The sequel to Miss Pettigrew’s Home for Peculiar Children picks up right where the first one left off, and continues the adventure of the peculiar children as they rush around between frozen time loops and the real world, looking for allies, a safe place, and a way to turn their teacher Miss Peregrine back into her human form. If you liked the first one, you’ll like this one too (I did), and if you didn’t, there’s not enough different about this second chapter to see if it grows on you any more.
Ransom Riggs is still using real photographs to steer his story, and I understand the complaints that this can be a bit twee. And sometimes it is a stretch to make the picture fit the story. But c’mon, some of those old pictures are cool!
There’s some pretty dark and serious stuff for a young adult book, but it’s fun to watch the kids rise to the occasion. There are a few too many for them all to get much attention, but Jacob is a worthy enough protagonist to carry the group. Until the end, at least, where he made a decision SO out of character for him I wasn’t sure what to think. It made sense in the next chapter, but again was a case of the author trying to shoehorn something in. He needed X to happen, and in order to get that set up, Jacob had to not act like Jacob for a couple pages. Lazy writing, but the rest of it was a decent enough ride to make up for it.