The Shack Written by Paul Young

Hello readers, wow, I feel like a mean lean reading machine, bring on the books! I’ve got to say… I found this book painful to listen to it was almost too much to finish, this just wasn’t my kind of book, I thought it was the description sounded creative and a bit playful, in a murderous kind of way. But, I was led to a book that just isn’t me. Mackenzie Allen Phillips’s youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during her 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 the 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. Okay, so I have to admit the beginning of this book had me hooked it’s about this gentlemen whose nobody of real importance he had a hard lot in life and was given a really short stick and made the most of what he had…even if that put red in his ledger. Still, okay it’s a pleasant/unpleasant enough tale and this could be anyone you’re reading about readers because “Mac” is just an average guy. Then things begin to change readers…this was a really heavy on the religion book. I mean wowza, I get the message the author is going for really I do, and a lot of it I can respect, but what took so many hours to tell and go through could have been done in such a shorter time I get Mac has to make this journey to find his way, but the message is just spouted over and over again…sure I’m not one for organized religion or religion in general, but I’m all for people being good to one another, but this was just OKAY I GOT IT, can we please move on now? I was absolutely ready to write this book off the middle to end was just a repeat of Macs thoughts, feelings, and him getting the message given to him, but then something happened. I continued listening to the audio book which the actual book was read by Roger Mueller not a bad reader, but not overly great either, his crying scenes didn’t touch me so much as agitate me at times, he just wasn’t convincing to me in his anguish, but not a bad narrator. So, after the book ends the author comes on and talks, he’s definitely a religious man and stands by his writing and beliefs. I can respect that, but this book wasn’t really meant for me, if you’re religious though in the Christian sense and enjoy a good philosophical book with a message of love and community then this is a book for you. For me not so much.