Hey lovelies!

Today I am going to be sharing with you the spoiler free review for the first book of Ransom Riggs’s trilogy, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children!

I had been recommended this book tons of time but didn’t pick it up until recently because I had wanted to read the book before going to watch the movie! (Which was very different from the book, however, that is a whole other post.)

This is a great book for October because it’s going to be Halloween (even though it isn’t hugely celebrated in Australia) and everyone loves a spooky book at that time! But don’t worry! It’s a little weird and strange but definitely not scary because I am not a huge fan of horror (namely because I am a chicken!).

Can we also just take a moment to talk about how freaky/cool the cover is? I love the whole vintage vibe of this book! I haven’t really seen a style similar to this in other books so reading this book was a really unique experience!

But let’s just get started with the review!

About the book. 

{ WRITING }

I found the writing of this book to work really well with the creepy vibe of this book! It set the mood really well and had me really in the mood for reading some more creepy books and all. However, the writing didn’t stand out hugely to me at the same time. It was well written and had a good flow but not to the point where I was unable to put the book down.

{ IDEA }

The idea of this book was UBER cool! It was unique and strange and creepy, just like the peculiar children themselves. It was such a new idea and one that has never been done before making it so wholly different. I think that is what drew me to the book the most!

It was also explored in a pretty cool way! I liked how WEIRD the peculiarities were! Riggs didn’t try to make the peculiarities ‘cool’ or ‘powers’ by giving functionality to them! They were completely out of the blue such as having a mouth at the back of your head or reflecting in a lake as two people.

There were a few technicalities in the book that had me quite confused, however, I’ll get to them more below!

{ PLOT }

The plot is what let me down. I was loving it to the start and even the middle, as he discovers the peculiar children. I liked how Riggs showed Jake discovering the island and finding them, rather than magically knowing or having them come to him because I felt a lot of the intrigue came from finding the peculiar children and seeing their world.

The end became a mish-mash for me. I wasn’t bored but I wasn’t as interested as I would have liked to be. I was confused by a lot of things, especially the ‘monsters’ they had. I think the idea got a little too strange and wasn’t very well explained and it meant I wasn’t very invested in the plot. The climax and falling action was also very sudden and had me rushed and thrown in a loop (if you’ve read the book, you’ll get the pun!) and it left me feeling very ‘meh’ about the next two books.

{ CHARACTERS}

I liked the characters in this book! As mentioned above, I thought the peculiarities were really cool! However, I was unable to connect with any of the characters. I liked them all but it didn’t go beyond that. They didn’t really seem 3D and lifelike to me. I didn’t feel much for the peculiar children and their situation.

I didn’t feel much at all for the characters, I don’t have much to even say for them because I’m unsure what to write and they let me down a lot as well, unfortunately.

{ FINALLY…}

I am going to be reading the next two books in the series, Hollow City and Library Of Souls, but I’m not in a huge rush to finish the series off. I don’t feel like the first book really captured my interest, which sucks because I had gone into it hoping for a better result!

Oh well. Hopefully the movie will be better!

OVERALL RATING: