Marshmallow has reviewed the first two books of the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series by Ransom Riggs. (Her review of the first book is here: Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, and here is her review of the second one: Hollow City.) Today she reviews the third book published in 2015: Library of Souls.
Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like books about magic and friendship, and if you enjoyed the first two books of the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series, then this might be the book for you.
Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): First off, let me say that the story in this book starts where the second book, Hollow City, ended. And that book was a direct continuation of the first book: Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. So you need to have read those two books (or at least read my reviews of them) before reading any further. Once you are ready, please do read on.
Jacob Portman recently discovered that he can not only see the monsters that have been plaguing him and his peculiar friends, but also track, control, and talk to them. These evil monsters (called hollows) consume the souls of peculiar children to transform into wights who look human except that they have all-white eyeballs. Both hollows and wights have been working to steal the souls of peculiar children for a long time, to regain their own humanity which they lost in a failed experiment for immortality. Leading his friends on a quest to save the peculiar people from those trying to destroy them, Jacob must first rescue their caretaker Miss Peregrine.
With the help of his friend / love interest, Emma Bloom, Jacob learns that the monsters are trying to break into the legendary Library of Souls. This supposedly non-existent place was rumored to be where the souls of peculiars went after death. Rather like a library, a peculiar would “check out” a soul when they were born, and give it back when they died. But if someone entered this library, they could potentially take the souls and gain more power.
Clearly the stakes are much higher than they realized. Jacob must rescue his friends and reunite with allies if they wish to defeat these monsters.
Marshmallow’s Review: Taking the peculiar world to a new level of weird, Ransom Riggs introduces new nuances in this book. I really liked how much Library of Souls added to the world of peculiardom. With these new details, the world of peculiar children felt much more realistic. The characters also developed more.
This seems to have been written as the final book of a trilogy, though I believe the author has written three more in this same world. I felt a little unsatisfied by the ending and felt that this wasn’t exactly an end. The main storyline resolves well, but in terms of character development, it did not feel completely finished. The relationship between the protagonist and Emma Bloom in particular is not settled, and there is still a need for continuation. So I wouldn’t say that this is a final end to the series, rather the end of a part of the story.
All in all, I really enjoyed reading Library of Souls and look forward to reading the next books in the series.
Marshmallow’s Rating: 96%.
BookBunnies 
Although I thought that the story consisted of three books, I must agree with Marshmallow that this installment was not the end, but rather it was the end of the beginning, Three books hence, we will have the beginning of the end, or something like it. LOL
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I wish I had the peculiarity of making everybody happy and rich.
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