Review: Hollow City

After reading the first book in this series, I knew I had to get the second one out. (If you want to read my review on Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, just click HERE. Don't worry; I'll be here when you get back).

Like his first book, Ransom Riggs uses vintage photographs to help him tell the story (a feature I consider rather freaky and pretty awesome at the same time). Hollow City is a continuation of the story from the first book.

I got it out from a digital library on my kindle (thus the kind of shiny photo of the cover, I discovered how hard it is to take a good picture of a book cover when you're reading it from your kindle).

Because it is a continuation of Miss Peregrine, I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up spilling some spoilers for the first book. So if you haven't read it yet and care about such things, I recommend reading Miss Peregrine first and then coming back to the review...

Okay, are they gone yet? Let's get into the book.

So if you remember at the end of Miss Peregrine, Jacob and the rest of the gang were on their way to the mainland, in search of another ymbryne to help Miss Peregrine get out of her bird form.  Hollow City describes their search for other loops and the other ymbrynes, their continued battles with the wights and hollowgasts, all while trying not to draw too much attention to themselves. And throughout all this, Jacob is still trying to figure out how to use his skill in seeing the hollows and learning how to fight them...

I really liked this book as well, and thought it was a rather good sequel to Miss Peregrine. I didn't like it quite as much as the first book (maybe because I already knew what the format was, and the newness of the vintage photos as part of the story wore off a little for me?). It was a little shorter, or felt a little shorter, so of course I wanted a longer book. I thought it was very well done, though, and again I was rather surprised when it was over (what? no way I read it all already...).

One thing I did really like was that there was less swearing in this book (I think it was maybe five words, maybe). Some of you probably don't care about things like that, but for those who don't like swearing, I figured you might like to know.

I didn't see the ending coming at all, which was another feature in its favor. I don't know about you, but I hate it when I can predict the ending two chapters into the book. Hollow City, though, was awesome enough to provide a realistic ending (when I looked back at the clues, it all made sense) while keeping the twist/shock factor alive.

It was a great book, and I'm eagerly awaiting the third one.

And I just realized these books are considered horror. Maybe I'm getting into that genre after all.

If you prefer just to get your own copy, instead of borrowing from the library, you can get Hollow City* 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.


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