Jo was dropped on the doorstep of Lily Larouche when she was just a baby with a note asking that she be taken care of, but warning that she is a "DANGEROUS" baby. Since then, Jo has lived in the desert of California with Aunt Lily, and now she's thirteen years old and trying to deal with her aunt's eccentricities, most often displayed at her parties and manifested as throwing rats at actresses, jumping into the pool wearing her cocktail dress, smashing records against her guests, and more. The paper loves her, of course, but it can be quite troublesome to be loved by the paper, or to be related to someone loved by the paper. At one particularly unusual Christmas costume party, a Russian colonel named Anatoly Korsakov dressed as a daffodil (his costume consists of a sad little fake flower on a hat) turns up, not quite sure what's going on, just that he must protect Jo. The evening grows more and more wild as Lily once again gets out of hand and a mysterious package containing a black box falls from the sky onto the head of an insolent, gun-toting boy dressed as a hedgehog. The Colonel's best friend, a glamorous, three-foot-tall talking cockroach named Sefino (who for some reason I image with Dan Stevens' voice; don't ask me why) arrives in a flurry of indignation at a questionable newspaper called the Eldritch Snitch, which has been printing nasty stories about him, and a slightly lame self-proclaimed Chinese villain named Ken Kiang burns the house down and tries to kill Jo, Lily, Korsakov, and Sefino. Eventually, the four find themselves in Eldritch City, a strange place of ruins, multiple cultures, and orders of knights. One such order is the Order of Odd-Fish, a group of people who research useless information (the more pointless, the better). Jo, Lily, the Colonel, and Sefino begin to figure out their connection to Eldritch City, but for Jo, there's a lot more than most people suspect. Eldritch City has entered a period of unease--at least for those who watch Teenage Ichthala and believe in its power to predict the future. Jo has many questions. Who is the Ichthala? Why are some people so worried? And what does a certain unpleasant TV trickster have to do with anything?
Two used copies were stuffed between some nasty pop realistic fiction and the title, old-fashioned font, and plain burgundy binding intrigued me. I am so glad that I found this weird little book. It's the only novel by James Kennedy, and he should write more, perhaps returning to the awe-inspiring world he created in The Order of Odd-Fish.
Jo was dropped on the doorstep of Lily Larouche when she was just a baby with a note asking that she be taken care of, but warning that she is a "DANGEROUS" baby. Since then, Jo has lived in the desert of California with Aunt Lily, and now she's thirteen years old and trying to deal with her aunt's eccentricities, most often displayed at her parties and manifested as throwing rats at actresses, jumping into the pool wearing her cocktail dress, smashing records against her guests, and more. The paper loves her, of course, but it can be quite troublesome to be loved by the paper, or to be related to someone loved by the paper. At one particularly unusual Christmas costume party, a Russian colonel named Anatoly Korsakov dressed as a daffodil (his costume consists of a sad little fake flower on a hat) turns up, not quite sure what's going on, just that he must protect Jo. The evening grows more and more wild as Lily once again gets out of hand and a mysterious package containing a black box falls from the sky onto the head of an insolent, gun-toting boy dressed as a hedgehog. The Colonel's best friend, a glamorous, three-foot-tall talking cockroach named Sefino (who for some reason I image with Dan Stevens' voice; don't ask me why) arrives in a flurry of indignation at a questionable newspaper called the Eldritch Snitch, which has been printing nasty stories about him, and a slightly lame self-proclaimed Chinese villain named Ken Kiang burns the house down and tries to kill Jo, Lily, Korsakov, and Sefino. Eventually, the four find themselves in Eldritch City, a strange place of ruins, multiple cultures, and orders of knights. One such order is the Order of Odd-Fish, a group of people who research useless information (the more pointless, the better). Jo, Lily, the Colonel, and Sefino begin to figure out their connection to Eldritch City, but for Jo, there's a lot more than most people suspect. Eldritch City has entered a period of unease--at least for those who watch Teenage Ichthala and believe in its power to predict the future. Jo has many questions. Who is the Ichthala? Why are some people so worried? And what does a certain unpleasant TV trickster have to do with anything?
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My, my, it's been a month since I posted my last review! How incredible! Since this is a short book, this'll be a short review, with good and bad meshed together. Sorry if that bothers you.
I enjoy map books quite a lot, and though it's a much different type of book than On the Map, my favorite map book that I've come across and which I read too far before starting IWMCW to review it here, I liked Lost States. Lost States is an alphabetized collection of failed US states with interesting backstories. A lot of them occur in the 1800s, which isn't that surprising, but some of them were attempts made before independence, or as recent as the early 2000s. From Absaroka to Yucatan, Lost States gives details on bits of land that almost became US states, some of them bits of other, existing states, and some of them bits (or wholes) of other countries. Despite a dreadful cover and an even worse title, Defiance made it through as an actually-pretty-good dystopian book featuring two older teens experiencing romance (together, of course). If you stick with IWMCW and if I happen to run across some actually-pretty-bad dystopian books, you'll figure out that my attitude towards such pieces of fiction is generally quite strongly negative. Okay, fine, I write dystopian sometimes, too, but it's always rather different from most of the futuristic fiction floating around. Among the likes of The Hunger Games and Divergent, Defiance does a bit of what its title suggests and breaks away from the dull norm of dystopian. Rachel Adams and Logan McEntire live in the city-state of Baalboden, which embodies a weird mix of typical dystopian (futuristic technology, a world in ruins, a tyrannical leader, and oppressive customs and rules) and pseudo-medieval (correct me if I'm invoking the wrong sub-genre; I mean the thing where guards patrol turrets, people wear tunics, fight with swords, and have oppressive customs and rules). "Unusual mix," you may say. But it worked out quite well. Rachel and Logan's world held together (in the writing sense; there's plenty of bone-breaking, murdering, burning, and other various calamities within the pages of Defiance) despite the odds of such a relatively rare combination completely falling apart.
Decades ago, a businessman drilled into the earth looking for a new source of fuel, and unwittingly released dragons. The beasts proceeded to destroy the world, and although all but one were killed, far more people were lost in the effort. When the destruction more or less settled, a triumphant group of nine men emerged from the ground. They claimed that they had found a way to control the Cursed One, as the final, immortal dragon was now called, and anyone who wished to live had to seek protection in the nine city-states the men would now set up on the only continent still populated by people. Now, fifty years later, Commander Jason Chase rules his city of Baalboden as a tyrant. The rules he set up years ago set strict gender roles that cannot be broken. Women must have a Protector, and are expected to behave docilely and obediently. But Rachel Adams doesn't fit the mold of the ordinary Baalbodenese sixteen-year-old girl. Her father, the city's best courier, trained her in fighting, and she's fierce, independent, and the exact opposite of what Baalboden girls are supposed to be like. Unfortunately, Jared Adams has gone missing on a mission to Rowansmark, a rival city-state, and the Commander has declared him dead. At the reading of Jared's will, Rachel expects that her Protectorship will be assigned to Oliver, an old baker who has been like a grandfather to her, but instead, her fate ends up in the hands of Logan McEntire, Jared's inventor apprentice, who two years ago Rachel confessed love to, and he shut her out. They haven't really spoken since, and now they're expected to live under the same roof, see each other every day, and work together. They both want Jared back, and they both suspect that the official declaration of Jared's death is not at all reality. So much stands in their way, mostly the result of the Commander and his regime. Rachel can't stop thinking about her lost father. Logan can't get the image of his mother, dead at the hands of the Commander thirteen years ago, out of his head. Written in two perspectives, Defiance tells the story of these two young adults trying to get back what's important to them and looking for a life together. Like with Nobody's Prize, I had some trouble returning to the story of Himiko after a year away from it, but once I reminded myself of what was going on, I had no problem staying in the world. As I mentioned in my last review, Friesner is very good at guiding you gently back into the story without making it a madly obvious explanation. But before you continue, allow me to suggest that you read Spirit's Princess first, so that my review does not give away anything that happened in the previous book.
