Why I Hated the 'Miss Peregrine' Trilogy

Famous for being adapted into a successful film, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (or as I will be referring to it, Miss Peregrine), is the first book in a trilogy, followed by Hollow City and Library of Souls.

The story follows a young boy named Jake, who is made aware of a mystery surrounding his recently dead grandfather, killed by a monster. He travels to Wales, where he discovers a house full of children with supernatural powers run by Miss Peregrine, a woman who can turn into a bird. The first book follows his entry into this magical world, known as “Peculiardom”, and how the children must fight against terrifying creatures called Hollowgasts, and even more terrifying, powerful human versions of these creatures, known as ‘Wights’.

Honestly, I don’t remember much about the first book, because I read it two years ago, but I’m sure I enjoyed it, and I remember enjoying the film. It was a strong start to the series, because of the general worldbuilding, effective laying down of mysteries and characters, and the fight against the Wights – it wasn’t too confusing, there wasn’t an overload of action, and I was generally interested in what was going on.

I listened to Hollow City and Library of Souls on Audible because they were two of the free books on there, and the series immediately started to go downhill. I’ve compiled a list of the general things that I think ruined the books for me.
 

The Writing
It really felt like the whole time he was writing this, Ransom Riggs was giving himself a huge pat on the back. The chapters were full of badly integrated techniques, and the occasional sentence that was supposed to be profound or meaningful, but was way too obvious.

Here’s an example: Jake’s phone. It was supposed to be a symbol of the world he had left behind, but couldn’t quite detach himself from – he would always miss his parents, a foregrounding of how he would have to return to them. This could have been done in a very effective way, but instead it was far too ‘in-your-face’. I don’t have the actual texts, so I can’t quote directly, but the passage said something along the lines of:

“I couldn’t throw my phone away. I didn’t know why – there was just something inside me that was stopping me, and hmm, I don’t know what that could be – it doesn’t fit into our lives here, guess it’s just a reminder of what I’d left behind (nudge nudge symbolism).” – disclaimer: this is a very exaggerated way of paraphrasing it, but it is how I felt while reading it.

Overall, Riggs’ techniques were pervasive, badly integrated, and I really got the sense that he was congratulating himself every time he put some sort of literary device in.

The novels followed a typical ‘journey’ format of this type of fantasy: a sort of quest. It seemed like a knock-off of a Rick Riordan book, but there are a lot of books which take this form nowadays, so that is understandable.

What I mean by the ‘journey format’ is the characters setting off with one end goal, the one here being to free Miss Peregrine and defeat the Wights, and they meet a variety of characters and run into a variety of obstacles along the way. The problem with this particular quest was the lack of variety in the obstacles they faced. It was usually either a battle with a Hollowgast, entering a new time loop, or fighting Wights.

There were a couple of obstacles I found particularly interesting, such as the meeting with the gypsies and when they encountered a peculiar and her sister during the bombings, but apart from that it was quite samey. Since the third book focused mainly on fighting Wights and Hollowgasts, I was sick and tired of it by this point, and just wanted some variety.
 

Characterisation
In the first book, this was acceptable, but after that point the characters really need developing more. Riggs had two whole books to explore each individual character, but he didn’t – what made this even more infuriating was the fact that he clearly thought he had done an excellent job at characterisation, and this really came across in the text.

The problem was, it felt like he had taken one word to describe each character, one personality trait, and that was all they had. For Bronwyn, it was ‘motherly’; for Enoch, it was ‘negative’; for Horace, ‘cowardly’ – there was no expansion on these, no diving into the complexities of each character. I couldn’t even separate Olive from Claire, because their personalities were both just ‘little girl’.

Now this could be forgivable if there had been more characterisation of the main characters. As we were inside Jake’s head, it would have been difficult not to get a sense of his personality, but it seemed pretty much a generic hero who didn’t yet know his place. As for Miss Peregrine, we didn’t really see her until the end of Library of Souls, so it was forgivable that she had little personality.

Emma’s character was definitely the worst of them all. It was quickly established that she was a righteous leader, and then… nothing else. She didn’t even have the qualities of a leader, she was just appointed to that position based on the fact that she was an important character, which in turn was based on the fact that she was the love interest. She morally objects to almost everything, even when there aren’t any other options, which is something that irritates me – due to her self-importance and ‘moral superiority’, the children ended up turning down a lot of help that could’ve been useful, or at least hindering the process of their actually getting that help. Her belief in her own perfection did not help on any level.

In my opinion, Emma seemed like Ransom Riggs’ dream girl. She is a poor attempt at a feisty, but ultimately caring, girl who finds it difficult to trust people after her traumatic past. However, it seems like Riggs’ fetishization of her gets in the way of her characterisation, and makes her the bland love interest. Several times, she is preyed upon by older men, and this is never again addressed – it isn’t even made clear that it is wrong. I’m sure Riggs isn’t one of these creepy old men, but when reading it, that’s all I could picture him as.
 

The Romance
As I hated Emma’s character, and wasn’t exactly impressed by Jake either, needless to say the romance was one of the most painful things I could ever read. The two had nothing in common, Emma is entirely self-obsessed, and Jake doesn’t seem drawn towards her at all. I didn’t even realise when they said ‘I love you’ for the first time, nor did I care, because there had been no build up and no actual feelings towards each other beyond surface level attraction. All suggestions of their love for each other felt tacky, and the scenes where they were together were really uncomfortable for me.

Of course, this made Library of Souls difficult, to say the least, because most of it follows Jake and Emma together, ‘conveniently’ being the only ones not captured and taken by Wights.

I breathed a real sigh of relief at the end, when they decided to part as friends, and their correspondence felt a lot more natural and less stilted and awkward. I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed the books a lot more if Emma and Jake’s relationship hadn’t existed – just once, I want to read a YA fantasy where there doesn’t need to be a poorly fleshed-out relationship.
 

The Passage of Time?
This was more something that confused me, and a lot of people, judging from other reviews I’ve read. There is the fear of ‘aging forwards’ that plagues a lot of the characters when they’re out of their loops or in the present day, but it feels like it is forgotten about at a lot of points. It’s also never fully explained – why don’t the characters age backwards if they go into the past? Why doesn’t it affect Jake? Do the loops protect the characters from aging forwards?

The whole ‘loops’ situation was also explained in quite a confusing way. There was one section in Library of Souls in which Bentham, Miss Peregrine’s brother, explains how he had managed to collapse loops, and somehow found a way to transport to ones all over the world. This was very confusing, and I still don’t really understand – it felt like Riggs wanted a reason for events to happen, like Jake taming a Hollowgast, and pieced together an explanation afterwards.
 

Overall, the base premise for the story was good, but it was the execution that ruined it. The plot-holes, the writing, the characterisation, all made the books difficult to sit through. Perhaps I would’ve enjoyed this trilogy had it been written by someone else, but unfortunately, it is not something I would recommend.