Review: Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

Reading Format: Audiobook
Year Read: 2014
Star Rating: 3.5 stars

I really liked the front cover of the book. It was one of the driving factors which made me read the book. That and the fact that my library's audio app had it available for free.

I listened to this on audio but when I got to the parts where it mentions the photographs and I discovered that the print version actually had those pictures in it, I decided to download the ebook to go with it so that I could refer to the pictures as and when I needed to. I am so pleased that I did as the pictures were a real highlight of this book. Unfortunately, I only had access to this through for the first part of the book as I had to return it due to their being holds on it.

I was blown away by the first two chapters of the book and I was thinking it was going to be a 5 star read for me then it just dumped me at chapter 3 and I spent the rest of the book trying to like it again. It is simplistic in language and is definitely marketed for the YA audience.

The audio was done well on the whole although the narrator's “Welsh” accent left a lot to be desired. It had American pronounced words in an accent of Cockney meets Scottish – there was not even a vague hint of Welsh in there! When I've heard bad accents before it generally makes me laugh but these were so bad it just made me cringe and almost shake my head at it.

The book did pick up again and I thought the ending was fantastic but I kind of lost my enthusiasm for it and I spent the last half of the book just waiting for it to finish. I really don't think the book lends well to the audio format. Because I enjoyed the ending, it did make me start thinking that I might read the sequel at some point.

Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children: View on Amazon || View on Goodreads

Related Posts:
Miss Peregrine's First Lines

Review: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Coraline's often wondered what's behind the locked door in the drawing room. It reveals only a brick wall when she finally opens it, but when she tries again later, a passageway mysteriously appears. Coraline is surprised to find a flat decorated exactly like her own, but strangely different. And when she finds her "other" parents in this alternate world, they are much more interesting despite their creepy black button eyes. When they make it clear, however, that they want to make her theirs forever, Coraline begins a nightmarish game to rescue her real parents and three children imprisoned in a mirror. With only a bored-through stone and an aloof cat to help, Coraline confronts this harrowing task of escaping these monstrous creatures.

Gaiman has delivered a wonderfully chilling novel, subtle yet intense on many levels. The line between pleasant and horrible is often blurred until what's what becomes suddenly clear, and like Coraline, we resist leaving this strange world until we're hooked. Unnerving drawings also cast a dark shadow over the book's eerie atmosphere, which is only heightened by simple, hair-raising text. Coraline is otherworldly storytelling at its best.

This was a simple story which made for a quick read. It's also pretty short. You could tell it was aimed at young readers as the language was much more straight forward compared to Gaiman's adult focused books. It had the usual Gaiman darkness to the story which, among other things, have made me a fan of his. I like how he doesn't shy away from the darker side of life even with his children's books. Even though it's dark in places, it's not particularly scary. That said, I did find a couple bits gave me the heebie-jeebies, but I think it's just me. I have a thing about eyes and Coraline's other parents had black buttons sown on where their eyes should be and combined with my over-active imagination it made me shiver and cringe.

I don't really need to explain what the story is about as the synopsis above pretty much covers the whole story. I think whoever compiled the book blurb on the back could have revealed less of what was to happen especially as it's a pretty short book - they've not really left anything to surprise! I loved the eerie drawings at the beginning of each chapter too. Another fantastic read by Neil Gaiman.

I read this for a "Name that Tune" themed read-a-thon in which I had to choose a song and change it's lyrics to relate to the book in some way. You can read my Coraline song here.

Coraline: View on Amazon || View on Goodreads

Related Posts:
Coraline First Lines
Coraline Name That Tune Song

First Chapter - First Paragraph - Tuesday Intro: Coraline

First Paragraph - First Chapter - Tuesday Intro is hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea.

I think I've posted the first paragraphs of all the books I am currently reading so this week I've decided to post one that I am going to be reading at the weekend for a challenge in one of the Goodreads groups that I'm in.

I will be reading Coraline by Neil Gaiman in a 24-hour read-a-thon challenge. I'm really excited about reading this book as Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite authors.

"Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house.

It was a very old house - it had an attic under the roof and a cellar under the ground and an overgrown garden with huge old trees in it.

Coraline's family didn't own all of the house, it was too big for that. Instead they owned part of it.

There were other people who lived in the old house. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible lived inn the flat below Coraline's, on the ground floor. They were both old and round, and they lived in their flat with a number of ageing Highland terriers who had names like Hamish and Andrew and Jock. Once upon a time Miss Spink and Miss Forcible had been actresses, as Miss Spink told Coraline the first time she met her."

