Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Good evening! For your first-blog-post bemusement, I present a humble review of the young adult urban fantasy novel Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Woo! Yay for new blogs I'm probably going to forget about in a month!

Goodreads Summary: 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.

Original reading: N/A
Recent reading: 8/30/14-9/1/14

3/5 stars

(There are some light spoilers in this review.)

First of all, let me just say that I do not read quickly. A friend gave me this book as a birthday present, and I decided to give it a go. I read this book in one 3-day weekend, even though I was doing things and going on shopping trips and hanging out with people. It was a very quick read, and what I considered a page-turner. The language was very vivid, and if it occasionally fell short, the photographs that were added in helped to color the landscape. Though part of the problem is that the photographs needed to do so at all.

I do have some other concerns, of course. For one, I was given this book without being told a genre or category, and I jumped in without bothering to read the summary or any reviews (since who needs expectations anyway?). I'd seen it on shelves and been interested, but I didn't remember just where I'd seen it. So when I began to read, I had zero expectations. I was hoping for some magical realism, and I was given a YA Urban Fantasy, which isn't all that bad for me.

However, I had a lot of trouble pinpointing that this was supposed to be YA. It starts out with a voice that sounds like an older person reminiscing about his youth, and moves into the body of the narrative that shows us a boy turning 16, who then waxes poetic about lanais and wainscoting and patinas. And yes, this is supposed to be a smart rich kid, but the voice just doesn't sound like a believable modern young teen to me. He goes from this very mature adult language to an admission of crying, along with lumping himself in with the group of what Jacob himself calls "children," to some innuendo/gore/racy language.

Also, it took me a long time to even realize that this was supposed to be modern day, partially due to the photographs, but mostly due to the word choice and characterization of the main character. I spent a good deal of the beginning wondering, "Sooo what year is it?" until a reference was made to computer screensavers and I thought, "Okay, I guess modern?" Still, nearly all of the few modern things that are mentioned could have been as much from the late 90s as the 10s, and that's a giant gap if you consider that the plot mentions specific days and years in history. Since the book is so focused and centered on time, it didn't make quite as much sense to be so vague about the time that it starts.

The typos I found kinda drove me bonkers, along with references to characters who are mentioned (via the pictures) but never actually met - like they are stuck permanently in the background or otherwise were ousted from the second half of the book and kept in the first, which seems pointless even if the pictures are interesting. If they are just there to be pictures, rather than to serve or illustrate the plot, then why introduce them?

Finally, the romance was not just forced, Jacob falls in love with literally the first girl he sees. You can't even say that about Twilight's Bella or Edward. But for this guy, there are no other girls until that girl, in the book or in his life. It's a relationship that could have been much richer without the unnecessary romance. If Emma had looked at Jacob and thought, "Wow, this would have been my grandson," and taken that kind of a role in his life, it would have been a MUCH different book, and exceptionally more intriguing, without changing the plot at all.

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. It was definitely worth reading, and I would probably read the sequel if I could find it at the library, but I probably won't keep it on my favorites shelf.

Cross-posting of this Review: Goodreads