Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Mackenzie Allen Philips' 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!

For some of us that do not go to church every Sunday but believe in a higher power that is greater than us, its a GREAT read. If puts the relationship between GOD and us in perspective. this is a book that I keep by my bedside and will flip through when I need some inspiration. I highly recommend it to anyone!

Average Rating:

Rating: - Have read it 3 times and love it!
For some of us that do not go to church every Sunday but believe in a higher power that is greater than us, its a GREAT read. If puts the relationship between GOD and us in perspective. this is a book that I keep by my bedside and will flip through when I need some inspiration. I highly recommend it to anyone!

Rating: - Wow This book is so awesome!
If you want to read a book that really speaks to you this is the one! I believe this is truely how GOD the Trinity wants to reveal his self to all of us! Read it for yourself!!!

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Rating: - The Shack
One of the best books that I've read! You cry,laugh,shout! I was really into this book! I highly suggest it to everyone!

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Rating: - The Shack
I am in the middle of reading this now and I recommend that everyone should read this, has great insights. Thank you

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Rating: - A Difficult Read but a Story Worth Telling
First of all, for all you one-star literature snobs out there mercilessly bashing this book...I can't really argue with you about the writing. It kept knocking me out of the story. I had a hard time buying Mack's character. Here's a guy who's clearly stepped out of reality and encounters human beings who tell him that they are God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit...and Mack joshes with them. He chuckles, he hangs, he good-naturedly punches a shoulder. Plus he is so self-consumed that he is never overwhelmed by the presence of God, even if it is in the body of the mother from Eddie Murphy's NUTTY PROFESSOR movie (which I couldn't stop picturing for the Papa character).

So I can't defend this book for its writing. I think the story is powerful to connect with millions of people (it obviously has) but I also think that it's not great literature. It obviously doesn't have to be.

But I did like the story. To tackle such a premise--the spiritual journey of man damaged by his past and nearly destroyed by the abduction and murder of his little daughter--is an incredible ambition in itself. To apply spiritual truth and bring a better understanding of God in the midst of such pain, guilt and suffering is a major achievement. There was a lot that didn't work but what did made it worth reading.

This will probably work better as a movie. I hope. Unless the movie is as heavy-handed in Mack's behavior as the book was. In the book, no matter how fantastic the scenario he'd find himself in, he normally just went with it, palling around with the incarnations. "Am I dead?" "Am I going to be allowed to see my family again?" "Are you really who you say you are?" The writers appeared to have been completely devoted to the spiritual journey--and I liked that--but it hurt the overall novel that the main character was so neglected. As another reviewer pointed out, count how many times everyone chuckles, shrugs, grins.

But don't get me wrong: it's a great story. And it has a lot of spiritual concepts and truths that would help a lot of people. The literary snobs and atheists? No, they're too arrogant in their own thinking to absorb anything. But I'm sure there are lot of people who will respond to this story, so it's definitely worth reading and, even if the writing is too clunky, toughing it out to the end.

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Finding God in the Shack: Seeking Truth in a Story of Evil and Redemption

The Shack: Unauthorized Theological Critique

Finding God in The Shack