucks. It would have been kind of annoying if he were the one explaining to Ella that actually, she SHOULD want to have human rights, but it’s somehow infinitely worse that he’s instead like “You know, you’re actually not like the other (enslaved & disenfranchised) girls. I actually care about you! I still don’t care about them, though :)” Like…how is this the LOVE INTEREST? He also acts all mopey after she tries to run away and asks her why she would want to leave. This boy knows full well that his dad already abused and impregnated a previous girl, and he needs to ASK to figure out why Ella might want to ESCAPE from that? I don’t care if he improves in later books. In this book, he is the worst to me.
There are other characters, but there’s not a lot to say about them. Penn has a cute little sister named Ruby who is the designated sweet innocent younger sister character of this book. Every dystopian needs at least one little sister. Penn’s mom is like, mostly very cold to Ella but then she has a weird switch-up at the end of the book where she’s suddenly very pro-pet rights. Penn’s dad, the senator, is mostly just around to instill a sense of foreboding into the reader, because maybe at some point he’ll start doing something bad/creepy to Ella (this does not come to pass, but I guess the threat of it is important so that we pretend that we’re engaging with the insane premise).
And now you know everything worth knowing. This book is very bad. For realsies. Can’t recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment