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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is Random Riggs’ debut novel and the first book in the Peculiar Children series. It’s thrilling, it’s creepy, and a great read. Riggs’ paints vivid pictures with his words so you feel like you’re standing in stinking sheep manure with Jacob or staring into the tentacled face of a hollowgast.
While a contemporary novel, it’s written in the tone of a historical novel. This adds to the creepy, vintage feel of the story. The old photographs peppered within inspired the strange powers of the peculiar children.
Premise
Jacob grew up hearing stories of the peculiar children from his grandpa, but he thought they were just that —stories. His father told him that the tales were born from Grandpa Portman’s trauma as a Jew who fought in the second world war. The thought of his grandfather’s monsters being the nazis makes sense to Jacob. Until Grandpa Portman is murdered under disturbing circumstances.
Jacob travels to Wales to visit the children’s home where Grandpa Portman lived during his childhood. Jacob hopes that finding his grandpa’s past will allow him to heal from the trauma of his death. Instead, he finds a bombed-out house on a remote island and a strange girl who calls him a monster. He follows her through a cairn and finds himself back in time to September 3, 1940—the very same day the children’s home was bombed and its wards reportedly killed.
The so-called peculiar children are a group of children with strange powers. They can make fire in their hands, float, or make plants grow. Some powers require conscious effort to use, such as Enoch’s ability to reanimate the dead. Others are uncontrollable, such as Olive’s need to wear lead shoes so that she doesn’t float away. Peculiars live in places where time has been cut off, called time loops for the fact that the same day repeats over and over. This protects them from the wights and the hollowgast, soulless creatures that feed on the flesh of the Peculiars.
Faced with the uncomfortable truth that Grandpa Portman’s stories were true and the monsters are real, Jacob has to decide whether to stay with the peculiar children and forfeit his connection to the present time, or return to his unsatisfying life where he is in danger from the hollowgast.
Setting
The story begins in Englewood, Florida, the small beach town where Jacob’s family lives. Jacob’s uncles own a chain of stores called Smart Aids. Jacob works at (and tries to be fired from) the local Smart Aid when the story begins. After Grandpa Portman’s death, the story shifts to Cairnholm, a remote island in Wales. It has a small population that relies on fishing and sheep herding. Jacob travels back and forth between the present time and September 3, 1940. In the present day, the weather is often overcast and stormy, whereas in the loop it’s a sunny summer day.
Notable Characters
Jacob Portman
Our protagonist, Jacob is plagued by nightmares following the death of his grandpa. Everyone claims that Grandpa Portman was killed by dogs, but Jacob swears he saw a monster that night. Even his only friend, Ricky, claims not to have seen the monster. Jacob starts seeing a psychiatrist, who diagnoses Jacob with an acute stress response and encourages him to visit his grandfather’s childhood home. Since it’s better than the paranoia and anxiety he currently experiences, Jacob convinces his parents to allow him to make the trip.
Jacob is initially shown to be suffering from extreme ennui that makes him snide and unpleasant. After arriving in Cairnholm, he quickly becomes enemies with the only two boys his age. Even his friendship with Ricky is shown not to be genuine. They stop speaking soon after Grandpa Portman dies. He has poor relationships with his parents, despite loving them and wanting his father to achieve his dream of publishing a bird book.
As the story goes on, Jacob is proven to be brave and non-judgmental. Rather than being afraid or disgusted, he is awed and impressed by the talents of the peculiar children. Even by Hugh, who keeps bees in his body, and Claire with her backmouth. He accepts them as his friends and wants them to be safe, even when he has to face danger to protect them.
Emma Bloom
The first of the peculiar children that we meet, Emma is fierce, temperamental, and brave. Her talent is fire, and she tasked herself with the protection of her fellow peculiar children. She and Grandpa Portman used to be sweethearts before he left to fight in the war. Emma is shown to still love him and grieves when she learns of his death. Up until the end of the book, she carries a snapshot of the two of them together.
After Jacob is proven not to be a threat, she becomes attached to him. He is a new person and a romantic prospect. In her Jacob finds someone that he can properly grieve for his grandfather with, as she loves him as much as Jacob did, albeit in a different way. He didn’t have that from his parents. His mother isn’t shown to be close with him, and Jacob’s father had a strained relationship with Grandpa Portman.
Emma is constantly shown to be willing to place herself in danger if it means the others can get to safety. I liked her character very much.
Miss Alma Peregrine
Miss Peregrine is the headmistress and the only adult who lives in the children’s home. She is an ymbryne, a class of peculiar women who can control time and transform into a bird. In her case, a peregrine falcon. Ymbrynes are tasked with maintaining time loops and protecting the peculiar children within them. They also take on the more mundane tasks of making sure the children are fed, clothed, and educated. Miss Peregrine takes her role seriously and is distraught at the thought of her wards being in danger, to the point where she will sacrifice herself to protect them if need be.
Enoch O’Connor
Enoch is a creepy boy. I expected him to betray the peculiar children from his first appearance. The other peculiars describe his ability as “raising the dead”, but it’s more that he temporarily reanimates them using animal hearts.
The first thing he does upon meeting Jacob is trick him into entering a room where Victor, Bronwyn’s deceased brother, is kept. Jacob is horrified to realize that they keep Victor in a bedroom rather than giving him a proper burial. Enoch is also quick to accuse Jacob of being a spy whenever things go wrong. However, by the end of the book he is still loyal to the peculiar children so maybe I judged him too quickly as a potentially traitorous creep. I do have the next two books as well, so I look forward to seeing what Enoch gets up to.
Bronwyn Bruntley
When Bronwyn was first introduced, I thought she would be the fulfillment of the all brawn, no brains trope. And while it’s true that she has super strength and is impulsive enough to launch herself at hollows without thinking it through, she is also often clever about how she does it. She thinks on her feet and is the most clever when it comes to battle strategies—often thinking of things that Emma and Jacob don’t. She and Emma are best friends and are often together.
Millard Nullings
Millard is much less inclined to mischief than his peers, though he does still get in his fair share. Since he is always invisible, he can sneak by people and no one ever knows he’s in the room until he speaks up. This means he walks around naked the majority of the time. Nobody seems to mind except at mealtimes, when Miss Peregrine makes him put on a jacket so that he isn’t entirely nude.
He is studious and occupies himself by recording the actions of all the townspeople within the loop who repeat the same day over and over. Reportedly, he spent three years tracking pigs alone. Millard is never willing to do anything that would get him in trouble with Miss Peregrine, but anything else is fair game.
Romance
While sweet, the romance between Jacob and Emma weirded me out a little bit. Emma used to date Jacob’s grandpa, and now immediately after finding out he’s dead she’s flirting with Jacob. That’s… a little odd. I get that she doesn’t have a lot of prospects being stuck in a time loop, but I worry that she’s using Jacob as a replacement for Abe, especially since Jacob is described as looking a lot like Abe when he was young. That’s the only real squicky thing about it. It’s portrayed as healthy and respectful, if touched by grief.
Final Thoughts
I LOVED this book! Creepy isn’t always my thing, and I made the mistake of reading this book at night more than once. But I found all of the characters interesting and dynamic, the plot was intriguing, and there was just enough foreshadowing to give me the heebie jeebies while I waited for Jacob to catch on. Definitely recommend!
You can read my review of the second book, Hollow City, here.
