So, I took a couple days to read book 2 of this series, and as a fan of pets myself, I definitely can say this was a good read. Ari takes care of his dog Coda for a bit in order to get a rare pet egg, after Zeke got a pet sloth (apparently, sloths are rare pets in this world. I mean, I've never met someone with a pet sloth in the real world, so I guess it's kind of the same lol).
As you'd expect from the title, the egg hatches a dragon, and like in most fiction, a dragon isn't exactly an easy pet to take care of. Ember (the dragon) causes his fair share of destruction, and grows unusually quickly.
After Ember almost kills Trip for playing a game against Ember at an event where the kids get out of school to play sports and eat delicious stuff, Ari understands he's unable to keep Ember, and gives him up to a Dragon Sanctuary. He realizes at the end that Coda was the pet he'd wanted all along, and he takes Coda for a walk to visit Ember.
This was a fun one. Admittedly, I wasn't happy that it took the promise of a new pet to get Ari to take better care of Coda, and then he went back to ignoring the dog after getting Ember's egg, but I like how the story turned out. And he didn't completely get rid of Ember, as he said they were going to visit him, so that's definitely a happy ending for both pets and Ari. And I really liked the artwork for this book. My favorite one was the one of Ari hugging Ember to say goodbye (as sad as it makes you at that exact moment).
I definitely recommend this one to any younger readers