Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ranson Riggs

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of peculiar photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

The novel follows sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman as he travels to a remote island off the coast of Wales after a dreadful family tragedy. He discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, where it becomes clear that the children are more than just peculiar.

The story starts of as being very intriguing, as Jacob finds himself having to solve more than a few mysteries. It kept me wondering what Jacob might discover next. I found the novel to be quite creepy and scary. I was almost too afraid to turn the page for what ominous photograph I might discover. The use of the photographs along with the text really brought the story to life. It also took a lot of will power not to flip through the novel and look at the photographs but I wanted to see them in the context in which Jacob found them. I really enjoyed this aspect of the novel.

Ranson Riggs also creates a creepy and ominous atmosphere with his descriptions of landscapes and situations like this description of a storm:

“We spun toward the sound, rattled, and for a moment just stood listening as it seethed and howled at the mouth of the tunnel. It sounded like a caged animal that had just been showed its dinner. There was nothing to do but offer ourselves up to it” – Ranson Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

SPOILER ALERT

That said I have to say that I enjoyed the book immensely until half way through. Time travel just isn’t something I’m interested in and when Jacob discovers that the peculiar children are stuck in a time loop I lost interest. This makes the novel a rather disappointing read in my opinion. I was also really frustrated with the ending. It ended rather abruptly with nothing being resolved. The sequel was released earlier this year but if I have to be honest it will most likely not find its way to my night stand.