Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs – Book Review

December 17, 2016 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of curious photographs.

A horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

“I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”

So I went into this book months after I watched the movie, so of course I already had a preconceived notion of what I thought would happen. I will say that there are quite a few differences, but that will be saved for another segment of my Books V. Movie series. But back to this book

Honestly I thought this book was one of my favorites this year. There were some things that I didn’t like, for example some of Jacob’s behavior. I can appreciate the fact that he didn’t have friends back in Florida, and since he had a falling out with his one and only friend it would make sense that he’s a little less social or more sarcastic. Don’t get me wrong, the sarcasm is amazing and it actually made me laugh quite often. But there was just something about him that bothered me. He wasn’t as brave as I thought he would be, and maybe I just had a lot higher expectations of him from what I wanted to see come out of him. It made it difficult for me to really feel for him, really root for him in every aspect.

Miss Peregrine was an interesting character as well. Seeing her as an old crone, one that has her own sarcasm attached to her with her demeanor and everything else that made me think of her as completely British. For some reason I just imagined her as an older and meaner Professor McGonagall (I doubt I have to say which book series she’s from). But unlike the beloved Professor, this first book didn’t allow me a chance to really fall in love with her character. it definitely makes me want to know more about her, and I’m hoping that I get that chance in the next two books.

The way that this book read really made me feel like this was meant to be a series. So I think with that in mind, I had to stop and think about the fact that not everything would be answered when I hit the end of the book. If anything, I had so many more questions. Like what is it about the ymbrines that makes them masters of time? How exactly do they reset the loop and do they ever get to sleep? What makes Abe and Jacob able to see the hollowgasts and the other peculiars can’t? Did all peculiars come from circuses or at least spend time in one?

Just so many questions.

I hope I get my hands on the rest of the series soon, and be on the lookout for my book and movie comparison where I can write a lot more about my thoughts on the differences. Right now I can’t really say much without spoiling it even more than I probably already did.

Rated: 3.5/5 ★

The Dreamer by E.J. Mellow – Book Review

December 2, 2016 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The first in a spellbinding contemporary fantasy trilogy, The Dreamer has been awarded a Silver for Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi from the eLit Book Awards, a Finalist Medal for Best Cover Design from The Next Generation Indie Book Awards and has appeared in globally distributed book subscription boxes such as the Sci-fi & Fantasy Book Box.

It’s night. Always night. Dreams guard against the evil forged by nightmares. Infinite shooting stars illuminate a moonless sky. A city stands alone, surrounded by a darkened field. On its fringes, a man watches one star separate from the masses and fall. What survives the crash will unveil a secret centuries long hidden.

Molly hasn’t slept well since the night of her twenty-fourth birthday. Being struck by lightning might have something to do with it, but then again, her chicken did look a little undercooked at dinner. Whatever the culprit, her life quickly catapults from mundane to insane as, night after night, Molly is transported through her once dreamless sleep to a mysterious land illuminated by shooting stars.

There she meets the captivating but frustrating Dev, and together they discover Molly possesses a power coveted by his people—the ability to conjure almost anything she desires into existence. Seduced by the possibilities of this gift, Molly shifts her attention from waking life toward the man, the magic, and the world found in her dreams.

But Molly must ask herself—does something truly exist if you only see it when you close your eyes?

Faced with the threat of losing everything—her job, best friend, boyfriend, and most importantly, that little thing called her sanity—Molly will learn just how far she’ll go to uncover what is real and what is merely a figment of her imagination.

“And then there are the dreams that feel as authentic as reality itself, that seem to exist just as your own life does. Where the emotions you experience there carry over to when you’re awake. They are so real, so genuine, that you begin to question your own sanity. And you know that when the day comes that you finally stop dreaming them, you will never stop remembering.”

Sometimes dreams can seem so real that you aren’t even sure whether or not you actually are dreaming. Those are the types of dreams I crave, the ones that feel so real, that are so close to being the kind of reality that I want that I couldn’t imagine waking up again. But none of those dreams could ever compare to the kind that Molly has, and I still don’t know whether I want to be in her shoes or not.

See, it all started when Molly was going home after celebrating her 24th birthday with her amazing attorney boyfriend Jared. Maybe it would have been better for her to play hooky that night instead of going home to work because that’s when it happened. The whole getting struck by lightning and almost dying thing. Kind of puts a damper on birthday celebrations, right?

