Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

By: Ransom Riggs

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience.

I think I really enjoyed this book, but sometimes it was hard to tell... This book was...peculiar (see what I did there? ;) ). As this is not a normal book, I will not be going by the normal review format. I am just going to talk about stuff I liked and stuff I didn't and tell you my rating at the end. Okay, let's get started.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was both not what I was expecting it to be and exactly what I was expecting it to be. I was ready for the idea of antique pictures being used to tell the story and I knew kind of what the school was and did. But I didn't know there would be any action, and there was a bit at the end. I liked the mystery aspect of this book, when Jacob had to discover what the school was and did or even whether it was real. And I loved the cool world that Ransom Riggs built with Ymbrynes and Loops and all of the other paranormal-ish stuff.

One of the most interesting parts of this book was the antique pictures that he found and used to tell the story. Sometimes I loved their inclusion, but other times it felt a bit forced. But overall I think it had a good effect on the story and made the book uniquely its own. By around the middle of the book I started to get excited everytime a picture popped up on the next page, because I feel as the story went on the interpretations of the pictures had to get slightly more abstract (by that I mean that it wasn't just a kid holding a rock and it being explained as a kid who could lift rocks).

The next thing I want to talk about was the plot. As much as I wasn't sure for awhile, there was a plot. I mean, sometimes it disappeared for a while and I had to search for it. But eventually it would always pop back up again when I least expected it. I don't think the entire story was leading up to one ending (which isn't a bad thing). I mean that the begininning of the book was leading up to Jacob finding the house. Then the middle of the book was leading up to Jacob's decision whether to stay or leave and him finding out the secrets of the house. The last section of the book (which had the most action, by far) was working toward the kids setting out on their own. This felt a bit like three stories attached to one another, and while this style doesn't work for me that often, I liked it a lot in this book.

At the ending I was definitely NOT expecting such a wide open ending. I thought this was a stand-alone book, but much to my surprise there is a second book in the works. I loved that toward the end the action vamped up, because I wasn't expecting much action in this book. Also the giant plot twist of who the wight was in Jacob's life and all that.

This was an interesting read, to say the least. But it came at a time when I think I needed a different kind of book to break the pattern of me reading more action-based books. It was a nice vacation to the world of paranormal-ish books, but I don't think I can live in this genre. I'll definitely be taking a trip back for the second book though.

Rating: 4 stars

Quotes:

“When someone won’t let you in, eventually you stop knocking.”

“I suppose. Though I imagine we’re killing ourselves right now in all manner of ways that’ll seem insane to people in the future.”

“I’m no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I’m pretty sure that’s flirting.”

“At times, young man, you tread a precariously thin line between being charmingly headstrong and insufferably pigheaded.”