Miss Peregrine’s Home Review: Photos That Haunt You

The Book That Made Found Photographs Terrifying Forever

I picked this up because of the photos, and I stayed for the fact that the photos actually earned their place in the story instead of being a gimmick slapped on top of a normal manuscript. That’s rarer than it sounds, and it’s the whole reason this book still gets passed around a decade-plus later.

Jacob, Grief, and a Grandfather Who Was Right All Along

Jacob is the kind of narrator this story needed: skeptical, a little numb, still raw from losing the one person who ever really saw him as more than “the rich kid whose family owns the drugstores.” His grandfather’s stories always sounded like war-trauma coping mechanisms dressed up as fairy tales, and watching Jacob realize they weren’t fairy tales is genuinely well-paced. He’s not chosen-one special in the way YA usually does it. He’s ordinary and scared and grieving, and the book lets him be bad at this for a while before he gets good at it. I respected that more than I expected to.

The Peculiar Children Themselves

This is where the book is strongest and also where it occasionally stalls. Miss Peregrine’s kids are individually memorable, sharply designed around their photographs, and clearly loved by Riggs. Emma in particular carries a lot of the emotional weight, and there’s a slow-burn thread between her and Jacob that’s more melancholy than swoony. It’s not a romance-forward book, and if you’re coming in expecting a ship-driven read, recalibrate now. The dynamic works because of what it can’t be, not because of chemistry-lab banter. That said, the middle stretch where Jacob is just absorbing the loop and meeting everyone runs a little slower than the opening’s momentum promises, and some of the peculiar children stay more “cool photo, cool power” than fully realized people.

Atmosphere Over Action, and That’s the Point

The time-loop setup is where the book earns its keep. There’s something quietly devastating about a group of children stuck reliving one day forever to survive, and Riggs lets that horror sit instead of rushing past it for plot. The monster mythology introduced late is effective but a little thin compared to everything built around it, more a threat to escalate the sequels than a fully cooked concept here. This is a mood book first, a plot machine second, and readers who go in wanting nonstop momentum tend to bounce off it. Readers who go in wanting dread, grief, and gorgeous unsettling imagery tend to fall hard.

Where It Actually Struggles

The prose occasionally over-explains what the photographs are already doing emotionally, which undercuts some of its best moments. And Jacob’s family, especially early on, verges on cartoonish in a way that doesn’t quite match the sincerity of everything else. It’s not a flawless book. It’s an atmospheric, patient one that asks you to sit with unease instead of racing through it, and depending on your reading mood that’s either exactly what you want or a slog.