Ransom Riggs: Miss Peregrine's Home For Pecular Children

In his debut novel Ransom Riggs takes the readers on an adventure for the peculiar:

Jacob's grandfather has a box of old photographs of children with them doing the strangest things or very weird appearances. Jacob's grandfather assures him that they are not fake and the children did exist. However, as Jacob gets older he begins to questions everything his grandfather told him and begins to believe that his grandfather was just making everything up. That is until his grandfather's murder and Jacob is there to witness it. What he sees changes everything for him, and he questions his own sanity as he is haunted by his grandfather's last words. Jacob needs to solve the riddle in order to find some peace, and have his adventure begin.

I've had this book on my TBR shelf for quite some time now but I can say that the reason that I picked it up was due to the fact that it has been turned into a movie and I try to read the book before the movie comes out. This book was fairly slow for the majority of the book and I guess it had to be as Riggs needed to set up the scene and worlds that Jacob lives in and is learning about. However, I never really felt the world building that Riggs was trying to portray in the book got to the depth that Riggs wanted it too, especially since he took a lot of time to get there.

I'm a bit confused about the "children" under Miss Peregrine's care (I use the term children loosely as many of them are in their 80s). I get the idea of the loop and how it would preserve them from aging, but does that mean that it keeps their mental age the same as when they entered to loop. This is never fully explained as to why an individual who may look like a teenager or child but is 80 years old and yet still will have the mindset of a teenager or child. This part was confusing to me. However, the peculiarities that the children have are a bit different and interesting and really not seen as powers, just abilities they are born with so that can be helpful and some that are more of a deformity.

Did anyone else think that the relationship/love interest thing between Jacob and Emma was creepy? I mean Emma was Jacob's grandfather's girlfriend when he was there and now Emma is trying to basically replace him with Jacob. Just creepy and kind of wrong to me especially when you couple it with the maturity issue stated above. I think the book would have been just as successful if Jacob and Emma were just friends, no live interest is really needed in this book.

I think my favorite part in this book was the Whites. Their history, how they become a white, their search for power and why they want it was really interesting. They also have some interesting abilities and powers that I will not go into here as it would spoil some key aspects within the book.

This book makes you think that all those wild stories that your grandparents and great grandparents told you may be true and that is the true charm of this book. This book is great for those who are of young adult age and would recommend it for those youth to read not so much so for adults. I'm not sure yet whether I will continue on in this series.

Cheers!!!

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On a side note, as I stated above I read this book as I saw the trailer for the movie and even just based up the trailer I can tell that there are some significant difference between it and the book, especially the main character Emma and her peculiarities. It will be interesting to see what else they have changed.