I bought this when it first came out because I liked the presentation as a faux-antique book with the photographs. I’ve only got around to reading it because we recently got a Now TV subscription, which has made the film available, and I wanted to read the book first.
Our protagonist is Jacob, a rich, underachieving Florida teenager whose life is changed when he sees his grandfather killed by monsters. He is understandably traumatised, and everyone thinks he is crazy because he told people what he saw. Going through his grandfather’s effects, he finds there’s a lot more to the old man than he knew, and drags his father off to a remote island off the coast of Wales to find clues to his grandfather’s early life.
Here he comes across the eponymous Home and Peculiar Children, and adventures ensue.
It’s reasonably well enough written in that the voice of a hitherto not-very-engaged adolescent boy comes through well, and I quite enjoyed it right up until Jacob finds the Home. Unfortunately this book fell down completely for me because I found the mythos not at all thought through, pointless and unconvincing.
Build me a world I enjoy and I will read any old shite. This one just left me going “what?”, in a bad way. Ends on a cliffhanger and I didn’t immediately order the sequel. Am actually contemplating not watching the film now, I care that little.
