Obsession of the Week - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Every time I go in Target (which I have to admit is a lot...), I spend some time in the movies/books section. For a solid few months, I'd see this weird grayish book with a strange girl on the front floating in midair. One day, I skimmed through the pages, came across pictures of some creepy man with no pupils and a dog with the head of a girl, and immediately put it back on the shelf.

Shortly after, I saw a commercial for a new Tim Burton movie about a headmistress and a home of weird kids, one of whom had a working mouth on the back of her head. I love Burton's work, so when I realized it was an adaptation of the book I was too chicken to look at, I decided it couldn't be THAT bad and gave Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children a shot.

My first impression wasn't great. I almost quit/dropped the book before the first chapter even began. On one of the introductory pages, there's a picture of a girl, which I later learned is the lead female character Emma Bloom, covered in shadows and basically staring into your soul.

Still, I pressed on and I'm so glad I did. The story centers on Jacob Portman and the special bond he and his grandfather, Abe, had throughout his childhood. Abe tells Jacob tales of the home he stayed in as a child, where there were children with special abilities, including an invisible boy and a girl who could levitate.

Jacob assumed these were fairy tales, until he makes the journey to the long abandoned children's home and enters the "loop" - the same day repeated over and over for eternity. This particular loop is on September 3rd, 1940, the day before all of Abe's friends, the peculiar children that Jacob assumed were fictional, die in a bomb explosion from the war. In this loop, they are perfectly safe and never age.

Jacob befriends the invisible boy, Millard, and finds more than a friend in the girl who can create fire with her hands, Emma Bloom. Emma also happened to be in love with Jacob's grandfather when Abe was part of the loop, which isn't awkward at all......

Going into this book, I didn't know what to expect. I don't deal well with stories that involve creepy kids, but the peculiar children are fantastic. They each have their own special ability, and work to help Jacob recognize his own talent, which is unfortunately the ability to see dark shadow creatures called hollows.

The second and third books of the series are waiting on my bookshelf, and I can't wait to see what happens to Jacob and his peculiar friends as they battle hollows and protect their loop.