Coraline: View on Amazon || View on Goodreads

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

Review: Splintered by A.G. Howard

This stunning debut captures the grotesque madness of a mystical under-land, as well as a girl’s pangs of first love and independence. Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.

When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.

Reading Format: Kindle eBook
Year Read: 2013
Star Rating: 5 stars

I chose to read this book as part of a challenge - I had to read a book by a debut author. I looked at the Goodreads list for 2013 debut authors and this was the only one which really jumped out at me - perhaps because I really liked the cover!

Prior to seeing the list of debut authors and their books, I hadn't heard of Splintered so I had no expectations of what it would be like. Obviously, I read the synopsis of the book and saw that it was a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, but other than that, I wasn't sure what it was going to be like. I'm so pleased I chose this one as I was fully engaged straight away. I thought the world building was great and the characters were great too.

I really liked Alyssa, the main character, whose perspective the book is told from. She was very quirky, keeping electric eels and trapping and killing bugs for her art to name but a few. Later in the book we find out why she focuses on those things in particular.

I also liked the focus on mental health and the happenings in the psychiatric hospital in which her mother Alison was residing. It would seem that the women in the family, who all descend from Alice Liddell, the inspiration behind Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, have all in the past developed mental health problems of some kind and been institutionalised and Alyssa will do anything to stop that from happening to her. She already hears bugs and flowers talk so she is determined to get to the bottom of it even if it means entering Wonderland and throwing out the window what she thought was reality. Loved it!

Towards the end, I got a little lost but I think that was just my attention waning as I was probably listening to it while doing something which perhaps required slightly more attention than just washing up!

I listened to the audiobook and I thought the narrator was very good, although her attempt at an English "Cockney" accent had me smiling every time I heard it!

I will definitely read the follow up book in the series at some point.

Splintered: View on Amazon || View on Goodreads

First Chapter - First Paragraph - Tuesday Intro: Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children

First Paragraph - First Chapter - Tuesday Intro is hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea.

I am currently reading and listening to Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

"I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen. The first of these came as a terrible shock and, like anything that changes you forever, split my life into halves: Before and After. Like many of the extraordinary things to come, it involved my grandfather, Abraham Portman.

Growing up, Grandpa Portman was the most fascinating person I knew. He had lived in an orphanage, fought in wars, crossed oceans by steamship and deserts on horseback, performed in circuses, knew everything about guns and self-defense and surviving in the wilderness, and spoke at least three languages that weren't English. It all seemed unfathomably exotic to a kid who'd never left Florida, and I begged him to regale me with stories whenever I saw him. He always obliged, telling them like secrets that could be entrusted only to me."

Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children: View on Amazon || View on Goodreads

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

Review: Paradigm by Ceri A Lowe

What if the end of the world was just the beginning?

Alice Davenport awakens from a fever to find her mother gone and the city she lives in ravaged by storms – with few survivors.

When Alice is finally rescued, she is taken to a huge underground bunker owned by the mysterious Paradigm Industries. As the storms worsen, the hatches close.

87 years later, amidst the ruins of London, the survivors of the Storms have reinvented society. The Model maintains a perfect balance – with inhabitants routinely frozen until they are needed by the Industry.

Fifteen-year-old Carter Warren knows his time has come. Awoken from the catacombs as a contender for the role of Controller General, it is his destiny to succeed – where his parents failed.

But Carter soon discovers that the world has changed, in ways that make him begin to question everything that he believes in. As Carter is forced to fight for those he loves and even for his life, it seems that the key to the future lies in the secrets of the past...

Reading Format: eBook
Year Read: 2014
Star Rating: 3.5 stars

I requested through NetGalley to receive this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This is my first disclosure. My second disclosure is that I am a thirty-something reading a YA book so I am not it’s intended audience.

“You have five minutes of this life left.”

The first line of the book is a great opener and really draws you in. But then just a few sentences later it mentions something about the over thirties which gets my back up.

“If he could keep himself together, then surely the old-timers should be able to manage it. It just confirmed everything he knew about anyone over thirty.”

