Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

I'll be the first to admit that I don't like scary things---books, movies, photographs, whatever.  I have an overactive imagination when it comes to that, and I expect every little bump to be a ghost or an axe murderer.  I don't even like going into a dark room.  However, I really REALLY wanted to read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

  Here is the summary from Goodreads:
A mysterious island.
An abandoned orphanage.
A strange collection of very curious photographs.
It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, 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.

I'll admit, I was expecting something different from this story based on this summary (and the cover).  But it really wasn't that scary, or even that mysterious.  Yes, Jacob (the MC) was met with a personal tragedy and went off in search of some answers, and I was interested to learn the why behind some things (I don't want to give details), but overall, it was just kind of blah.  The scariest thing (and they weren't even that scary or spine-tingling) were the photographs that were included, but only because they were actual, real photographs that the author got from collectors. 


The story opens with the death of Jacob's grandfather, a man, by all accounts was closed off to everyone except Jacob, and has been written off as senile.  When Jacob starts believing his grandfather's stories, he is deemed "unbalanced" and sent to speak with a psychiatrist.  Jacob soon discovers that his grandfather's stories might have a bit of truth to them, so he goes in search of some answers at Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  

There was an element of time-travel, and at times, I had a hard time distinguishing which time Jacob was in (especially the ending).  



I think this book is meant to be part of a series, as the ending just kind of stops with the characters "riding off into the sunset" (and I say that in quotation marks because they really were riding off somewhere, it might not have been into the sunset, but that just sounds nice).  I hope that, if it is part of a series, that the next book picks up the pace a little.

All that being said, it wasn't a horrible book.  I was interested enough to see it through to the end.  I was just a little disappointed that it wasn't as good as I had imagined.