The Shack by WM Paul Young, physical book, 279 pages
From back of the book: Mackenzie Allen Philips'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 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 a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant, The Shack wrestles with the timeless question: Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain? The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!
I started this book 13 years ago (according to a FB memory I recently saw) and almost made it to the end but never finished it. When it was drawn at random for our book club for June I figured it was a perfect time to start over and read it all the way through. I had seen the movie a couple of times and I think that overall the changes that were made between the book and movie were minute compared to the overall storyline.
I feel like this hit a little different for me now then it may have back when I first started reading it. I have a daughter close to Missy's age and I'm from the Pacific Northwest. I know that waterfall that they stop at and I kind of knew the story that went with it. I'm terrified of my daughter being snatched by a serial killer. I'm also only a few year into my journey with God (I'll link those posts to this one if you want to read about it). While I haven't experienced the loss that Mack has, I have found myself in various times of my life wondering why God would have such horrible things happen to me and ask similar questions as Mack. Watching the relationship Mack builds with Papa, Jesus and Sarayu has filled me with a renewed sense of love and and openness to build my relationship with God!
The part of me that doesn't want to make this a 5 star read is that I have a mass marketed copy of the book. The font is small (in my opinion) and the margins are small (again...in my opinion). That would literally only knock it down to a 4.9 but since it's 100% a me problem, I can't fault the book for that! I highly recommend this to anyone who has struggled with their relationship with God. Even if you've never experienced loss like this (I haven't), it really did help me understand a lot of what I've been reading in my Bible recently.
5/5 Stars
2024 Reading Challenge: 25/50 complete