Fast-forward to her time in the hospital, while she was in her mini coma, and she ends up dreaming for the first time in her life. And for some reason she dreams about this field with a single tree, with a bunch of stars in the sky, and this mysterious guy dressed in all black. Who is this guy, and has she seen him before? Is he someone from her past that is suddenly making an appearance in her subconscious? Whoever he is, he is certainly dreamy (pun-intended).

Molly basically starts to dream about this land, which she finds out is called Terra, basically a land of dreams. She also finds out that there’s so much more to her than she thought, and while she may have already been pretty sure of herself from the moment we met her, she learns that she is meant for greatness. It almost reminded me of that movie, Night at the Museum, where Theodore Roosevelt talked about greatness. Yeah, that’s pretty much Molly right now.

Not to mention Dev is a book babe, and I’m so obsessed with him that I wish I could dream about him as much as Molly did. Granted, the time that Molly spent with him was 50% rolling her eyes at him and 50% wanting to take his clothes off, but I know there is so much more to this guy. I just want to know his backstory, like who was he before he became this bad ass head of military specialist that is fascinated by Molly and how human she is.

So did I like the book? Loved it. Do I want the physical book as well as the Kindle version? Absolutely. Do I want Dev to myself?

You bet your ass I do.

5 /5 ★

Divergent – Book Review

March 25, 2016 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

“I believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.”

The appeal of dystopian novels is the “what if” factor. What if the world ended and there were only a few humans left? What if after a hundred years of living, people began to show signs of supernatural abilities? What if the world started having competitions where children were forced to kill one another in order to have their families have food for the rest of the year? It’s those kinds of questions that people crave to have answered, without actually going through it themselves. It is with the power of books and storytelling that these questions can be explored in their own universe.

So what if the remaining humans in the world decided that the best way to keep control over society was by categorizing them into five specific character traits?

This is where Divergent comes in to play, and the world that author Veronica Roth created. Each person has to choose which group they want to belong to: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. Each group is known for a specific trait: Abnegation is selfless, Amity is peaceful, Candor is honest, Dauntless is brave, and Erudite is intelligent. These groups are called Factions, and this kind of society has been working for as long as they can remember. “Faction before blood” is their mantra, for even though one can be born to a certain faction, on their sixteenth birthday they can decide whether to stay in their born faction or more on to a different one. But once they choose, they can never change their decision, or they risk being factionless, without a home or family ever again. In a city that used to be Chicago, society is functioning as well as could be expected in the wake of a decaying world.

Beatrice Prior, born into the Abnegation faction, doesn’t feel quite so selfless as the rest of her family. She feels like maybe something is wrong with her for feeling this way. Why should she not be as selfless as her family when they are all Abnegation? She spends her spare moments watching the Dauntless kids, the ones who her father believes are wild animals because they frequently do daring acts that no other faction would do. Like jump on and off moving trains for example. But that’s just who they are, and Dauntless are the brave after all. Beatrice turns 16 and it’s finally time for her to take her aptitude test, the one that will tell her which faction she belongs to. But when the time comes and the test is finally over, she hears that her results were inconclusive, that she has an equal chance of being Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite. How can that be? Is she the only one that has been like this before?

And what exactly does being Divergent mean?

After finding out what she did about her, and knowing that she’s not allowed to discuss her results to anyone else, she has to make a choice on where she wants to be for the rest of her life. Will she stay in Abnegation, where she already feels out of place? Or will she take a chance and become a Dauntless, following her dream of getting out there and doing something with her life? Will her family be okay with her decision? Will she be okay with it? Will this decision change her life forever?

By changing the course of her life forever, by choosing to jump on a train and become a Dauntless initiate, Beatrice transforms herself into Tris, and her new life is born. She goes through many trials, both physical and mental, in order to prove herself to be worthy of being in this faction. She goes from being the girl that was born to stay out of people’s way, to being a target to those who see her as a threat. And while part of that reason may be because she’s been labeled as “Divergent”, it’s also because Tris herself is an enigma that the rest of the world doesn’t know how to handle. She is more than just brave, more than just selfless. She is everything that the society has based their world on, not just one or the other; those that want power just don’t know how to keep her in check, and that’s what makes her so dangerous to them.

I really enjoyed this book, and I’m glad I finally got to read it after seeing the movie when it first came out. It gave me a different perspective going into the book, and it actually made me appreciate the movie even more. I feel like Book-Tris and Movie-Tris had their differences, but I won’t discuss that on this post. Look for my Book vs. Movie post for Divergent, hopefully coming out soon.

Rated: 5/5 Stars