More time playing catch up with my back log of reviews. This time, we step back into the world of Peculiardom, this time with a twist!
About the Book
Title: A Map of Days
Author: Ransom Riggs
Series: Miss Peregrine’s #4
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 496
Edition Read: Kindle eBook
Dates Read: April 7 – May 25, 2022
Blurb: Having defeated the monstrous threat that nearly destroyed the peculiar world, Jacob Portman is back where his story began, in Florida. Except now Miss Peregrine, Emma, and their peculiar friends are with him, and doing their best to blend in. But carefree days of beach visits and normalling lessons are soon interrupted by a discovery—a subterranean bunker that belonged to Jacob’s grandfather, Abe.
Clues to Abe’s double-life as a peculiar operative start to emerge, secrets long hidden in plain sight. And Jacob begins to learn about the dangerous legacy he has inherited—truths that were part of him long before he walked into Miss Peregrine’s time loop.
Now, the stakes are higher than ever as Jacob and his friends are thrust into the untamed landscape of American peculiardom—a world with few ymbrynes, or rules—that none of them understand. New wonders, and dangers, await in this brilliant next chapter for Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children. Their story is again illustrated throughout by haunting vintage photographs, but with a striking addition for this all-new, multi-era American adventure—full color.
Review
I really enjoyed this series. I absolutely love how the story was built around these collections of old, vintage photographs. With each chapter, Riggs describes a scene and you think, there’s no way he has a photo for this – but then he does. It’s so creative and I absolutely love it.
I also loved seeing our lovely British peculiars in modern America. To say they were fish out of water would be an understatement, especially when you consider that they were stuck in the same day in 1940 for a very long time. I’m so glad that Jacob has them, especially given the fact that his own parents didn’t want to deal with him and accept that he was different. Or peculiar, I should say. Having this book set in America really set a different tone for the series, one that I think made the entire story world of the peculiars even more rich. We were used to the somewhat rigid decorum of British Peculiardom, and we were not ready for what Peculiardom looks like in America. It is definitely more of the Wild West here.
We did learn a bit more about Abe in this book and, to be honest, I’m a bit angry at him. I get that he was trying to protect Jacob, but Jacob would have had so much less trouble with things if he had been able to learn from his grandfather. Of course, then we wouldn’t have this huge plot point and inner conflict, but still. Abe wasn’t a bad guy, but he made some dodgy decisions and it would have helped matters greatly if he had just told Jacob the truth and helped him more. It was nice to learn a bit more about what Abe was doing, which was tracking down peculiars in trouble and helping them get to safety. Jacob even manages to connect with an old associate of his grandfather in an attempt to try and follow in Abe’s footsteps.
There were so many new characters to meet. I especially loved the various peculiar gang leaders and particularly loved Noor, a peculiar who is being hunted and who doesn’t understand what being peculiar truly means. She has a really cool power though. Everything about these stories is so vibrant and exciting. While this series was originally supposed to stop at a trilogy, I’m glad that Riggs decided to keep going and expand his universe even more. It is really top notch storytelling.
GoodReads rating: 5 stars
Categories: Books I've Read
Life With No Plot 
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