Every time I go on a long-distance flight, I like to buy a book at the airport so that I can try to retain memories through the book. So A Map of Days will be my “moving to Nice” book and I hope I remember the first few days of Nice (and how I basically stopped doing everything for a few hours to devour this book) whenever I pick it up.

A Map of Days is the 4th book in the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series but because it’s book one of the new story arc, I didn’t feel like I needed to reread books 1-3 before reading this. Which is a good thing because the first three books are currently in a different continent from me. Anyway, A Map of Days takes place after the events of Library of Souls – Jacob is back in America and so are his friends. But the events of Library of Souls are going to take a long time to clean up and so the Ymbrynes are hard at work. However, the jobs they give the children are… not quite what the children one. So when Jacob finds out more about his grandfather’s double life and receives a covert assignment, some of them jump at the chance for a new adventure.

I wasn’t quite sure about what to expect when I started this book because as far as I knew, the story had ended by the last book. So while I did find a few things almost too coincidental to be believable, such as Jacob’s grandfather somehow leaving him notes throughout his childhood that would be helpful to this mission when it also seemed like he didn’t want Jacob exposed to his double life, I generally found the book to be a fun introduction to the American peculiardom and a good first book to the next arc. While it was pretty obvious that a key character was only introduced at the end and the book is mostly here to set up the world, I thought the missions that Jacob and his friends went on were a fun way to experience how Peculiars in America were different from those in the UK and Europe and served to carry the story forward without making it feel like a setting info-dump.

One thing I really liked about this book was that it finally starts to address the love triangle between Emma, Jacob, and Abe (Jacob’s grandfather). I always thought that their romance was a little strange, given that Emma was in love with Jacob’s grandfather, and I’m glad that these missions got them to start facing the awkwardness of the whole situation. I’m actually interested in seeing how they’re going to move forward in the next book, and I’m normally not a fan of the romance subplot!

That said, I was a bit disappointed with Jacob in this book. I understand his disappointment with his parents and it’s normal to want a glamourous job, but some of his decisions seemed rather childish and not really fitting someone who has presumably matured while saving part of the world in a previous trilogy. While I understand that he needs to leave to start a new adventure, the way he left and some of the decisions he makes (like bringing a book you know is full of valuable information despite the dangers? and I don’t think the book gets used in the main mission?) made me roll my eyes. But I hope that this is a second-first book thing and Jacob goes back to his old form in the next book.

Overall, I thought this was a fun book that sets up the stage for a new adventure. Despite some unhappiness with Jacob, I was very quickly hooked by the story and basically finished it in one sitting over a couple of hours. I think that you’ll enjoy this if you liked the original trilogy.