Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

GOODREADS SUMMARY: A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. Fiction is based on real black and white photographs. The death of grandfather Abe sends sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and explores abandoned bedrooms and hallways. The children may still live.

[caption id="attachment_348" align="alignright" width="290"] Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs[/caption]

I would consider this more of a "juvenile fiction" book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Especially the old photographs (I read this on my Kindle Touch, but I recommend buying the book or checking it out on a better screen to really see the photographs)

The story centers around Jacob, an awkward teenager, who grew up listening to his grandfather's fantastic tales of peculiar and superhuman children from the small Welsh island. He had the pictures to prove it. Jacob no longer believed in his grandfather's stories and, like the rest of the family, blamed his grandfather's increased paranoia that something was after him on dementia. All of that changed the night he found his grandfather dead and saw something beyond explanation in the bushes. Jacob travels to the island to make peace with his grandfather's death...and to make sense of what saw that night.

The world Jacob finds on the island is beyond belief. It's not that he just finds some legitimacy to his grandfather's stories, but he (and the reader) is immersed in this strange and extraordinary world.

Since the book has a large cast of characters, the author doesn't go into too much depth aside from Jacob and even his depth is fairly limited to the thoughts of a teenage boy. The father was pretty vapid, absorbed in his own activities, and just there enough to provide enough parental guidance for Jacob to disobey him (not that his father ever really cared about enforcing the rules).

I was surprised when so much happened in the early pages and wasn't quite sure how the author planned to continue. That's when the plot took an unexpected but enjoyable detour -- and kept me up until 1 a.m. to finish it.

The ending was slightly disappointing, but mostly because I didn't feel there was a sufficient conclusion. I felt like the second part of the book had been spent building up a new story, but it never finished. Would definitely read a sequel if there was one.