Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs


Synopsis :

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of curious photographs.

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.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was published in 2011 but it seems to have gained it's popularity only last year.  I have this book with me since 2013 but I wasn't all that keen to read it.  I was more keen to keep it and thought I'll just keep it to enjoy the many strange, odd and creepy photographs within the pages of the book. 

The stars of the books are these photos. Most of them are of children but there a a few with adults as well and you will get the chills of you stare at them long enough!  For ordinary photographs they are not but of rather unusual and the peculiar kind they are.  And the story in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is weaved around these photographs.

Like I said earlier, I seems to come across this book quite a fair bit in the social media especially towards end of last year that I finally decided to bring it down from the warm cosy comfort of my bookshelf and give it a go.

I first read it just right before bed.  The story wasn't that scary.  Jacob's rather mild and easy going.  Nothing else seems to be scary at all, even the horrific family tragedy which was rather tragic but wasn't that horrific.  It's the photographs that were creeping me out.  They were all in black and white, have a real vintage feel.  They were rather disjointed but the story was supposed to bring them together but I don't think the author was successful in doing that as I didn't really like the storyline and where it's going.  It's a bit ridiculous but then we must remember that the author is not really an author but someone trying to inject some story into the photographs.

I wouldn't really recommend the book to you other than if you wished to be creep out by the photos.  By the way, there's a sequel to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children entitled Hollow City.  I don't think I would be in a hurry to get hold of it.

I have also read on the web that filming of a movie adaption for this book has began by the famous movie director Tim Burton. It stars young British actor, Asa Butterfield as Jacob.  I think it would be an interesting movie the way the book wasn't.

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