Hollow City

Title: Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

Author: Ransom Riggs
Pub Date: 2014
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Nutshell: The peculiar children of Miss Peregrine's loop struggle to help their injured headmistress while keeping safe from hollows

I read the first book in this series (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children) about a year or so ago. It's an odd premise--a novel seemingly built around a series of photographs the author found, more or less. But the narrative itself is quite good and definitely draws you in, and the quirky pictures eventually take a back seat to the story.

This is the second novel, and you have to have read the first to really understand what's happening. Suffice it to say that Jacob and his peculiar friends have been ousted from their safe home and are on the run from forces that want them dead. This book is the story of their journey toward London in their search for help for their wounded headmistress, Miss Peregrine, and also to rescue the other kidnapped ymbrynes that hollows are keeping locked up. On the way, they will meet other peculiars and learn a great deal about what they're up against.

This is another engrossing tale and a very quick read. There aren't a lot of punches pulled here, so for all that it's YA, very young readers might be a bit overwhelmed. But I would have loved this series at about age 11 or 12. Adults will also find it most enjoyable.