Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, review on Goodreads

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Last week I read and wrote about a children’s book, and wondered why we, adults, like to read them. This week I read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and I’m finding that line blurry once again. I don’t think Ransom Rigg’s novel is necessarily for adults—that’s the default, right? I saw the book on the new arrivals shelf at Barne’s & Noble, was intrigued by the cover, intrigued by the use of old photographs within the text, and once I read the sample on my e-reader, decided to keep going. Nowhere was there anything that made me think that this was a book for kids.

Until I was about halfway through it. The main character is a teenager, and the other characters are either adults seen from his perspective (unlikeable) or a bunch of little kids possessed of fascinating “peculiarities.” So it’s about kids, is quasi-fantastical, deals with time travel and a mysterious island and other tropes that seem to indicate: meant for younger readers.

Is it important to make the distinction? Maybe. If I’m going to speak to how well the book was written, or how well the writer’s ideas were executed, maybe I should say something like “teenagers will identify with Jacob’s struggles to balance his experience with adult incredulity, while adult readers will enjoy the return to innocence in this coming-of-age tale with a twist.” But I’m not writing back-of-the-dust-jacket blurbs here.

I’ll say this instead: it’s a quick read, interesting enough, sets itself up for sequels, and gets three stars because Riggs tells his story right without taking any real risks. That’s a poor review, actually, but the best I can do, for now. You see, Peculiar Children was not the book I expected, and I’m only just now realizing I don’t even know what my expectations were.

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