When I heard this title, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, my first thought was to watch the movie. But since I’m not a big fan of horror movies, I stopped watching it when I was halfway through. Instead, I read the book. Surprisingly, it was actually pretty awesome!
It’s about a boy named Jacob, who has a pretty interesting grandpa. Ever since Jacob was 5, his grandpa would tell him stories about monsters and unimaginable creatures. When Jacob turned 7, he thought those stories were a figment of the imagination and stopped believing them. Now that he’s 16, he’s forgotten all about his childhood stories. One day, his grandfather calls Jacob and tells him that something is chasing him, and warns Jacob not to come to his house, or Jacob will become a victim as well. Jacob, however, thinks that his grandfather is just drunk, so he and his friend, Ricky, drive to Jacob’s grandfather’s house… and find it empty.
Jacob, worried, goes searching in the woods and finds a trail of fresh blood. And the trail leads to his grandfather. Thankfully, his grandfather was alive enough to tell Jacob one last message: “Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man’s grave. Sep. Third 1940. Emerson. The letter.” Jacob just nodded. Then, Jacob saw a horrifying creature with tentacles sticking out of its mouth. Then, all went black. A couple of years after Jacob’s grandfather’s death, Jacob finally worked out what his grandpa’s last words meant. He was to go to the house for Peculiar Children.
I was really scared for Jacob when he ventured into the monster-filled woods alone, because like Miss Peregrine mentions in the book, monsters can lurk anywhere, at any time. I feel that Jacob should’ve been more careful when he was helping his peculiar friends awaken the dead, since he seems the most ‘ordinary’ of them all, and he can’t afford to lose his life at such a young age.
If I were the author, I would change the part where Jacob found his grandpa’s body in the woods almost instantly, because it would seem much more suspenseful, if Jacob had seen the monster, then blacked out.
I recommend this book to people who haven’t seen the movie because I usually like to read the book then compare it to the movie. It just seems much more fun than watching the movie, then reading a book that is almost the same, when you know what everything in the book looks like already. I give the book a 5 out of 5!
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