Unable to remain in her own clan where her chieftain father would not recognize her as a shaman, Himiko of the Matsu (pine) people ran away from her village to stay with the Shika (deer) clan, where her best friend Kaya lives. But after sickness claimed her brother's secret Shika wife, Himiko prepared to return, only to learn that the war-loving Ookami had attacked her clan. At the start of Spirit's Chosen, Himiko and Kaya walk into the conquered Matsu village. Many of the clan's warriors are dead or dying of their injuries, and every survivor is like a ghost. Himiko's family has not remained untouched--her father and two of her brothers are dead, and her younger brother, one of her stepmothers, and one of her half-brothers have been taken away and enslaved to the Ookami (wolves). But even the remaining members of her family--her brother Masa, her stepmother Yukari, her half-brother Takehiko, and her mother--aren't totally well. When her young son Noboru was taken from her, Himiko's mother snapped. She terrorizes Takehiko because she thinks that he's Noboru, and behaves possessively towards him. When Yukari and Takehiko try to flee, she is inconsolable. Himiko ends up receiving a less-than-happy welcome home. Her mother's madness mounts, and finally, a near-tragedy turns the whole Matsu village against the hapless woman. She is sentenced to death for attempted murder, despite the clear evidence that she has no way of knowing what she was doing, and Himiko knows that the only cure for her is to return Noboru. With Kaya ("Lady Badger") at her side, Himiko sets off to spirit Noboru away from the Ookami settlement, but of course many things are more easily said than done. It's been at least a year since I read Nobody's Princess, so I did have some trouble remembering exactly who these characters were and why they were doing what they were doing. Fortunately, Esther Friesner is quite good at reminding you where you left off without making an absolute mess of it. Here's an absolute mess: "So-and-so had gone to This City because he was looking for his little sister Blah, who had been kidnapped by a man named Mr. Whatever." Then, even if you have forgotten what's going on anyway, you feel utterly stupid. Here's a more subtle way: "So-and-so shuddered at the memory of Mr. Whatever's cruel expression as he snatched little Blah from the armchair. So-and-so now found himself in This City, not knowing where to look for the evil Whatever and sweet Blah." Better? I hope so. In the first version, you feel a bit like a five-year-old who has just missed some important family discussion and is now having the details explained painstakingly and way too clearly to you. In the second version, you feel more like you're (gasp) reading a book--and not only that, but like the book was written by an author who can actually write.
In my previous review for Deception's Princess, I did mention Frienser's writing's lack of completely amazing qualities, but I have returned to finish off the story of Helen of Sparta! You might wish to read Nobody's Princess before proceeding to read this review. Helen, hearing of Prince Jason's voyage to seek the legendary Golden Fleece, has disguised herself as a boy named Glaucus, and she and her friend Milo, a former slave, are sailing to Iolkos, where the Argo is supposed to be setting off from. They get work as weapons-bearers for a hero named Iolaus, and soon begin their adventure. But it's not nearly as easy as they had hoped--Helen has to avoid her older brothers, Castor and Polydeucus, lest they should get a good look in and recognize her for who she really is. On top of that, Helen's growing up, and passing as a boy becomes harder and harder with each day. As if that wasn't bad enough, she gets caught up in a horrible love triangle--she has fallen for a beautiful weapons-bearer named Hylas, who loves his master Herakles, who loves Helen's boy identity. More and more people are taken into Helen and Milo's confidence, and the secret is bound to come out soon. Some characters from Nobody's Princess reappear, such as the hero Iolaus and the famous Athenian king Theseus, along with Helen's family, and new characters are introduced, including the Argonauts, mad Princess Medea of Colchis, and the unfortunate Athenian guard Telys--and of course Menelaus, the man who will become Helen's husband, enters the picture near the end. Jonathan Stroud is one of my absolute favorite authors. (In case you were interested, the others are, in no particular order, Diana Wynne Jones, Charles Dickens, Roderick Gordon, Terry Pratchett, Tad Williams, and J. K. Rowling.) I first came across him a few years ago through his Bartimaeus books, one of the most cleverly funny series I have ever read. Bartimaeus is so much about the humor, but it's never, ever cheap. I highly recommend that series as well; my personal favorite is the second book, The Golem's Eye. Positively hilarious, that one, with a fantastic plot as well. Now, Stroud's got his newer series going, Lockwood & Co. He's done a smart thing here, something that's a very good idea for authors who write books for late elementary school to early middle school kids. Bartimaeus is definitely aimed at the ten to eleven demographic, and Lockwood & Co. is targeted towards kids a couple of years older than that, being a bit darker and having older characters, and with a writing style that works better for thirteen-year-olds than ten-year-olds. Stroud can still attract new fans without losing old ones as they grow out of Bartimaeus (although I will always love Bartimaeus so much, both the books and the title character). I was very excited two years ago when I first saw that Stroud had a new series going! At last, I have read The Screaming Staircase--in three days. It didn't last long enough.
