Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

If you've read my library haul post, you'll remember me talking about this book. In fact, I actually finished this book before I even posted my library haul.

When I first got it out, I almost returned it because, to be honest, the cover kind of creeped me out, and I wasn't sure I was going to like it. I thought it was going to be a horror story, and I do not like horror. But I decided to try the first couple of chapters, and it turned out to be a very interesting book.

Miss Peregrine is about a boy named Jacob. All of his life, Jacob's grandfather Abe Portman, a survivor of the Holocaust, has told him these incredible stories about the children who lived in the safe house with Abe in Wales, children with extraordinary gifts. Abe has even shown Jacob pictures of these children.

As Jacob grows into a teenager, he begins to doubt his grandfather's stories, believing the pictures to be fakes. But when Abe is murdered one night, Jacob comes face-to-face with one of those monsters. Doubting his sanity, he finally decides to visit Wales, find the house his grandfather stayed at, and put this whole thing behind him once and for all. But when he arrives, Jacob finds that there may be some truth to Abe's old stories after all...

This book was amazing. I finished it in a couple of days, grabbing it up when I had a few minutes. The characters were so believable, and the way the author worked in the vintage photos to illustrate parts of the story made it seem real. Instead of being creeped out, the pictures held my fascination, blending with the prose to make one fascinating tale. I had never seen something done like this before, but writing the story from the pictures is really cool.

The one thing I didn't like about the book was the fair amount of swearing. But other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and would definitely recommend it.

I'd never read anything by Ransom Riggs before, but I really like his writing style. I thought his idea for this book, using the vintage photos and telling a story with them, was so creative and unusual, and he pulled it together very nicely. I'm excited to see it when it becomes a movie next year. And I've just learned he's written a sequel, which I can't wait to check out!

You can get Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children* on Amazon in print, audiobook, or Kindle format.


 *This is an associate link, meaning if you purchase through it I get a referral fee but it costs the same as if you had just gone and ordered it through Amazon.