Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (A Book Review)

When I was a child, I'd like to see pictures and create stories regarding the pictures. For instance, I could see an image of a girl in the table eating all alone- I could imagine a story and produce things on my mind. I would state the girl has busy parents, she was craving for the attention and care of her family. This is one of my favorite things to do, I interpret the picture and invent stories behind the photos.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs reminds me of that.

This story, for me, is messy and it seems to me that the vintage photographs Riggs' included to create a story do not match or even make sense in the story. For example, there is this picture of a boat in an island and the character, Jacob, stated "In the next boat, I saw Brownwyn wave and raise Miss Peregrine's camera to her eye. I smiled back. We'd brought none of the old photo albums with us; maybe this would be the first picture in a brand new one. Then Brownwyn lowered the camera and raised her arm, pointing at something beyond us. In the distance, black against the rising sun, a silent procession of battleships punctured in the horizon."

This part to me is very strange because the children in the story lived in a deserted island which nobody who is not peculiar could enter. How did they had a camera to take a photo of the boat sailing? It seems to me that Riggs' just used the photo to make that chapter longer. The story is evidently framed with vintage photographs, but the story is not incorporated with the pictures. It seems that the author is looking at the pictures and imagining how it would come up with the story and sometimes it doesn't fit in at all like the instance mentioned above.

If you are thinking this book is a creepy and a halloween story- it is not. This is all about the children with special powers trying to save their headmistress in the orphanage.

With the main character of the story, Jacob Portman, a spoiled brat who is super bored at his life being the only child and the successor of their pharmaceutical business, he is a rich kid who considered himself as a loner. I did not like him at all. Some unlikable characters are unlikable in a complex and interesting way, but Jacob is just a spoiled, entitled and selfish brat.

Add to that, I think this book may fit into the taste of midschoolers for there is a mystery and I find it really messy and disappointing. Compared to the fantastic books I have read.

Now, there is a movie that has been produced by Tim Burton about this book- same title. It is not showing yet but I hope they would come up with an interesting characters and mind blowing plot twists because the book is plain boring. I would watch the movie when its already available in the cinema to see whether the story changed or improved.