Miss Peregrin's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Basics:

Title: Miss Peregrin’s Home for Peculiar Children (#1)

Author: Ransom Riggs

Originally published: 2011

Pages: 379

Genre: Fantasy, spooky

Brief Plot:

A boy who suddenly loses his grandfather under mysterious circumstances goes on a journey to a isolated island across the Atlantic to find out what has happened, while meeting some most peculiar characters.

My thoughts:

As with “The Pianist” I went into this book with high expectations, which were well met. I decided to read the book when a friend used it as a reference in a school presentation, saying that it was the scariest book she’s read. More on that later. I loved that the book was so full of old pictures. It really set the mood and gave the book a spooky feeling. I have to admit, I did not fancy reading the book in the dark, because of the pictures. Some were quite harmless, other were simply terrifying. However, the plot was not what I had expected. From what I had heard a thought this was going to be a sort or horror story, and all the characters were to be a sort of ghosts. That was not the case. In a away, I was disappointed because of the lack of horror that I was expecting, nevertheless, I still loved the way the book turned out to be. I fell in love with the characters. I wish we’d know more about the side characters since I found them the most interesting. But this is the first book in a trilogy so I take it there is more to come.

SPOILER SECTION!!!

I will start off by just writing some meaningless words just so that if anyone accidentally reads the first few lines, they will not be spoiled. So if you’re for some reason STILL reading this, stop right now. I didn’t fancy the love sequences between Jacob and Emma. I found it very weird and not necessary. It seemed obvious that she only fancied him in the first place because he looked like his grandfather. Other than that I found the book amazing.

Summary

I really liked this book. It was fast-paced, the writing style was simple but not boring and I really liked the way the story developed. I loved the characters and I’m very excited to continue the series and hopefully witness some serious character development! I heard that the up-coming books will introduce some new characters which I am all for! To to summarize, I recommend this book to anyone who is out to read a moderately creepy book and explore new worlds!

Next review coming up: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

/Ingrid