London's got a Problem--for the past fifty or so years, there have been loads of hauntings going on in the city and throughout England, as well. The only people with the psychic talents needed to fight off the ghosts happen to be children and teenagers. Over the years, various psychic investigation agencies have sprung up around the country, recruiting kids with the Talent to battle ghosts. Adult supervisors who used to have the Talent train the agents and tag along on missions to give advice and step in to help if necessary. Lucy Carlyle is one such Talented teen. When she was younger, she worked for a man named Jacobs in her northern town, but a terrible accident leaves her the only agent remaining in the company, and so she sets off to London, seeking a new position. All of the bigger agencies, including the top two, Rotwell's and Fittes, turn her down. In six days, six agencies reject her, and her only choice left is tiny Lockwood & Company, which only has two agents at the time she applies: founder Anthony Lockwood and his partner George Cubbins. She's not the only one wallowing in disappointment--Lockwood & Company have had far too many failed applicants in their latest round of interviewing. Lucy is their last, and she will prove to be the best. Very soon, Lucy's working closely alongside the mature and smooth Lockwood and the rather sloppy and not always kind George, fighting ghosts. But one simple assignment leads to disaster, and the three find themselves tasked with paying up £60,000 in compensation to their client. They must find a murderer, cleanse England's most haunted house, and pay a disgruntled client before a ghost gets angry (well, angrier), a rich businessman withdraws his generous offer, and their very company is shut down. Two years after The Apothecary, the sequel came out, and I've read it at last. But before you follow suit, I would suggest ensuring that you've already read the previous book. If you haven't, you'll want to take care of that before even reading my review of The Apprentices, because some plot point of its predecessor will be given away.
Two years have passed since Janie Scott, her parents, and her friend Pip drank the Wine of Lethe and forgot all about three weeks of their lives, in which they met Benjamin Burrows and travelled to Nova Zembla to halt an atomic bomb test. After drugging Janie, Mr. and Mrs. Scott, Pip, and a couple of troublesome employees of Scotland Yard, Benjamin and his father escape on a train--it's not safe for Janie and Pip and people close to them to have any memory of the last three weeks, and Benjamin and Mr. Burrows cannot stay in England. But a year after they left, Benjamin sent Janie her diary, and everything came back... Now Janie is living back in the USA, in a little town called Grayson, New Hampshire, with her parents living in Michigan, writing for television. Janie goes to a private school, Grayson Academy, and rooms with a very rich, stunningly gorgeous (as in, more beautiful than Sarah Pennington from The Apothecary) girl named Opal Magnusson, whose mother is a Malaysian princess. Janie's been working on an experiment in her spare time--inspired by Jin Lo's desalinating solution, she's attempting to recreate the mixture. Much to her annoyance, Mr. Magnusson, Opal's father, keeps praising her intelligence at the expense of Opal. Out of habit, he slights his daughter and calls her stupid and lazy. Janie's not exactly moody Opal's friend, but she can't stand the way Magnusson talks about the two girls, contrasting them unfairly. One awkward restaurant dinner turns into a fight between the two schoolgirls, and the next day, Janie receives shocking news: She has been accused of cheating on a math test--something she would never, ever do--and is now expelled from Grayson Academy. It doesn't take her long to figure out that Opal is the source of the accusation, and a little more digging brings up further revelations. She asks if she can keep working on her chemistry experiment, since she's so close to figuring out the correct solution. The headmaster refuses to let her stay on the campus, and so she ends up working as a dishwasher for Bruno's Italian restaurant, looking over Benjamin's rather strange letters in her spare time, and befriending Bruno's son Rafaello. Meanwhile, Benjamin has been sending Janie coded messages with his location hidden in the code. It's been a while since he and his father travelled, though, and instead of running around the world stopping atomic testing as they're supposed to be doing, they've been acting as field medics for Vietnamese villagers fighting the Vietminh. He, too, has his own chemistry experiment going, but this one is more in the vein of the Pharmacopoeia and is slightly less scientific. His goal is to create a substance that can provide windows into the worlds of others. He ends up with a gray powder that allows you to look through the eyes of anyone else who has taken it. All you have to do is think of them, and their world will open up before you. He sends some to Janie, and their secret communication begins. But some things are private, and Benjamin ends up seeing an event that Janie would wish unknown to the world. We can't forget about Pip. The former pickpocket has slid easily into celebrity life, even though he had a painful breakup with Sarah Pennington at some point between The Apothecary and The Apprentices that still hurts him and won't get out of his mind. His comfortable new life is disrupted by an unexpected telegram from Benjamin--Janie's in danger, he says. Get to America, he says. Pip immediately sails off, battling uncomfortable shoes and creepy girls along the way. His arrival in America brings unpleasant surprises. I found Esther Friesner's Princesses of Myth series on my Kindle. Her book Sphinx's Princess showed up as a suggestion, and I read it and liked it. I soon discovered the great world of Princesses of Myth books, and now I'm thoroughly inundated in them. Deception's Princess is the seventh Princesses of Myth book so far. Friesner writes these two-book series on various historical princesses--real or mythical--from all around the world. Even with only four females in the series, she's managed to pull them from extremely diverse cultures--we have seen Helen of Ancient Greece in Nobody's Princess/Prize, Nefertiti of Ancient Egypt in Sphinx's Princess/Queen, Himiko of medieval Japan in Spirit's Princess/Chosen, and now Maeve of Iron Age Ireland in Deception's Princess. Throughout all of these books (I've read them all except for Nobody's Prize and Spirit's Chosen), there's definitely the running theme of the royal girl growing up surrounded by perfection, realizing that everything isn't quite so fantastic as she thought before, and rebelling to take her own path. For the most part, this creates a strong unity between all of the radically different cultures of the books, but it is sometimes the books' weakest point (more on that later).
