Rinda's Reads: In which I admit to being a slacker

I know I haven't posted a reading list for a while. The truth is, it's been a while since I read anything new worth sharing. Seriously--for most of the last two or three months, I've simply been rereading my favorites and skimming through some new ones that haven't amounted to more than your typical Christian historical fiction fluff.

Finally--finally! I picked up a new book and I couldn't put it down. I don't even remember the last time I was so engrossed in a book I read it in three days.

So I am sharing it with you less than an hour after I finished it.

What is this book you ask?

Here. Here you go. You are welcome.



Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

Hands down the best thing I've read since The Book Thief (the first time). It's another young adult novel that takes place in the 1940s (okay, kind of, it also has a taste of the here-and-now and a bit of time travel). If your teenager doesn't like to read but is into slightly creepy things, hand them this book. The best way I can describe it is a mixture between The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Goosebumps series (which I never read because I was too much of a scaredy-cat BTW).

The story is a magical mixture of prose and photography (even Gaston can't complain about this one--there are pictures! Lots of them!). Every photograph used in the book is real--as in, not something the author staged just to fit in his book, but real vintage black-and-white photographs. These are pictures he searched for, found intriguing, and when the stories behind the people in the photos couldn't be found, he made up his own, and that's how Miss Peregrine's collection of Peculiar Children came about. Just flip through the pages and I guarantee you will want to know the story.

Here's the disclaimer though: it gets intense. And scary. Like, don't read at night when you are home alone scary. And there is some choice language I could have done without (think PG-13 language, no f-bombs). So, don't let your ten-year-old read it. I probably wouldn't hand it to anyone under the age of 13. But your 15-18 year-olds will be fascinated. And so will most adults who love a good adventure, all-things-extraordinary kind of story.

And the best part is, the sequel (Hollow City) came out two weeks ago, so you don't even have to wait for the second one!