Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Truly a direct sequel that doesn't even let us take a breath between the last action of the first book before we're hunted by baddies, we're going crazy to fix poor Miss Peregrine, and before we solve the new mysteries of new photos.

It's a good setup and a good adventure. They obviously need a lot of help, but it's great to see how they solve their problems and avoid or defeat the baddies as they try to find others of Miss Peregrine's kind.

Suffice to say, read this for the adventure and the twists and the turns and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

Me? Why didn't I give this more stars? Well, honestly, some of it didn't really hold my attention very much. When things got weird, I was right there, and they got weird regularly enough that I couldn't quite dislike the novel. On the other hand, a good deal of the novel felt like it was stalling and idling. It was just the times when it got weird that I found myself *wanting* to pay attention.

Adventure is only as good as the characters and their motivations and their stakes, after all, and like the first novel, I kind of wish that the MC wasn't such a lightweight. Everyman isn't really working for me, here. And the other kids seriously needed to have stronger personalities rather than just interesting powers. It's only some of the time, too. The times when it stalled was when the stronger personalities weren't in play or we weren't in the middle of the next reveal. Unfortunately, that happened a lot.

I'd call this a slightly flawed novel, but certainly not enough to ruin it. I had enough occasional fun to call this a win.


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