Rachel Rambles About Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
From Goodreads:
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.

I'm pretty sure I'm the last person in the world to read this book. I've been reading glowing reviews of it ever since it first came out, but for whatever reason, never bothered to pick it up. Now that I've FINALLY read it, I can confirm that those glowing reviews are pretty spot-on.

It took me about 130 pages to get into Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. In the beginning, I liked the writing style and was intrigued by the story, but I wasn't totally hooked on the book. I wasn't dying to know what happens next. Then, suddenly, things started to get very interesting, and I started to truly enjoy the book. So, while it was a slow start for me, the rest of the book flew by rather quickly.

My favorite things about Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children are the writing style and the photographs. It's clear that Ransom Riggs can write, and while I didn't always one hundred percent LOVE the story, I always liked the way the story was told. The use of super old, super creepy photographs to assist the story is compelling and brilliant and unique. The pictures are all so fascinating, and many of them are incredibly disturbing. The fact that this book is based on all these strange pictures is seriously awesome, and it makes this book stand out in comparison to other Young Adult books.

There were some things I didn't like about Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, although, for the most part, I did enjoy it. The main romance made me really uncomfortable, and I almost wish it hadn't been included in the story at all. I personally feel like there was no need for this book to have a romance, but it didn't distract me from the important things in the story, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Also, the actual plot of the book didn't impress me all that much. Sometimes it seemed a little forced, like it was working a little too hard to make the pictures work in the story.

For me, this book was all about the writing style and the photographs, as well as the setting, which was creepy in a beautiful sort of way. I hope that this book gets made into a movie just so I can see the cool setting come to life. Imagine watching a movie and getting to see the set of the house and the island and the bog! It would be visually stunning.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a unique and slightly disturbing book with an eerie quality to it that is enhanced by strange, vintage photographs. It is not a perfect book, but it is certainly deserving of all the hype and praise it receives. I look forward to reading the sequel and continuing on with the rest of the series.