Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

When Abe Portman dies a mysterious and violent death, most people assume it was a vicious dog attack, but his grandson Jacob knows otherwise. His grandfather's final words to him were, "Go to the island, Yakob. Here it's not safe."

When Abe was a young man, his parents sent him to an island during the war to protect him from the invading Nazis. As a child Jacob always heard stories from his grandfather about the home where he stayed but always assumed they were just fantastical stories made up by a man who was trying to cope with the abandonment of his parents and the loss of his true home.

Given that he saw the terrifying creature that killed his grandfather, Jacob knows his death was no dog attack. But terrorized by nightmares and a family that thinks he's gone crazy, Jacob is sent to a psychiatrist to deal with the trauma of his grandfather's death, all the while knowing there is something much more sinister afoot.

On his birthday, Jacob's aunt gives him a book that was inscribed to him by his grandfather. Inside this book is a letter written by one Miss Alma LeFay Peregrine to Abe Portman. This letter is the impetus Jacob needed to go to the island his grandfather spoke of and find the house where he once lived with these peculiar children that Jacob always assumed were just bizarre stories he made up as a way of coping with the terror of war.

Now he knows otherwise and he somehow manages to convince his father to take him to the very island where his grandfather once lived. Will he find the answers he is looking for? Or just discover that his grandfather, and now he, are the crazy ones?

Peppered with a collection of unusual old photographs, Ransom Riggs weaves a story unlike any other I've ever read. It is the very definition of the publishing house that printed it: Quirk. It's not scary enough to be a horror story, but it's definitely frightening enough to be creepy, and will prevent you from reading it alone in bed at night if you're a chicken like me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book up until about two-thirds of the way through when the world of the Peculiars started to reveal itself. As someone who is not normally a fan of fantasy and/or scary stories, I found it difficult to lose myself in the world that Riggs created. Still, I can see why this book is a bestseller. The draw of the strange photographs along with the mystery of what really happened to Abe Portman allows this book to appeal to many different types of readers.Whether I read the sequel remains to be seen. I want to see what it's about before I commit to adding it to my TBR pile.


Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Published: June 7, 2011 by Quirk Books
Pages: 352
Genre: Mystery/Fantasy
Audience: Young Adult? (Lots of people seem to be confused about the age group of this book)
Disclosure: Book received from publisher