9460487Title: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Author: Random Riggs

Publisher: Quirk

Publication Date: June 2011

Genre: Adult Fiction/Horror

Series or Stand Alone: Series, Book One

 

 

Synopsis can be found here.
I purchased this book for review.

 

Review:

Jacob journeys to an almost abandoned island, searching for answers to questions from his dying Grandpa’s lips. What he finds there….

Miss Peregrine’s is that book. It’s the book you hear about before it comes out, and you eagerly await it. It’s the book you can’t wait to read and leave it on your nightstand, but somehow it gets shuffled again and again to something you’ll read later. It’s the book that is intriguing, with the promise of a good story and maybe a good scare. It’s the book you want to read, but somehow never find the chance to for whatever reason.

For me, finally, it is not that book anymore.

I was super excited years ago after reading a synopsis for Miss Peregrine. I even went and got it signed by the author, but somehow other books got in the way. I am so glad I finally got around to reading Miss Peregrine. Honestly, it came at just the right time.

Let me explain: recently I’ve been having a little bit of problem staying focused on books. I usually only read one book at a time, but I’ve been finding myself with maybe four or five books at a time. I don’t know why and I’m hoping to break out of it (I am not comfortable with so many small helpings of different stories – must be why I am not a fan of short stories). Imagine my delight when, having promised myself to only read one chapter a night as to not scare myself silly, I couldn’t put it down. I kept going. This is the book I carried with me to work everyday, trying to read at lunch. All the other books faded away. It had become that book.

The writing is beautiful, perfectly placed words and cadences that slowly seep around the reader. I felt like I was being gently submerged in a tub of water, drowning in the strange world of Jacob and then Miss Peregrine, my nose barely above the water, eager to read and read.  There’s strange things tugging at me, questions that need answering and I felt for Jacob who just lost his strange grandfather to a freak animal attack. Even though we all know it wasn’t an animal attack.

The eerie photos that accompany the story lends themselves well to the overall tone and creepiness. They were fun visual aids and I found myself excited to see the paragraph end and take in the next amazingly strange photograph. Riggs does a wonderful job of bringing these characters to life on the page then adding a depth to them by including the photos. And the ending is superb. A sickening, intense climax that leaves the reader wanting more. More of the world and its answers. Perfectly plotted and paced!

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children saved my week. I am not sorry for waiting so long because this book came at the perfect time. A time when I needed an imaginative story, filled with rich and lively characters, mesmerizing writing and a fabulous story.

Rating 8 Cookie Worthy