Ive read so many rave reviews about this read and I was really looking forward to getting stuck in. It’s described as a thriller and set in New Zealand in the 1980s but also has flashes to present day. This is a really cleverly written read but for me the pace was incredibly slow for the first 1/4. It picked up a little in the middle and then it felt really rushed when bringing it all together. For me it lacked the thrills to keep me engaged and I found I wasn’t really reaching to pick it up. I found it to be predicable..Yet again I’m in the minority when it comes to this one as it didn’t really work for me and wasn’t the engaging read I was expecting but that could be due to the fact I had it built up in my head.

3.5/5 🌟🌟🌟/🌟

Thanks to Netgalley and Europa Editions for the opportunity to read and review #Pet

When Mrs. Price begins to single out Justine as her special student, she can’t help but feel special, especially having recently lost her mother to cancer. Mrs. Price’s affections are fickle, so this causes a ripple in the class. Catherine Chidgey, a New Zealand novelist, writes “Pet” with a deft hand, reminding the reader how these events from childhood echo through our lives, affecting the adults we become. She fills the story with just enough references to Holly Hobbie bedsheets and Duran Duran to coat this Gen X reader’s cold heart in a cozy wrap of nostalgia.

Amongst this story of a teacher striding across boundaries most people’s common sense compels them not to cross, are the cruelty of children, the casual racism of the 1980s—all thematically organized under the moral superiority of the Catholic church. Sometimes Mrs. Price is an excellent teacher, engaging in what today would be model active learning-style teaching, such as exploring the sea shore and observing the local food chain in action. Other times she displays top dog behavior on the same level as her twelve-year-old students, like the ultimate mean girl. “It’s nature, my darling. If you’re at the bottom of the food chain you can’t do anything about it, and if you’re at the top, well, you can’t do anything about it either. It’s what you’re born to.”

When things start disappearing from the classroom, like the special pen Justine’s mother gave her before she died, everyone assumes Justine’s friend Amy is the thief. For one thing, Amy hasn’t had anything stolen from her, and for another, Amy and her family are immigrants, outsiders to the community. Mrs. Price does nothing to quell the suspicions and even publicly supports the idea that Amy has stolen the small treasures from unattended desks. “Dirty thief, our classmates called in her wake. Liar. I wish you were dead. Why don’t you kill yourself? Mrs. Price heard them but never intervened.” This drives a wedge between Amy and her classmates, but especially Justine. Meanwhile, Mrs. Price draws Justine deeper and deeper into her circle, inviting her to her home, inserting herself into Justine’s home life, taking her shopping for her first bra, and becoming involved in her first period.


Few adults in Justine’s life look askant at her role as “teacher’s pet,” with only one nun at the school seemingly wise enough to notice the unhealthy relationship this teacher brews with her students. All the others are quite easily assuaged by the privilege of her beauty, thinness, whiteness, and outward displays of kindness. After all, what could possibly be the downside to being a teacher’s pet? But Chidgey shows how being caught in the snare of Mrs. Price means being fiddled with like a mouse by a cat. Chidgey amplifies the tiny world of child and her teacher, so often a woman, who, perhaps otherwise powerless, has unlimited dominion in the universe of her classroom. In the hands of a narcissist, that’s an authority you might as well press to the extreme. Like the eccentric Miss Brodie or the pedophilic teacher in Alissa Nutting’s satirical “Tampa,” Mrs. Price is a fascinating character in the realm of novels about teachers and how they can influence so much more than just our education.

“Pet”
By Catherine Chidgey
Europa Editions, 332 pages

This book started a little bit slow, but the more I read the more I couldn't put it down. The ending was a shocker, at least to me! The book alternates between the main character Justine at 12 in 1984, and in her thirties in 2014. Justine's mother has recently passed away so she is already experiencing some emotional turmoil. She is in 5th grade at her Catholic school with her best friend Amy, and the class has a new teacher, Mrs. Price. Everyone absolutely loves and can't get enough of her even though teaching ways are quite a bit unusual. Mrs. Price seems really great at first but then she starts playing favorites among the classmates which gets out of hand as she only picks the beautiful kids which really does not include Justine or Amy. Justine works very hard to be one of her pets. Objects go missing from different students and she hold a class vote to see who everyone thinks is the thief. And then reads them all out loud. What becomes of Mrs. Price and her teaching as well as Justine and her father was a story I did not expect in the beginning of the book. In her thirties, Justine is captivated by her father's memory care nurse who seems like Mrs. Price's twin. She will not give up until she finds the truth about Mrs. Price, first as a child and then an adult. I loved all the characters, especially Dom, who turns out to be Justine's emotional rock for her entire life. The thriller ending was also unexpected, but I enjoyed seeing the loose ends tied up and learning what really happened in 1984. I could not put this book down at a certain point because it was so engrossing. I highly recommend this novel!!! Can't wait to read another book by the same author!! Thanks so much to NG for the ARC!!

