As Jacob gets older, he's not sure if he believes Grandpa Portman's wild tales of tentacle-mouthed monsters and peculiar children. Until the day he finds his grandfather brutally attacked in the woods behind his Florida home. Lying in a pool of his own blood, Grandpa Portman makes Jacob promise to go to the island and warn them. He only manages to whisper a few cryptic clues before he dies - the name Emerson, a letter, the date September 3rd, 1940, and instructions to find the bird in the loop. When Jacob looks into the deep shadows, he catches a glimpse of a creature that can only be one of his grandfather's monsters.
Of course, no one believes him - monsters aren't real. The police decide that wild dogs killed Grandpa Portman, and Jacob spends his days with his psychiatrist, trying to convince himself that what he saw in the woods was a hallucination brought on by shock and stress. Until he finds the letter from Miss Peregrine revealing the location of the island. It's not easy, but Jacob convinces his parents to let him spend the summer on the remote Welsh island. When he arrives, however, he finds that his grandfather's childhood home is nothing but a bombed-out shell, destroyed when German planes attacked the island - on September 3rd, 1940. But when Jacob finds the trunk full of peculiar old photographs like the few Grandpa Portman showed him, he knows he has to find out what happened to the peculiar children - it's the only way he'll find out what really happened to his grandfather.
First-time novelist Ransom Riggs weaves a creeptacular tale of gothic horror, history, and family around a set of very peculiar, very real photographs he and his friends have collected over the years. You'll devour this fun, mind-bending novel, stopping only to pore over the very weird, very awesome vintage photos in the book.
The book trailer for this one is so awesome, I have to share it!
Megan
(now reading Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini, a paranormal romance that promises to be absolutely delicious!)