"Peregrine Harker & The Black Death" might offer a simple diversion for young readers new to the genre, but for those seeking a mystery that truly transports and immerses them in the echoes of the past, this book may not hit the mark. Its potential is evident, but the book would benefit from richer character development and more careful plotting.

This book is action packed and full of twists and turns and even a few surprises and mystery. And the ending leaves it open for more, which I would read despite my annoyances and some parts.

A little too much is going on in this. I wish there was just a little bit more focus on the story; it kind of seems like the author had a lot of "zany" ideas and didn't really know how to handle them in a single story. These ideas could have worked together if there was a better focus.

I didn't really enjoy this book. I didn't understand what the first chapter had to do with anything, and then I was confused for a few chapters thinking I was missing something. It just didn't get better for me.

I remember really enjoying this book, but I don't recall much about it now, unfortunately. It was a page turner and the characters were really interesting.

A story of a 15 year old boy who fantasies about being a spy who works at a newspaper. Not great story, bit far fetched to think he knows about guns, poison, knows the prime minster. Still might appeal to some.

This wasn't a bad book, but i felt that it was just skimming the surface of the story. We didn't get a lot of background on the characters apart from very scant details, we didn't really get into our protagonists head to see his thoughts and feelings apart from him feeling fear or excitement. There wasn't a lot of conversation in the book, we were mostly following things through Peregrine's eyes, but purely as a quite bland "and then this happened, and then this happened". There were some odd moments when i thought, how did that happen, like somehow Peregrine managed to keep hold of a sword stick during a quite exciting part of the book but it wasn't mentioned he still had hold of it until suddenly it was needed to move the story on. All the characters seemed to be quite one dimensional versions of characters you would read in any similar book to this. For example, you have the young lady who seems to be a beautiful rich girl, but she actually carries a pistol in her bag, there's the best friend who always turns up in the nick of time, oh and there's even a gun toting butler. The final reveal of everything that was going on was something i'd guessed quite a long way back in the novel, so even this wasn't particularly thrilling. I realise this is a book for younger readers than i, but this could really have been a more ingenious plot.
Overall it's not badly written, but there were some odd moments that were a little hard to believe, maybe the author will get better with a second book? I'll give it a go, but i'm not desperate to get my hands on a copy.