Miss Preregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

                                              A novel by Ransom Riggs. On cover, the flying girl 

What if we were given an opportunity to relive one day of our life over and over, which day would it be? For me, it would be my graduation day. The day I finally saw the train…oops…light at the end of the tunnel. On my graduation day, I wore a red gown and took the doctorate certificate from my advisor on a stage decorated with multi-colored flags representing different colleges of the University. I can relive that day once or twice but reliving that day forever would have been boring.

In the book Miss. Preregrine’s home for peculiar children, the peculiar children relive the last day of their lives for several years in a parallel universe. This book is a debut novel by Ransom Riggs. The protagonist, Jacob is a rich kid who is bored of his parents’ wealth. He loves his grandfather and the stories he told when Jacob was a child. The stories were regarding his grandfather’s peculiar friends during his stay in the orphanage under Miss. Preregrine’s care. His friends had super powers; a girl who can create flame with her bare hands, another girl who can fly an invisible man and many more interesting characters (kind of like X-men). 

The girl who can create flames in her hands

Jacob always thought that these stories came out of his grandfather’s imagination, until his grandfather was murdered in the woods, close to his home. The last words of his grandfather are, ‘They are coming. You are not safe here’. At the murder site, Jacob finds a weird creature in the woods. 

                                                            The creature in the woods

After that fateful night of his grandfather's murder, Jacob has nightmares everyday with the creature in it. His parents take Jacob to a psychiatrist. As a cure for his bad dreams, the psychiatrist advises Jacob to go to his grandfather’s orphanage, to dispel the myths of his grandfather’s alternate world. Jacob goes to Cairnholm, UK to demystify his grandfather’s tales. The rest of the novel is about how he discovers these peculiar children and how he helps them to escape their enemy.

What I loved in this book were the pictures of the peculiar children.

                                      

                                            Can you guess what is weird about this picture

I also loved Jacob’s character, his wit and the humour in looking at things from a different perspective. The suspense builds up until Jacob finds the peculiar children. I could not keep the book down until Jacob met the peculiar children. The novel went downhill after Jacob discovers the dark secret about his new friends’ sunny place. In the end, I felt that the author put a villain in the story because all stories should have a villain in the end, which the virtuous must defeat. The ending is written with a thought to continue the novel but I felt it to be abrupt & incomplete. I did not get closure. I wanted more. I would not recommend this book to anyone because it starts with a great momentum which fizzles out after three quarters of the novel.

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All images from google images