Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is about sixteen
year old Jacob finding out about his grandfather’s past after he dies. Jacob is
a pretty solitary teenager; he has one friend and a job he hates. The one
person who gets him and understands him is his grandfather, Abe. Abe is a bit
eccentric and often tells Jacob embellished stories from when he was a boy. He
has photos of children doing strange things such as levitating and lifting boulders
with one hand. When he is small Jacob loves listening to Abe and takes every
story as if it were true. As he grows to a teenager he thinks the stories are
stupid and the photos have obviously been doctored to make them look peculiar.
He carries on thinking this until his grandfather dies. Jacob travels to a
remote Welsh island, where his grandfather spent his childhood, and his world
is turned upside down.
The story is slow to start off with and takes a good fifty
pages to get going but once you get through that it gets a lot better. The
story is told in first person which I usually don’t like but I didn’t even
notice it when I was reading. I think the start felt so slow because I was
expecting it to be one thing but it didn’t seem to be any genre in particular.
It’s classed as a fantasy book but it’s not really fantasy as I would define
it. To me it felt more like an adventure book, with Jacob discovering things
about his grandfather and himself. It also felt like it was sort of trying to
be a horror book but if it was it didn’t succeed. But that may be the cover
deceiving me.
Jacob as the main character was fine. He started off a bit
irritating, being angry at everything but then he is sixteen. Once he gets to
Wales he gets less annoying and you just go along with him on his journey. The
children he meets in Wales are all fun and interesting. There are a lot of them
though so you don’t feel you get to know some characters as well as you’d like.
Most would have a fascinating story to tell of how they ended up on a remote
island off the coast of Britain. They are from all over Europe, gathering
together to escape their plight. I felt sorry for Jacob’s father, Franklin, who
travels from America to Wales with Jacob. He didn’t really get to know his dad
as he would have liked as he was away a lot and emotionally distant. He is then
going through the same thing with his son, who he doesn’t understand either. It
can’t be easy for him and are not surprised he takes himself off bird-watching
as they are more easily understood.
The book is unusual as it has photos interspersed with the
chapters. When Abe is telling Jacob about the children he grew up with he has
photos of them and the reader can see them too. At first glance the photos look
normal, but then you realise that none of the children in the photos is normal.
I think having the photos in is a good idea as it really adds to the story when
you can see what is being described to you. When some were described I couldn’t
really think what it would look like so seeing the picture helped understand
the peculiar children.
I really enjoyed this book and once it got going I couldn’t
put it down. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting it to be but I still liked
it. I will be reading the sequel when it gets written, although it was quite a
nice standalone story. The ending was a bit rushed and didn’t really end
properly so hopefully the sequel will deal with that. It is difficult to define
the genre of this book but that’s not important. It’s marketed as a young adult
book and I think they would enjoy it but I think adults can enjoy it too. It’s
a fun, unusual read.
Overall rating 4 out of 5.
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