Random Article


 
Must See..
 

Rooms (Book) Review

 
9780805448887
9780805448887
9780805448887

 
At a Glance...
 

Genre:
 
Author:
 
Year Published:
 
Final Score
 
 
 
 
 
5/ 5


User Rating
no ratings yet

 

We liked?


Unique and interesting concept.

Not so much?


Mix of supernatural and spiritual doesn't quite gel.


Final Fiendish Findings?

Rooms is an interesting story, with a very interesting premise. While I was always curious to see what the next room would reveal, or how Micah’s life would change next, I didn’t really find myself drawn to the book. I do like the idea of trying to mix the supernatural and the spiritual together in a story (although many Christians of the very conservative type will likely not feel the same way), but I was left feeling that the mix was a bit off.

0
Posted November 28, 2012 by

 
Full Fiendish Findings...
 
 

Sometimes a house can save a life.

No matter how much time we spend in it, how much life we live there, a house is still a house. It’s a place to sleep, to spend time with family, to relax after a hard day. But how much impact can a house have on who you are as a person? Micah Taylor is about to find out.

When we first meet Micah, he is a successful businessman in every sense of the word. He has a thriving software company, a beautiful girlfriend, the coveted penthouse, and millions of dollars in the bank. But what Micah doesn’t have is happiness. The death of his mother at a young age, his guilt for his role in her passing, and his resentment of his father’s failure to cope have all contributed to Micah’s character, and while he tries ever harder to be more nd more successful, he can’t help but feel something is missing.

So where does a house come into all of this? Just when Micah thinks he has life all figured out, a mysterious letter arrives from an uncle he has never met. His father had always told him that Uncle Archie was crazy, and Micah was never given the chance to get to know him. To top it all off, Archie has been dead for years, making the letter all the more unexpected. The letter tells Micah that a special house has been built just for him, and that he must go there to find himself. The catch? The house is built in the very place his mother died. Free house or not, this is not an easy decision for Micah. In fact, Rooms is a book full of difficult decisions, and each and every one is a vital step for Micah.

The biggest draw for me with Rooms was that the house has mysterious rooms that appear and disappear at various moments in Micah’s life. Each room,when it appears, is like a journey and a memory at the same time, and they help Micah to face things that have long been buried. I love the idea of these magical rooms as a tool in the story, a tangible yet unexplainable phenomena that is impossible to avoid.

And yet, I was left feeling that the rooms were underused in the story. When a book is based on a magical house that changes configurations, you would expect to see a lot of that in the story, but in the end, the rooms felt like just a very small part of the story. I would have been okay with that, but things just seemed to move along very slowly at times, and I think developing more of the story around the rooms could have really helped with that.

While it isn’t apparent at first glance, Rooms is a very religious story. While it is about a house with mysterious rooms, it is more about Micah’s journey back to God in a very unusual way. The gifted house from Uncle Archie seems to pull Micah along a path to spirituality, even while his former life of luxury pulls him away. But the spiritual struggle in Rooms is not of the “look inside your heart” variety. Although there is a fair share of that in the book, the author has really tried to pull a lot of supernatural type stuff into the story as well, which seems an odd fit at times.

Rooms is an interesting story, with a very interesting premise. While I was always curious to see what the next room would reveal, or how Micah’s life would change next, I didn’t really find myself drawn to the book. I do like the idea of trying to mix the supernatural and the spiritual together in a story (although many Christians of the very conservative type will likely not feel the same way), but I was left feeling that the mix was a bit off.


Amy

 
U.S. Senior Editor & Deputy EIC, @averyzoe on Twitter, mother of 5, gamer, reader, wife to @macanthony, and all-around bad-ass (no, not really)


0 Comments



Be the first to comment!


You must log in to post a comment