Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
It's hard to beat a really good YA fiction book. The best ones balance adventure and danger without losing a youthful sense of wonder. This is a really good book. Like many books in the genre, it involves a young, normal teenager who's life gets turned upside down when he discovers an amazing secret. Unlike any book I have read before, the story was inspired and built around a series of remarkable vintage photographs. Ransom Riggs has collected them over the years and used them to build his story about a home for refugee children. The photos are facinating, and build a wonderful sense or eerieness to the book. I also really enjoyed the background of our protagonist, Jacob Portman. Unlike typical YA main characters, Jacob comes from a family that cares for him, and is very well off. He is not abused or neglected. In fact, the main cause of contention revolves around his elderly grandfather, a surviver of the holocaust who tells strange tales of the refugee home he stayed in during WWII. Jacob's grandfather is suffering from dementia and paranoia. It's a common problem, that affects many people, and gives us a very realistic point of entry to this tale. The book is clearly the beginning of a series, ending on a cliffhanger of sorts, and I look forward to the further adventures of Jacob and his new found friends.
8/10
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