Book It - The Shack

This week’s featured book:

The Shack
Author: WM. Paul Young

Overview:

Mackenzie Allen Phillips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in this midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change his life forever.

My Comments:

This book has so many positive reviews with so many people praising it and placing it on the highest pedestal that I’m reluctant to confess that I just didn’t like it. At all. And I tried. I tried really, really hard to like it. I really did. It started off fine, and I had high hopes for it, and then after a few chapters, I just couldn’t focus anymore. I was bored. Restless. I began skipping sentences. Then paragraphs. And finally, entire chapters. And as much as I hate leaving a book unfinished, trying to get to the end of this one was torturous. I’d try to read a little more each night before I went to bed, which is my favourite time to read, and just get fed up after awhile and put it away.

I honestly don’t know what it is exactly about this book that I don’t like. The writing? Maybe. The story? Perhaps. It just didn’t work for me; I was profoundly disappointed by it. And that’s a lot coming from someone who has read hundreds of books since childhoold and rarely ever gives up on one. There is only a handful that I’ve been turned off by in a reading span of 40 years. So this type of review doesn’t come easily. In any case, don’t just take my word for it. Give it a try if you’re curious to know why there is an abundance of glorifying reviews by so many folks. Maybe you’ll like it.

Maybe not.

[Shrug]