We meet Justine both as a 12 year old girl and an adult both bearing guilt.
   It’s hard enough being 12 and all its ramifications, but when your mom has just died of cancer and dad is in a liquor slump who becomes your idol? The pretty teacher who dotes on her students…but only the chosen ones. All of the students want to be the teacher's pet but when you do, the others become jealous bullies.  While this teacher who seems to have it all: good looks, brains, hot car, nice home, there is a side that is unseen and scary.
   The story bears all the angst of preteens: rivalry, best friends, trust, hormones and a desire to be special….above all to Mrs. Price.  But Justine becomes more than a pet in class……….she’s going to have Mrs. Price as her new stepmother.  A role that Justine has a hard time dealing with especially since she harbors thoughts about her teacher’s hidden habit of stealing and accusing students for it.
   Justine as a child has epileptic seizures with memory loss that play a key role in the incidents that cause the guilt she carried all her life…….and even as an adult has her wondering.
   An interesting turn of events with her senile father and his caregiver also gives the reader pause and difficulty deciding how clear cut the devastating events in the story actually happened.

New Zealander Catherine Chidgey's Pet has been described as a psychological thriller. Although the author occasionally hinted at bad things to come, I don’t agree with that genre description. Overall, much of the novel proceeds slowly, divided between life in a New Zealand Catholic school that of one grown student, Justine, and her elderly father suffering from dementia thirty years after she had left the school. As a retired teacher and as a daughter who has lived through somewhat similar issues with my elderly mother, I enjoyed the book but found myself wondering when the psychological thriller characteristics would come to the forefront.

Granted, the earlier parts of the story contain some ominous vibes—some effective foreshadowing. Middle-school girls vie for teacher's pet status whereas the beautiful new teacher exhibits questionable traits such as grading students according to her personal preferences, flirting with dads and strangers, and popping pills. Furthermore, a caretaker in the memory care facility where Justine’s dad lives three decades later bears an uncanny resemblance to Mrs. Price, the beloved teacher--same appearance, smile, voice, etc. Oddly, if she is Mrs. Price, she has not aged. I began wondering if the pills had kept her forever young.

The shifting of teacher’s pet status from one student to another leads to jealousy, changing alliances, and bullying. Slightly more than halfway through the book, the suspense increases, and it gradually builds from there, but not before I came close to setting the book aside. Perhaps if I had not read the “psychological thriller” description, which established my expectations, I would have found the plot less slow-paced.

The author finally hooked me with her ambiguous ending. Just when readers think they know what happened, the main character’s nagging personal doubts raise a question in readers’ minds. What really happened on the cliff? After the last page, I closed the book without an answer. To me, that uncertainty is the best part of Catherine Chidgey’s Pet.

Thanks to NetGalley and Europa Editions for an advance reader copy.

Shared on NetGalley and Barnes & Noble

What happens when your teacher chooses favorites? When all the kids in Justine's class start clamoring to be chosen as a "pet", Justine is thrilled when she is finally chosen. But, she soon realizes that things are not all as they seem. Great read first read by Catherine Chidgey. Will read more of hers in the future.
{There seem to be two covers...the one on NetGalley is better IMHO}

I loved the setting of the eighties in this novel. Justine and her interactions with her friends and classmates were so well depicted. Mrs. Price was an enigmatic character and I liked how her story arc ended although I would have liked more information. For me the modern-day Justine storyline wasn’t really necessary and I would have enjoyed the story just the same without it. A great thriller/ coming of age novel, my first by this author but not my last.

Pet - Catherine Chidgey ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It takes quite a lot to get me to read a thriller, but Pet’s striking front cover drew me in. From there, Chidgey’s writing had no problem holding my attention.

