Peculiar Children? That Sounds Fun!

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Jacob grows up sitting on the knee of his grandfather listening to the stories of his Grandfather’s strange upbringing.  As his grandfather runs from the Germans (or what he calls the monsters) to a small island in Wales he grows up with children that are unbelievable in his grandfather’s stories.  As the book continues, a family tragedy rocks Jacob’s world and sends him searching for answers on the mysterious island of the stories he grew up listening to but didn’t always believe.  When he arrives at the bombed out house of his Grandfather’s upbringing he quickly realizes that something is not right and maybe the dwellers of the strange house have never left.  The story is an exciting mix of fiction and photography where Riggs takes us on a mind blowing adventure.  

What started off as a crazy suspenseful rollercoaster of a book, sure had a blah ending.  I enjoyed the story during its entirety until the last chapter.  The ending was anti-climatic.   I literally would squeal with anxiety and would be on the edge of my seat because I didn’t know what was going to happen next.  Then the book ended and I left feeling empty and wondering if the author rushed the ending for publishing purposes.  I’m sure this will be a series and I’m almost guaranteeing that I will continue the series, because I always do, but for what I thought was going to be a creepy story about some psycho kids, turned into bla.  Also, the timeline and space time continuum does not make sense at all.  If the author would have addressed how one time line doesn’t age while another continues and there are loops all over the earth doing the same thing, it would have been a better read, but the way Riggs doesn’t talk about the loops, leaves the audience with questions, specifically, I’m talking about the towns people.   

With my amazing problem solving skills, at the very beginning of the story I started to worry that Jacob was going to somehow go back in time and become his own grandfather.  Thankfully that was not true.  I kept thinking that the reason Jacob and his grandfather got along so well was not because he was peculiar, but because they were the same person.  That’s funny, I don’t care who you are. 
Let’s talk about the photography.  First of all in the back of the book it talks about how the photos are real and the story was written around them.  But also because they are real photos, they do not stay consistent with the characters.  For example, Emma had several pictures in the book and they are always a different girl.  So therefore, the author loses the part of the audience that needs cohesiveness throughout the story.  But in my opinion, it was neat that the author found those pictures and used them for the story. 

Would I recommend this book to my beloved readers?  That is a good question.  Did I leave the book weeping and wishing I had never read about the peculiar children? No, not at all, I guess I would give it 3 out of 5 stars, and now you decide if you want to start or continue the story.