Three Stars
Jacob Portman grew up listening to his grandfather’s stories
of the orphanage he grew up in where the children had unique abilities and
everyone was haunted by mysterious monsters. He even had the pictures to prove
it.
As Jacob gets older he begins to side believe his parents
that his grandfather’s stories aren’t literal, rather metaphors for his
experiences as a young Jewish orphan in Europe during World War II, and that
the pictures are simply trick photography. Even though this is the more logical
answer, Jacob is never able to completely stop believing his grandfather.
After his grandfather is murdered, Jacob is reeling from his
death and the mysterious clues he left
behind. Jacob’s search for the truth leads him on a journey across the Atlantic
Ocean, to the isolated British island and the mysterious orphanage where his grandfather
grew up. The closer Jacob gets to the truth about the past, the more he feels
someone, or something, is getting closer to him.
The cover of this book sold me with its dark, haunting
picture that doesn’t give up all of its secrets at first glance. The
description pulled me in further with the promise of a story set in a dark old
manor house, hiding an even darker family secret.
I was all set and excited for a hauntingly gothic tale, brought
to life by curious old photographs. Unfortunately that’s not quite what I got.
The story is unique and creative, and it’s obvious the
author put a lot of work into compiling the photographs and building a world
around them. It’s just not the world I thought I was going to get.
The story starts out well enough, a mysterious family
secret, an untimely death, a search for the truth. Then the story drifts from
the main plot and a lot of new characters are introduced leaving the reader a
little lost and wondering what is going on. But things come back together
towards the end with a few nice surprises thrown in.
I was really expecting an almost Bronte-esque gothic novel,
set in the far reaches of England, and that’s just not really what this is. The
book is much more YA fantasy that I anticipated, and there are several places
where I felt like Riggs was trying too hard to fit random pictures into the
story by adding more and more characters histories, slowing the whole story
down and completely losing momentum.
Honestly, I had begun to lose interest about halfway through
and was a little upset about feeling misled as to what the book actually was.
But then Riggs began to redeem the story by refocusing on the main plot,
pulling things back together, and introducing some intriguing concepts.
My main complaints with the book are that I was never fully
captured by the story, and while the pictures were entertaining, I felt that a
lot of them were forced into the story detracting from the plot. I also had
issues with the adults and how Riggs portrayed them, it was like they had to be
there but rather than have to deal with how parents would actually behave,
Riggs just wrote them off to get them out of the way. Especially at the end.
But the end of the book saved it for me and I enjoying it
more than I thought I would. I think had my expectations been more in line with
what the book actually is I would have enjoyed the whole thing even more. The
plot is still very unique and a fun new addition to the YA fantasy world.
I will be
interested to see what Riggs comes up with next.
