Rooms - by James L. Rubart

Micah Taylor is an incredibly talented and wealthy software company owner in Seattle, or at least, that's what he is when he receives a letter from his Great Uncle Archie.  A great uncle who has been dead for several years, and whom Micah has, to his knowledge, never met.  Weirder still is that Archie has left Micah a house on the Oregon Coast, the same coast where as a child, Micah created both happy memories, and the worst memory of his life.  When he goes to Oregon to inspect the house, ostensibly to put it up for sale and to return to his life in Seattle, he finds the house to have been created to his exact taste and preferences.  He is drawn to the house, and even when strange things start to happen in the house, and his life seems to be shifting out of balance, his search for himself and God within him keep him going back and digging deeper to see what his life is meant to be.

This book was a bit strange for me; not necessarily the content - the idea of God working through a shifting house and an inexplicable timeline is not out of the realm of possibility, but it was just a tough story for me to get through.  Instead of being eager to see Micah change and grow and realize the path God had for him, I found myself irritated at Micah and his reluctance to seek the whole truth at each step.  I can't even pinpoint why the book didn't connect with me.  Maybe there were too many back and forths for the story's continuity, or maybe it felt like too many chances for Micah to pick the right one.  Micah's girlfriend Sarah confronts him with "God gives only two choices; hot and cold.  Living in a world of lukewarm gets you spit out," and yet Micah continues to waver between his two lives and separate worlds, trying to find a way to have both.

Overall, I give this book 3 stars.  I didn't find it to be a bad book, I just didn't think it a great book. Even still, we can take Micah's story as a lesson to not be lukewarm in our own lives, and to not try to live in two worlds of our own.

You can find the book and an excerpt HERE.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.