Hollow City by Ransom Riggs (review)

Title: Hollow City (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #2) *goodreads

Date published: 12 January 2014

My rating: 3 stars

Firstly, let me say that I am not a huge fan of the first book – Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children. I thought that the first book was lacking in plot, it seemed like the plot was made to fit the pictures. As if the plot was more of an afterthought. That was the gripe I had with the first book, that and the characters were flat. However, Hollow City, the sequel, is in my opinion much much better.

Let me start by talking about the plot. The plot is phenomenal. It had me hooked from page one. One thing though, Hollow City really picks up where Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children left off. So I suggest you do a reread beforehand or do what I did which was to google the plot. Jacob and the other peculiar children are off to find a way to turn their ymbyrne, Miss Peregrine, back into a human. Off they travel to London in search for a solution. Along their journey, they discover that their loop is not the only one that has been attacked.

As mentioned above, my main complaint with the first book was the plot. However, in Hollow City I felt like the plot took centre stage and the accompanying pictures were just there to accompany the story. The pictures added to the story and not vice versa! This is true except for one part, the part where the children find a lady with a note stuck in her shoe followed by a picture of that description


It felt like Riggs stumbled upon this cool picture and tried to wriggle in a way so that it would fit into the book. Maybe that's not really what happened, but that's the feeling I got when I read it.

Next, the characters. Oh my god yes. In Hollow City most of the characters gets a moment to shine. While in Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children it was all about Jacob and Emma and Emma and Jacob. Hollow City allowed the other children to display their peculiar abilities! I am all up for that. There were characters that were not developed but I can forgive Riggs for that because they weren't in the story much. I can't say why without risking a spoiler. My favourite character has to be Millard (the invisible boy) and Olive (the paper light girl).

Since nothing in the world is perfect, I still have something to complain about regarding the characters.

Emma, Emma, Emma. I want to love you, I really do but you read a little bit like a 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl'. We read the book through Jacob's eyes and through Jacob's eyes you were the reason that he is "truly living". Emma, I'm sorry to say but you have been reduced from being a complex character to simply the motivation of male character to do this or that. Emma, you are first and foremost, no not your own person, but Jacob's ~dream girl~. At one point of the book, I thought 'wow this is it, Emma is going to break out of the MPDG mould'. However, to my disappointment Emma remains a MDPG at the end of the book.

Another thing that I don't really dislike but more I find really weird is the relationship between Emma and Jacob. Like is it weird for Jacob that he's hooking up with the girl who used to hook up with his grandfather? Also, is it weird for Emma to be "in love" with the grandson of her ex-lover? In addition to that, Jacob is always compared to his grandfather and how they are so similar. So when Emma looks at Jacob does she see Jacob as Jacob or does she see Jacob as his grandfather "but more". It's a weird relationship those two have. I want a good discussion between Jacob and Emma at some point in this series.

Now on to the writing. Ransom Riggs's writing doesn't blow my socks off, it's just meh most of the time. But I think that good writing or whatever depends a lot more on the individual, it's subjective! So, what may be your cup of tea might not be mine and that's a-okay! The bits where Jacob kept going on and on about how much he loves Emma made me cringe a little. Maybe I'm older and know better that Jacob who is still a kid. At that age, love tends to be the end all, be all. However, I will hands down pick my family over a boy any day of the year. So, yeah it made me cringe how Jacob justified his actions of leaving his parents to think that he was dead because he's infatuated with a girl. 

The photographs in the book are still as creepy as they are in the first book. They really add something special to the story. It also makes you wonder the thought process that went in the heads of the people who took the photographs. What makes them go 'Oh, I know! I'll just take a photograph of a suit sitting on a chair in front of a mirror with NO body!!! How cool would that be?!?!'. Other than that, I also wonder who the people in the photographs are. Who is this little girl or that little boy or that man … will (s)he find it insulting that (s)he is now being described as such and such?

To summarise, if you have read Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children then I definitely recommend you picking the sequel up even if you didn't enjoy the first book. Also, I wouldn't read this book without knowledge of the previous one because it does rely heavily on events that have happened in the first book. All in all, Hollow City was an enjoyable read and is much better that its predecessor! I am absolutely reading the next installment of this series!