So a bit of a mixed start for me! Despite the inference that I’m an old-timer, I carried on with the story. ;-)

I really like how the story was told. It is written in third person from two different POVs and two different time frames. Confused? Well there’s no need to be as it’s really well done. Carter Warren, a 15-year old boy, shows us what it’s like in a present day post-apocalyptic world while Alice Davenport shows us how life as we know it changed forever and how the new society was formed. I thought this was quite unique among the dystopian/post-apocalyptic stories out there as we generally see what it’s like after the s**t has hit the fan as opposed to as it’s happening. Each chapter switches POV to progress the story and each story line makes things fall in to place in the other.

While we don’t know exactly what has caused the Storms, it’s obviously global warming related in some way. The Storms came followed by floods then people died. Any remaining stragglers were picked up by Paradigm Industry and taken underground to sit it out until a society could be established above ground again. This is the bit I found scary! Not in a horror story kind of way but that this could happen; Corporations gaining control and being in charge is where we’re heading now. While we still have a government in our country many of the MPs have shares or some other involvement in big businesses and banks, so laws are passed to favour themselves, we have schools sponsored by companies and things being tendered out to private companies such as homeland security and prisons to name just a few.

So Back to the story! 87 years down the line, technology has advanced significantly and people are chosen by the Industry to go back in to the catacombs underground to be frozen in stasis for an unknown period of time to be awakened in the future to bring balance to society. Carter Warren is one of those people who were chosen and frozen just aged 15 to be brought back in the future as a contender to be Controller General, the person in charge of the Industry and Society as a whole.

I forgot to mention that the book is set in London too which I also liked being a Brit myself. There are so many books set in the US within this genre so it's good to see we get our own one now.

Whilst reading, I felt like I was waiting for the obligatory romance to start which always seems to crop up in YA books. But it didn’t happen which was quite refreshing. There were some mentions of crushes and love and the odd kiss and cuddle but it wasn’t the main focus of the story. And no angst!

A few interesting issues are raised in this book. Carter has sex for the first time, aged 15 on his going away party, and gets a girl pregnant with twins. I thought this sends a clear message to the YA audience to practice safe sex and that even on the first time you can get pregnant, although the message is more implied rather than being spelled out. It also briefly addresses paedophilia/sexual assault with Alice being attacked by an old man whilst she was under his care. Difficult topics to broach but they were woven in to the story nicely and sensitively.

I felt that some of the things that happened were predictable while other things happened which were really unexpected (but were good) and blew me away. I also felt that some characters were well thought out and developed, for example Alice and Carter, while others not so and it was difficult to understand who they were and what they stood for. At times things happened and I wasn't sure what, leaving me feeling confused although that eased off as things were explained later in the book.

I really liked that it covered the creation of a post-apocalyptic world and the reasons why they made the choices they did and the omissions they made to society and life. I also get why those restrictions which once worked no longer do when time moves on and why 87 years later people are rebelling against the rules.

All in all I thought it was an enjoyable read. Will I be reading the sequels? I’d quite like to know how the story progresses so I probably will.

Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

"Errand requiring immediate attention. Come.

The note was on vellum, pierced by the talons of the almost-crow that delivered it. Karou read the message. 'He never says please', she sighed, but she gathered up her things. When Brimstone called, she always came."

In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she's a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world, half in 'Elsewhere', she has never understood Brimstone's dark work - buying teeth from hunters and murderers - nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn't whole.

Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.

Reading Format: Paperback
Year Read: 2013
Star Rating: 5 stars

Although I was intrigued by the book before reading it, I had been putting it off as I went through a bit of an "avoiding YA books because I'm an adult" phase. I'm so pleased I got over that!

While it is aimed at young adults, the main character is old for her age so it had a different feel to other books in this genre that I have read.

I fell in love with this book and the characters right from the start. It is about Karou, a blue-haired, 17 year old girl living in Prague who is trying to juggle two lives; one normal in this world where she is an art student and the other where she runs errands for a monstrous creature called Brimstone and is surrounded by fantastical creatures called chimaera. There is a lot about her past and present that she doesn't know so she has a sense of feeling incomplete.

The descriptions of the characters is great and I could really imagine what they looked like - I bet the people who like drawing fan art will have a field day on Laini Taylor's creations! They were all really interesting too and I liked their uniqueness's.

I especially felt drawn into the setting in Prague as only the week before I read the book I had visited there so I was able to really visualise where Karou and the other characters were and what they were seeing and experiencing.

I have since read the two follow up books in the series, Days of Blood & Starlight and Dreams of Gods & Monsters which I will post reviews for at a later date.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone: View on Amazon || View on Goodreads