Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

I originally chose this book to read because of its original title and interesting cover art.  I was hooked immediately, drawn in by the old feel of the book, perpetuated by the sometimes-chilling and always wacky vintage photographs scattered throughout the book.  That being said, the story lacked any sort of pacing - all of the action happens in the last 30 pages and feels almost hysterically rushed (I was actually anxious for the book to be over).  The first three-quarters of the book are really quite good, very suspenseful but not without humor.  It's a little slow, but it keeps moving forward nicely up until, as I said, page 200 or so when this whirlwind of events seems to blow through, ending with a really poor cliff-hanger.  All this could be forgiven (this is, after all, Mr. Ransom Riggs' first young adult book) if the story actually made sense, but while Riggs did a fantastic job of explaining everything in the first half of the book, the rest seemed to go by too fast with not nearly enough reasoning behind the action.  I believe these problems could've been solved, not be speeding up the beginning, but simply making the book a little longer.

Props to Mr. Riggs, however, for including some great historical deets about Wales and WWII; it made the book seem very realistic.  Even though many of the ideas are completely improbable, his beautiful descriptions and sympathetic characters made it much more real than your average "ghost" story.  This is definitely an author to watch out for.

Will I be reading the sequel?  Probably.  Let's hope Riggs fixes these problems in the near future; he seems to be competent enough to make writing a career, something few authors manage to accomplish.

For a synopsis of the book and more editorial reviews, click here.

Hungry Lionel gives this:

3/5