Pet is a suspenseful, slow-burning tale in which a woman recounts her experience with her childhood teacher, Mrs. Price. Said teacher makes for a compelling and uniquely disturbing antagonist, and I was struck by how fresh Chidgey’s take on the thriller genre really feels. Personally, I felt there was a lot of crossover with literary fiction, which I obviously really enjoyed.

Pet is twisted & uncomfortable in all of the right ways, and Chidgey’s ability to couple the sinister with the domestic is a real driving force of the novel. A lot of the time I struggle to get on board with the downright implausibility of thrillers, but Pet maintains a certain realism and subtlety that helped me buy into the story. With that being said, I thought the climax of the novel felt a little rushed, and I found that the extremity of the ending took away from what is otherwise a solidly believable novel. Perhaps that’s a matter of personal taste though, as do thrillers necessarily need to be believable? 🤷‍♀️

If you’re read a lot of thrillers, I’d looove to know how you get on with this one! Personally, I don’t think I’m fully persuaded by the genre just yet, but Pet was a gripping read nonetheless.

A huge thank you to @europaeditions and @netgalley for the e-ARC!

Justine is 12 years old and lives in New Zealand. Her class gets a new teacher, Mrs. Price, who everyone loves and wants to be her pet. Then a thief starts stealing things from the students causing everyone to no longer trust anyone. Justine starts to notice that something just isn't right with Mrs. Price and the story takes a dark turn.

The narrative stitches between 1984 and 2014 with Justine telling the story. The eighties references were a lot of fun. However, the story is dark and creepy. The atmosphere felt awkward like someone smiling and laughing at a funeral. This made me feel on edge and the climax was fantastic. I never would have guessed. Plus the ending leaves us with a question I found quite eerie.

I was floored by this creepy little read; I am very picky about my thrillers but this one exceeded my (high) expectations. It's the seemingly unassuming story of Justine, a lonely 12 year old girl who has recently lost her mother. Her dad is drinking too much, and she's on the cusp of puberty - so very vulnerable in general. She develops a fixation on her kind, glamourous teacher, Mrs Price - who recipricates, making Justine one of her teachers' pets. But Mrs Price, with her glossy hair and little pill bottles, has more to her than meets the eye. Tightly plotted and vidily characterised, this story sucked me in and would not let me go.

Pet is split between 2 timelines: in the present day, Justine visits her dad in a nursing home; she reflects on the events of 1984, the year she met Mrs Price, for much of the book. Present-day Justine provides a LOT of foreshadowing, reminding us that something terrible happened in 1984 - but she's used sparingly, so the author gets away with it. 12-year-old Justine is naive,seeming younger than her peers, and feels startingly real. She has epilepsy and is deeply self-concious about it; and no wonder, given the cruelty of the children in this novel. 12 year olds are MEAN, it turns out, and I gasped at the little cruelties the class inflicted upon one another. The main target of these cruelties is Amy, Justine's best friend. Amy is Chinese, and the racism that she faces is a plotline that seems small until it changes the game of the novel entirely. To say any more would be to spoil things, but my god, do things take off from there.

Chidgtey immerses us in New Zealand, 1984, in a hyper-Catholic community. The spectre of Catholicism looms large in this one; characters wear tiny gold feet pins, thank God for the miracles of creation, and fear retribution after wrongdoing. As someone who grew up in Ireland, this fearful claustraphobia was familiar, and heightened the already tense atmosphere of the novel. It sometimes felt a little heavy handed, including a frightening but ultimately frivolous scene outside a family planning clinic. But I'll forgive one scene in an otherwise fantastically rendered, hard-hitting novel.

The setting, the characterisation, the plot: all of it was wonderfully done in this weird little novel. An absolute belter.

It's 2014 and our narrator Justine is visiting her father who's in assisted living. He has his good days and not so good days. An aide has just finished her duties and is getting the father situated for the day. The aide reminds Justine of a teacher she had when she was twelve years old and we are immediately transported back to 1984.

Mrs. Price is the teacher. She has "pets" who she assigns special duties like chalkboard cleaning and setting up the overhead projector. All the students love her - she's glamorous, worldly, treating her students like the little adults they are at their Catholic school in New Zealand. While the book is filled with 1980s nostalgia: Cabbage Patch Dolls, The Love Boat, Duran Duran (!), getting your "colours" done, it feels even earlier in time, more like the 1950s. There's an innocence, a feeling of isolation, an old-timey style of teaching (and punishment). There's a lot of foreshadowing, and early on we know that "everything went wrong" that year.

