I’d been hearing good things about it for months, but never anything specific. It was always, “Oh I read that book, it was really good, you should read it!” or something similar. Never too many details, but with a title like this, it’s not hard to pique your interest just a little bit. However, the don’t judge a book by its cover motto applies nicely here, simply because it looks a lot more promising than it actually is. The picture of a levitating, somber-looking girl on the hardcover jacket hints at mystery with a dash of creepy intrigue. Sadly, the plot fails to deliver on both counts.
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
We are introduced to Jacob, a relatively normal sixteen-year-old Floridian born to an affluent family. His somewhat eccentric Polish grandfather, who grew up in Wales after his parents sent him away for his safety during the Second World War, lived the remainder of his adolescence in a school of sorts: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, where he stayed for several years before moving on to Florida. There, he started a family and eventually entertained Jacob with strange photographs and stories of his time in the Home for Peculiar Children, (stories about invisible children, girls who start fires, a boy who controls bees, and even a girl with a mouth on the back of her head) his only good memories after escaping the war of Nazi Germany.
Jacob is much delighted by these stories and vows to be just as adventurous as his grandfather, until he starts to realize that he’s too old for fairytales, particularly those that seemed too fantastical to believe in the first place. Right when Jacob starts questioning his childhood idol, he finds his grandfather dead in the woods, murdered by some strange humanoid creature with tentacles protruding from its mouth that Jacob caught a glimpse of and no one else will believe.
Thought to be mentally unhinged at the sight of his grandfather’s gruesome death, Jacob’s parents waste no time in planting him in front of a psychiatrist, who promptly begins administering prescriptions for Jacob’s every ailment over the course of several months. Tired and annoyed of being drugged up, Jacob suggests to his parents that he would like to spend part of his summer in Wales, visiting the very place his grandfather spent his early years.
The psychiatrist approves, believing this will allow Jacob to find some much needed closure; Jacob’s mother, a rich suburban woman whose primary concern was always herself, ”relieved to have her life back and not have two needy children to worry about,” also agreed to the trip. Thus, Jacob, accompanied by his father (who has ulterior motives for going on the trip, as Wales is teeming with diverse bird species he intends to write a book about), set out for a three-week vacation.
In Wales, Jacob learns that all of his grandfathers stories were true, and actually meets the children from the photographs. They live in a loop, literally stuck in September 3rd, 1940, with a sort of Groundhog Day quality as they relive that same day for the rest of their lives; most of the children are actually aged senior citizens by their count. Jacob also discovers that he is like those children; his powers is simply the ability to see the strange creatures no one else can, like the one that killed his grandfather.
Despite this initial premise, it lost its appeal early on due to its uncanny resemblance to the X-Men storyline. The children with special abilities, called “peculiars”, live under the care of Miss Peregrine, the headmistress who has taken them under her wing to protect them from prejudiced “commoners” who do not understand their abilities and would have them killed as witches, for example, and from other rogue peculiars who would do them harm in their quest for power. She also keeps them on a pretty short leash and devotes much of her time convincing them that their way of life is perfectly fine where they are, disconnected from the present day.
If that parallel wasn’t enough, the foreshadowing and the introduction to “new” twists tend to hit you over the head; the author wasn’t going for subtle here. Many events scream “Remember me later, because I am plot-significant!” Ironically, Jacob himself seems to forget many details or not recognize their significance right away, even though they had been explained barely a chapter previous, or seem obvious to begin with. This is disconcerting to the reader who has undoubtedly figured it out and now waits for the main character to do the same.
On the other hand, the book’s saving grace comes about 50 pages before the end of the book, in the form of a rogue peculiar who had been following Jacob his whole life, adopting various forms like his middle school bus driver, his family’s lawn keeper and pool cleaner, and, ultimately, his own psychiatrist (which I admittedly didn’t see coming at all).
The rogue has captured Miss Peregrine (along with another headmistress) intends to use them for his own nefarious purposes, but is defeated by Jacob and his newfound peculiar friends, who manage to rescue Miss Peregrine but not the other kidnapped peculiar.
However, during this process, Miss Peregrine was unable to maintain the loop in which they lived in, and their time has started moving at its normal pace, eventually leading to their first day in September 4th, 1940. Jacob now faces the decision of staying in their time or returning to his present time to his father (who lost the ambition for his book and has spent the entire time having several beers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). If he stays, there is very little chance he will ever be able to return to his own time period. If he returns, the children and Miss Peregrine may never find what became of the kidnapped peculiar and the rogues will not be stopped. Unsurprisingly, Jacob chooses to remain with his new friends, leaving his father a letter explaining his decision.
This ending is a sort of resolved cliffhanger; it definitely leaves the door wide open for a sequel, but it’s the sort of ending that readers can be content with should the author not choose to continue the story, simply because this isn’t the sort of book that offers anything new. The attention grabbing part isn’t the story, but the photographs that are included along with it. “All the pictures in the book are authentic, vintage found photographs, and, with the exception of a few that have undergone minimal post-processing, they are unaltered.”
Yet even this fails to have been executed properly. The graphic element is the only thing in the book that offers any sort of interest, while at the same time frustrating readers because nothing of interest ever does happen concerning them. Riggs fails to deliver what could have been a promising story, given that the photographs are supposed to be authentic and may have contained a far more unique tale than the one he chose to drag them down with.