Maeve of Connacht lives just as a princess should--her five older sisters do make things difficult sometimes, but her mother Cloithfinn is strong and fierce, and her father Lord Eochu has just become High King of Eiru after he cut off the head of Lord Fachtna, the old High King, in a battle. Now Fachtna's head sits in the lintel above their doorway--the place of honor. Maeve has managed to cut a piece of hair off of the end of the tail of Dubh, widely reputed to be the fiercest bull around. Quite an accomplishment for a five-year-old girl, she thinks! But as Maeve gets older, her sisters are sent off into fosterage with other families--the annoying ones and, less fortunately, sweet Derbriu, Maeve's only friend--and every single male guest at the Cruachan ringfort keeps following her around, seeing her as either their wife or daughter-in-law. Maeve decides that the only way to throw off these troublesome suitors is to learn to be boyish, and the best way to do that is to take fighting lessons. But it's not easy for a princess to suddenly start vanishing and learn to swing a sword and toss a spear, and her secret lessons don't remain secret for long. Punishment results, and the outcome will haunt Maeve for a long time. But when she is nearly fifteen years old, a druid named Master Iobar shows up at Cruachan, along with a very strange son named Odran. The boy's hair is waist-length and blue-black, he wears a thick cloak even in May. But strangest of all, Odran carries with him two animals, Guennola the stoat and Muirin the red fox. Maeve and Odran quickly become friends, spending time together healing injured animals in an old shack. Maeve learns how much Odran loves healing small animals, and that he doesn't want to be a druid like his father, which is the path that Iobar is set on his son following. Like Odran, Maeve resists the future set before her, but neither one of them will get their way without a fight... Well, here we go. First not-so-wonderful review. It had to happen at some point; one can't like all books that they read. I did want so much to love this book, but that wasn't going to happen. The premise sounded fantastic, and really it was. The bit about the main character suddenly moving to Northern Ireland interested me especially, since I'm very interested in Ireland. I thought it might help me write some of my own works that take place partially or entirely in Ireland, considering that the writer is from Carrickfergus, where the story is set. I did learn some, but once the alien planet was discovered...well...the writing just went, as I've been telling people, NEEERRRRRRRRRRRR. A finger moving downward in a rapid arc accompanies that noise. The beginning was really wonderful, but towards the middle, the plot was literally the only thing driving the story, and by that time it wasn't even a very good plot at that.
