Review: Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Title: Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

Author: Ransom Riggs

Published by: Quirk Books

Released: 2011

Summary: Jacob has grown up listening to his grandfather's fantastic stories of a mysterious island, an orphanage, and a group of very peculiar children. As Jacob grows older, his grandpa's stories start to become more fiction than reality. The monsters Abe claims to see are thought to be just hallucinations of an old man. Then Jacob's grandfather dies in a mysterious manner and Jacob sees something that can't be real. Jacob is heartbroken, confused, and scared. As a form of therapy, Jacob decides to visit the island of his grandfather's youth. On the island, Jacob discovers things that lead him to believe that his grandfather was telling the truth all along and that the peculiar children might be the least of his worries.

My Thoughts: This book has been sitting on my shelf for quite awhile being neglected and all that stuff. Because of my library addiction, I tend to focus just on reading library books and not the books that I actually own and keep on buying. My friend Ali suggested that we read this book together and I'm glad she did. Ali has a youtube channel and I highly recommend checking her out because she is one of my favorite people!  ( https://www.youtube.com/user/alisonmurfitt ). I enjoyed every second of this book. The premise was cool with all the peculiar children, they mysterious island, the monsters, the grandfather's secrets, and Jacob's role in the whole thing. 

I also loved the design of this book. Quirk did an awesome job at making a pretty book. It felt like a book I actually could have picked up and flipped through in Miss Peregrine's library. And also, the pictures! Those awesomely creepy, sometimes disturbing pictures that were incorporated in the book. They added a little something extra to the story and it just made it all the more interesting to know that they were real pictures of real people and places. I do feel that there was one opportunity missed, and that was including a picture of Miss Peregrine's Home. I would have loved that.

I really enjoyed this story and can't wait to continue on to the next book. This is a book that deserves all the hype that it gets and I highly suggest you go read it. It won't disappoint.

One thing I don't know about is the relationship between Emma and Jacob. It just feels slightly wrong and a little icky. Great book though.

                         BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL 4.5/5

Climb aboard and let's go to an island filled with Peculiar Children!

Reading Right Now! (#12)

Title: The Program

Author: Suzanne Young

Progress: Page 199 of 405 which makes me 49% finished

So long time no see again. I know I am a horrible person with this blog. My excuse this time is a crazy, homework filled, summer class that I am finally finished with, Yayy! I'm not going to make any promises with this blog, because I always seem to break them and disappoint myself. I'll update this blog on my own time, when I feel like it, because really no one is forcing me to do this blog or these reviews. This is something I do for fun and I want to keep having fun doing it. If this starts feeling like a job or something I'm forced to do, then the fun feeling goes away and I don't want that to happen. So, I will try to update this blog whenever I can or whenever I want to and I hope that's okay with everybody :)

So this week, I'm reading The Program by Suzanne Young. I had planned on reading this book with friends, but I didn't get around to reading it when they were reading it. For shame on me. I have one friend (Kristina from youtube at ThePrincessGummyBear, go check her out she's awesome!) who loved this book. My friends Ke-sha (theforsaken707) and Alyssa ( from ACReads, she might have changed her name, I'm not to sure on that) only thought it was an okay read. Oh and their channels are awesome too, so go check them out as well!

This book is about a world where teen suicide is an epidemic and society has gone to great lengths to prevent more teen deaths. Any teen that shows symptoms of depression or signs of suicide, is taken from their friends and family and entered into The Program. The Program treats these kids by wiping their memories and releasing them back to their families. The main character Sloane and her boyfriend James believe The Program is a fate worse than death. When Sloane's life starts falling apart around her, she is taken into The Program and what happens next is something you'll have to read to find out. No really, I don't know what happens next because I haven't gotten that far yet.

So far, I'm enjoying this book but not absolutely loving it. Suzanne Young's writing is really good and pulls me into the story. The premise is interesting and I'm excited to learn more about it. The book does have a depressive feel about it which makes sense because it's about teen suicide. The only thing that makes me scratch my head is just why suicide has become such an epidemic? It's not really explained and I think that kind of hurts the story. It doesn't really make sense for all these teens to just decide to end their lives on their own, so I would think that there would need to be a more significant reason for it. But I am enjoying the story. Definitely.

So that's it for what I'm Reading Right Now! Share what you are reading in the comments.

Review: Deadline (Newsflesh #2) by Mira Grant

Title: Deadline (Newsflesh #2)

Author: Mira Grant

Published by: Orbit Books/ Hachette Book Group

Released: 2011

Summary: After the catastrophic events of last year, The After The End Times blog/news site is trying to deal and come back from the tragedy that befell them. Shaun Mason has lost the edge that makes him a good Irwin. He has now been put in charge of the site and really doesn't know what to do. When someone starts targeting the headquarters and the staff, Shaun knows he's on to something big, something that affects the whole pre-rising world, and it's up to him and his staff to uncover the truth.

My Thoughts: I read Feed a couple of years ago and although I didn't love it, I did want to continue on with the series. I was excited to pick up Deadline and couldn't wait to get back into this zombie world. Unfortunately, I really didn't end up enjoying the majority of Deadline. Certain characters really got on my nerves and it really ended up as more of a government conspiracy plot than an end of the world zombie novel, which is probably more of what I wanted. I also really didn't enjoy this whole melodramatic flair for the truth and doing anything for the news. I don't understand the mindset of a bunch of these characters.

I did get more into this story as I got near the end, but then it just ended in a massive cliffhanger which I had my own problems with.

Overall this was just an okay book and an okay series, that could do with more survival and zombie action with less melodrama and government conspiracy. I do plan on finishing the series just to see what happens.

SPOILERS!!! This part of my review will contain SPOILERS, so if you haven't read Feed yet, don't read this.

I did wonder how the series was going to go on with killing off Georgia and I think that's what disappointed me the most. The whole Georgia living, talking, and interacting in Shaun's head through all of Deadline just irritated me. It just seemed like that author had no plan on how to continue the story without Georgia, so she just stuck her back in. What was the point of offing Georgia and then keeping her around. And that ending/really non-ending to Deadline, just annoying. It just seemed like awful planning to decide to kill off a character, but then regret killing her off. I should have known when we heard about the whole clone thing in the beginning. SPOILERS OVER.

BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL 2.5/5

just mehh. I want zombies, not government conspiracies.