Hollow City by Ransom Riggs is the second novel in the series Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children. Hollow City picks up directly after Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children ends and continues the story right away with no time skip.

The children are in London during WWII air raids, and find themselves facing bombs as well as wights and hollowgast. The danger that was threatened during the first book has turned into all out war. They are constantly kidnapped and taken hostage and betrayed. It’s hard to tell friend from foe in this book.

Hollow City features one of the greatest twists I have read in a long time. According to the author Ransom Riggs, the idea of it didn’t come to him until he was halfway through writing the book, which is brilliant. As for me, I didn’t see it coming at all, which is why it’s great.

One of the great things about Hollow City is the expansion of the ten characters. In the first book, there were so many characters I found it difficult to sort them out. But with the children leaving Cairnholm, and now in London, we get to learn more about some characters who didn’t have much roles to play, such as Olive, Hugh and Horace. The characters are very vivid and real, though I’ve always been a bit leery of the love story between Jacob and Emma.

Their relationship is the one that doesn’t hook me so. It doesn’t seem really realistic. Emma is like eighty years older than Jacob, if not more. She was in love with his grandfather, so to be “in love” with his grandson makes me a little weirded out.

Beyond that, I enjoyed Hollow City even more than the first book. This is a story where a boy leaves the familiar world for a fantasy one…one that is under attack and is getting destroyed. Jacob doesn’t get to fall in love with this world, but has remained in constant danger the entire time. He’s got to save a world he never really got a chance to be a part of.

While the last book was about Jacob discovering himself, this one goes a bit further by the end. Jacob is discovering his power as well, and what he can do to help save peculiardom. It’s too interesting for me to stop reading, I want to know what happens next. I checked out all four Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children novels at once from the library, so my suggestion is make sure you have the books at hand for quick reading as well, because it seems its a trend to end in cliffhangers.

Moving onto Library of Souls.