There was something creepy about the cover of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Whether it was a good kind of creepy or not was a question I debated on when I chose the next book to read after the very exciting Golden Son by Pierce Brown. Never mind that it was meant to be creepy in the first place, the question was if I wanted to handle creepy. I was on a good run with my reading list, reading at least one book per week, since we still didn't have a TV set up in the bedroom in our new house (which means I'm even more way behind on my viewing list, but that's another post altogether). I didn't want to break my reading momentum, but I also didn't want to read something too close to the genres featured in Golden Son, thus I ended up considering Ransom Riggs and his debut novel. I guess creepy children is as far as one can get if you're trying to avoid anything relating to a sci-fi space opera.
Jacob Portman shares a special bond with his grandfather Abe, even long after he realized that the fantastical stories the old man used to tell him are just that... fantasy. As a teenager, Jacob worries about Abe, living alone and suffering from fits of paranoia, stating that monsters are after him. After a disturbing phone call, Jacob checks in on his grandfather, only to find the house in disarray and Abe dead in the woods by the hands of what he could only describe as a monster. Jacob spends the next months talking to a psychiatrist who helps him understand that the monster was a byproduct of his emotional distress and the memory of his grandfather's last words over the phone. In an effort to make peace with all that has happened, Jacob tries to follow Abe's last wishes to find the orphanage that he grew up in before the second World War. Thus, Jacob travels to that far off Welsh island where he hopes to find Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
There are times when I'm in the mood for horror, despite the fact that the genre is usually the last option in my reading list. And I was really eager to cross off Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children from that list because every time I see the cover on my Google Play Books widget, I get a little freaked out. The book featured an interesting enough premise, so I crossed my fingers and tried to ignore the smattering of even more creepy pictures throughout the book (it doesn't help that I later found out that these are actual pictures collected by people with very specific interests).
I do have to say that I didn't quite enjoy Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children as much as I thought I would. The best YA novels are the ones that are enjoyed even by more mature audiences, so I don't think my sentiment is due to the fact that I'm not among the book's target demographic. Nor is it because it was my follow up reading material after the splashier Golden Son. The story was a bit too predictable, the characters a bit too difficult to empathize with, and the overall tone of the book a bit too drab.
Let me clarify that Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children isn't a bad book. It features a great premise and an adventure meant to be enjoyed by everyone. It's just that I somehow ended up predicting all the major plot reveals (i.e. whether Abe's stories were true, where Miss Peregrine and the children really were all this time, who Jacob shouldn't trust, etc.) and sort of dampened my enthusiasm for the book. I appreciated that it wasn't hard to imagine the locales that Jacob ends up visiting, though for some reason, I can't imagine those locales with color. I'm guessing that the black and white nature of the photos sprinkled generously throughout the book lent much impression on my imagination.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children also holds the potential for intriguing world building, even if the world Jacob stumbles into doesn't exactly fit in the present times that we live in. And given that the home's residents have rather unique skills that mark them as peculiar, it's hard not to be interested in their display of individual skills. Unfortunately, I don't think that the first book in the Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series holds up to those potential just yet, because it only offers the most basic of glimpses of both the peculiars' skills and the world they live in. Given that it is the first book, I'm hoping that the series is meant to show more of those tantalizing details in its later installments. I'm also hoping that the next books would offer more opportunities to empathize with the peculiar children Miss Peregrine is responsible for.
Ultimately, I'm holding on to hope that sequels Hollow City and Library of Souls would prove that the series is, in fact, something worth recommending to young readers looking for a new adventure to enjoy.Labels: Adventure, Book Series, Books, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs, Reading List
