Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Hardcover, 352 Pages
2011, Quirk Books
ISBN: 1594744769
Synopsis
A mysterious island.
An abandoned orphanage.
A strange collection of very curious photographs.
It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets 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. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.
A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.
Review
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a uniquely creative book based around a series of antique photographs. The quirky paranormal/time-travel tale will appeal to many fantasy and science fiction fans, but the sheer strangeness of the story will put others off.
I loved the pictures and the way the story was obviously built around them. What's truly impressive is that these pictures aren't edited. They're authentic, vintage photographs and most are completely weird. They're pictures that are begging to have their stories told and Ransom Riggs puts forth a fine effort in making them more than a bunch of strange images.
I couldn't get into this story, no matter how much the premise and photos appealed to me. It's an odd story about odd children in an odd place. I enjoy quirky, but it went beyond that into something too out there and jumbled for me. The story was darker than I expected and I found it to be sort of depressing. The characters were fascinating, but some of them didn't quite mesh with the sideshow freak thing the book already had going for it. Levitation, super-strength and even invisibly fit the story, but I quickly lost interest once we moved onto shapeshifters with time travel abilities and people who ate with the back of their heads.
I didn't love Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but I didn't hate it either. I wouldn't read it again, but I would recommend it to certain people. The book wasn't quite my thing, which sort of surprised me, but I can totally appreciate its appeal to others. Fox has the movie rights already and I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of those novels that works better for me on the big screen than in print.
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