Edit on January 9th, 2016: I haven't thought about this book since I read it in July and I really have no interest anymore in reading the rest of the series. ----------It definitely was a slow moving book, but the plot really held my attention and I loved the use of the pictures. Sometimes I felt like he tried a little too hard to make the pictures perfectly fit into the story which made it a little awkward to read, but they still made the reading experience more interesting. The book really rea...

yo I came for the horror, got the fluffy stuff

My grandfather had described it a hundred times, but in his stories the house was always a bright, happy place—big and rambling, yes, but full of light and laughter. What stood before me now was no refuge from monsters, but a monster itself, staring down from its perch on the hill with vacant hunger. Trees burst forth from broken windows and skins of scabrous vine gnawed at the walls like antibodies attacking a virus—as if nature itself had waged war against it—but the house seemed unkillable...

When I was a child, one of my favourite things to do was to look through pictures in books - children's picture books, colouring books, etc. - and tell stories in my mind with them. For example, a picture of two children holding hands would start this story of friendship, which would then grow with every picture, introducing grander stories and dragons, unicorns, whatever the pictures gave me.Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children reminds me of that.This story, for me, feels completely disj...

This book has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention for the way it incorporates unusual antique photographs into the narrative. The premise: Jacob grew up on his grandfather’s stories about his own childhood during World War II. Supposedly his grandfather escaped the Holocaust by taking refuge on a Welsh island, at an orphanage that catered to children with strange powers. The grandfather even has photos to prove it. As Jacob grows up, he loses faith in his grandfather, and assumes the s...

This is just one of those books whose hype I don't really "get." I read this years ago when it was newly released, and was thoroughly unimpressed. Upon my second reading of this book, my opinion remains unchanged.A few creepy pictures and some weird people do not a horror tale make, and honestly, that's all the story is. It's a book about stories, and too much attention is focused on the telling of those stories instead of developing the actual plot. As a result, the tale fell flat for me. It wa...

I can't even.The poor execution of a good idea is just so upsetting to me.The main problem with this book is that the entire time I was reading I felt like a high school English teacher grading a student's paper, when in fact I am not a teacher or anyone who majored in English or writing. If I am simply a normal reader thinking this, then who the hell was working as the editor?? Did they not bring up these issues? Clearly the several people the author listed in his acknowledgements couldn't have...

This is kinda like uh...a hipster Harry Potter. Not a bad thing! I liked it a lot. There are tons of cool vintage photographs that lend the air of a turn of the century freak show. I loved the world and the vibe though.

Let me tell you a secret, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is actually:(I don't think what follows is a spoiler, but am marking it as such anyway as some people think it is.) for elementary school kids.Yes, the book tries to pretend it is something else, embellishing itself with creepy and weird vintage photographsbut the reality is, it is nothing more than a regurgitated version of X-Men.Rarely do I come across a book that is as far from what it aspires to be as this one. You might e...

This book started with a bang. It was very creepy, exciting and really intriguing, but it all went downhill from there. Once the mystery around the house was explained - which was fairly early and without any nuance - it became a very boring and almost childish story, which I didn't expect at all. One thing I can say I enjoyed was the photographs- they're scattered throughout the book, all black and white and remarkably creepy. They add a nice eery touch to the story and gives it a really unique...