Building up to that is a delicious slow burn. The story goes in unexpected directions, building up suspense along the way. Chidgey captures that twelve-year-olds going on eighteen angst perfectly. The kids are both sweet and mean, self-conscious, and starting to explore. But this is not YA.

My thanks to NetGalley and Europa Editions for the ARC. Pet was published in August 2023.

Pet is a well-written, suspenseful novel that really picks up in the second half of the book as the clues start to fit together. Pet follows Justine, a twelve-year-old New Zealander, and the classroom she is in with a new and charismatic teacher. The teacher, Mrs. Price, has many secrets and as she becomes more are more important in Justine's life, Justine begins to put the secrets together.
Pet is a great read for those who like mystery, suspense, and thrillers.

An enticing and bewitching read. A real sense of the period and the social/political conflicts. Particularly enjoyable because it's told from the perspective of such a young child. The depiction of the psychological affects of oppressive religious beliefs and dogma is spot on.

Thank you to the author, Europa Editions and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. My apologies for the slight delay in posting!

This novel is a sleeper - as I read the first third, I felt it meandered and nothing much happened, but it sucked me in and I found myself staying up to read on. The author masterfully conjures a sense of glowering menace while describing what are on the surface the carefree school days of a young (12 years old) girl in New Zealand. As most of us know, at that age - on the brink of the teen years - there is a lot of uncertainty about wanting to fit in, wanting to belong and to be special. The voice of this young girl is extremely well written, and we see her fall under the spell of the her teacher, who is little by little revealed to be a master of manipulation. In a parallel timeline, we see the young girl as an adult woman, visiting her ailing father - who has his own experiences with his daughter's teachers. Intriguing and disturbing - I look forward to reading more by this author.

I was not expecting this book at all after reading Catherine Chidgey's previous novel Remote Sympathy. I don't know how you can be so talented as to move so freely between genres and write so well in each. This book slowly built up the tension, the cruelty that it takes for girls to survive adolescence is so deeply evoked. The manipulation of the teacher was just stomach turning. Just brilliant!

"Pet" by Catherine Chidgey is a compelling and unsettling narrative that navigates the challenges of adolescence, bias, and discrimination within the backdrop of a 1980s New Zealand school. Chidgey skillfully captures the intricacies of twelve-year-old girls' lives, vividly portraying their quest for the coveted role of the captivating teacher's favorite. Amidst this competition, the novel delves into themes of vulnerability, ever-shifting friendships, and the tumultuous journey of growing up.

Beyond its exploration of school dynamics, "Pet" ventures into psychological terrain, imbuing the narrative with a sense of suspense and intrigue. Chidgey masterfully weaves a thrilling narrative that keeps readers engaged, provoking contemplation long after the story concludes.

This was a page turner for sure and such an interesting story about power dynamics, loss, racism, and girlhood. A sense of foreboding and 80s nostalgia permeated this novel from start to finish and the story was compelling and unique. Mrs. Price is a character reminiscent of the Other Mother in Coraline and Nurse Ratchett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; her saccharine mannerisms and charisma surely hiding something sinister. Justine's innocence and naivety, and her questioning of reality based on her experiences makes her eventual realizations all the more impactful. Overall I really enjoyed this psychological thriller with it's varied themes, refreshing voice, and gripping plot!

This was a wild ride of a book. Even though the reader knows exactly where the plot is going, the actions still seem a bit surprising at times. I won’t lie and say the ending was satisfying, we all saw the frustrating ending coming. But it works here with the rest of the story.

Wrapped inside of a violent psychological thriller — every kid wants to be the teacher's pet, but the teacher is secretly unhinged — the book actually tells an equally heartbreaking story of the harm that traumatized adults can inflict on children. It's a page-turner, but some of the deadpanned stories of abuse (e.g., kids telling a classmate to unalive herself and the teacher ignores it) stop you in your tracks. This book left me pondering whether society is better or worse now than it was a few decades ago. Thank you to NetGalley and Europa Editions for the eARC.

Beautifully written and endlessly captivating, Justine's story unfolds across two timelines as she reflects on the impact of a beloved teacher and the tragedy that befalls her class. As the past becomes clear to the reader, the future shifts into a new focus resulting in a truly satisfying denouement. The characters in the book live with the reader even after the story has concluded. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a book they won't want to put down.