Jamie O'Neill had bone cancer a year ago, which resulted in the amputation of his left forearm. Since then, he has not said a single word. He communicates by gestures and writing things in a notebook, and he lives with his mother in a ramshackle New York City apartment. Though Anna O'Neill has a good, well-paying job, all of the cancer treatments for her son took loads of money, and her debts are too great to live somewhere nicer. It doesn't help that her husband left her for a woman in Seattle when Jamie had just had his surgery, leaving his wife in the economic lurch and causing his son to feel betrayed, alone, and unloved by all except Anna and an old librarian named Thaddeus Harper who is fond of talking to him. Jamie has no other friends, and his Harlem School for Children with Special Needs is not at all the right place for him, since all the other kids there who can't speak are actually mute. Jamie chooses not to speak, and he connects with no one at school. But then Anna receives a letter with a lot of confusing legal terms in it one day, but she understands what it means: a distant relation of hers has died and she has inherited Muck Island off of Islandmagee off the coast of Ireland (at one point Jamie thinks of it as an island off the coast of a bigger island called Islandmagee off the coast of an even bigger island called Ireland which is off the coast of an island larger still called Great Britain--I liked that take on it). On Muck Island there is a little Victorian cottage--and an old lighthouse that is no longer used as such. Anna and Jamie, having nothing really to stay in New York for, decide that yes, they will move to the Lighthouse House on Muck Island, Northern Ireland. When they arrive, they make an interesting discovery--when he turns eighteen, Jamie will be the Laird of Muck, or Lord Ui Neill/O'Neill, a designation similar to a lord. On Jamie's first day of school, he makes a friend--a guy named Ramsay McDonald who shares his rather rare views on the world. Ramsay respects that Jamie doesn't want to talk, and he's very smart, spending lots of the words he says to Jamie on bits of information. Ramsay and Jamie finally convince Anna to let them use the lighthouse as a place to hang out and do homework, as long as they were careful on the decrepit stairs. But one day, Ramsay looks at the lighthouse and realizes that it's too tall--there's an upper chamber that they haven't discovered yet. Jamie and Ramsay break through the ceiling and discover that there is, indeed, another room at the top. In that room, they find a strange gold device shaped like a fish and decorated with jeweled buttons. It doesn't take long for them to figure out that the Salmon, as it is called, takes them to the alien planet of Altair, where the equatorial country of Aldan is desperate for help in fending off the northern invaders from Alkhava, a country running out of resources and space as the permanent ice creeps over their land in the process of global freezing (the opposite of Earth's global warming). There, Jamie and Ramsay meet an Aldanese girl named Wishaway who claims that her people have been waiting for the Lords Ui Neill; in past times of trouble, they have come just in time to save them. This is one of those books that I meant to read and meant to read ever since it came out, and I just never got around to it until last month. It really catches your eye at the bookstore--among all the kid/YA books that have cover pictures of either plucky young protagonists looking confused and carrying magical instruments, or very ordinary and harassed-faced teens trying their best to be attractive, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children really stands out in that its cover is a vintage photograph of a levitating little girl in a tiara, floating blank-faced among some trees. "Wow," you say to yourself. "That must be one strange book." And you pick it up, and you flip through it, and things get even weirder as you notice all the old and creepy photographs, largely of kids doing impossible things like lifting huge boulders or having two reflections in water. Actually, these pictures aren't nearly as creepy and weird when you read the book, because they connect to the story, and you just go, "Oh, yeah, there's Hugh with his bees all over him, like usual."
Jacob Portman has a rather unusual grandfather named Abe, and according to Abe, his past was literally magical. He was born in Poland just before WWII, and had to escape the Nazis. He was sent to an island off the coast of Wales, where, as he tells his grandson, the sun shone all day and everything was perfect. And the kids there did magical things; Abe even has photographs to prove it--invisible boys and such. At first, Jake is fascinated by these tales, even though a part of them gives him nightmares--the monsters. In Abe's early stories to young Jake, horrible monsters with loose black skin and many tentacle-like tongues were what chased him away from his family and to the island off of Wales. But as Jake gets older and wiser, he figures out that Abe's stories must be embellished, and that the creepy monsters were really just men with guns and uniforms, who Abe later went to fight when WWII finally came. Only then something awful happens: Abe is murdered in the middle of the woods. Jake and his friend Ricky arrive just in time to see the old man die, and Jake sees something terrifying in the woods that runs away before he can get a proper look--it's one of the monsters Abe always told him about. But Ricky didn't catch a glimpse of the creature, and so Jake gets a psychologist named Dr. Golan who diagnoses the boy with acute stress reaction, and pronounces the "monster" in the woods a product of that, and after a while, Jake is convinced that he saw nothing. His grandpa was killed by wild animals, nothing else. But Abe's last words are still haunting him, and he cannot figure them out. On his sixteenth birthday, Jake receives a gift from his grandpa: a book of Ralph Waldo Emerson's writing, and inside there is a letter, fifteen years old, from someone named Alma Peregrine. Soon, Jake and his father plan a trip for a few weeks to the Welsh island of Cairnholm. Mr. Portman wants to research birds there, and Jake plans to figure out what really happened to his grandfather when Abe was a child, and so he finds Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children. |
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August 2017
AuthorI am Fiona, a 16-year-old person. I write reviews of books that I read. I love reading, writing, spoonerisms, word jokes, accents, In Which chapters, parentheses, long dashes, et ceteras, and acronyms. Categories
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