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The Muir House (2011)

by Mary E. DeMuth(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0310330335 (ISBN13: 9780310330332)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Zondervan

review 1: She left one life behind for another, quite different than how she grew up, but she's learning she hasn't left it behind. Haunted by dreams and memories that she can't remember or place in her life, she begins a journey to claim the truth. Willa Muir goes home, to the house she grew up in, The Muir House. She finds the memory of her cherished father, the failing health of an unloving mother, and the mysterious grumpiness of the house caretaker. Old and new friends help and hinder her quest. Will she find the truth or will she learn to live with mystery?What is the secret to Willa's past? Who wouldn't love that? Personal mysteries are among my favorite reads. This book does a fairly good job of taking the reader along on the journey. Early on I felt that some of Wi... morella's actions were over the top, but as the book unfolded, I better understood the direction DeMuth was trying to take her. The other characters are nicely developed and realistic. Another interesting aspect was the development of Willa's faith. At the beginning, she isn't sure what she believes, if she can trust God. As everything else is stripped away, she's left with God and learns what she believes. By the end of the book, she knows God can be trusted, even when nothing/no one else can. The Ruminating Reader will award The Muir House four pieces of bacon.Mary DeMuth is a wife, mother, and writer of both fiction and non fiction. She teaches and mentors writers.The Muir House by Mary DeMuth, published by Zondervan "My guess is that you're so used to believing the crap in your life that you've crowded out the beauty." I received this book free from the author in exchange for my honest opinion
review 2: The truth will set you free—or will it? Willa Muir believes wholeheartedly that it will, and will stop at nothing to piece together her missing memories of early childhood. In fact, she has boxes of memories, dreams, thoughts, and images stored in her attic to help her do just that. She thinks she has moved on with her life, renting a house in Seattle and establishing her career there. But when her boyfriend, Hale, proposes she realizes just how much she has not moved on and turns him down in a panic. She runs out on him and heads home, only to see her house going up in flames, taking her painstaking research of memories with it. She does the only thing she can do at that moment, and that is to accept an invitation to return to The Muir House to help the old caretaker, Genie, turn it into a bed and breakfast. Willa figures she can research her memories there better than anywhere. And thus begins the mystery, the agonizing search for the truth that everyone seems to know but no one is willing to share. We are taken through many twists and turns throughout Willa's life and find that not all is as even she remembered it, and reputations seemed to be esteemed higher than the welfare of a child.We begin to see bits and pieces of Willa's childhood through her memories, and the author does an expert job of letting us see this story. Willa believes that no one wanted her except her father, and that he loved her beyond belief. The writing is melancholy, with bursts of occasional happiness throughout, and some quirky humor, which really stands out against the melancholy backdrop. There is enough mystery to keep you turning pages to see what memories Willa is able to recover and what really happened in her childhood. When Willa is melancholy, you feel melancholy. When she is happy, you are happy too. The author really knows how to make you feel what the characters feel. I also like the way she handled dialogue, not saying “he said” or “she said” too often, yet always allowing you to know who was speaking. Being from the south myself, I loved the descriptions of Texas and everyday events of life in the south, like sweet tea on a humid summer day, or friends gathered for an impromptu picnic or cookout. While Hale tells her to keep the ring he gave her when he proposed because he will never stop loving her, and that her home is with him, he seems to show something totally different with his actions. She feels that he has abandoned her and no longer feels that way for her. Meanwhile, her old boyfriend Blake is still around her hometown and is more than happy to fill his place. But things start to get creepy, in my opinion, when Blake tells her, “I always knew exactly where you were, Willa. Knew every address, every roommate you had. Every phone number, email address, profile. I knew what you read on Goodreads, what you bought on Amazon. There's a deliciousness in knowing everything about a girl, yet not making a move, wouldn’t you say?” But while Hale is a God fearing man who loves to teach lessons about Him in creative ways, wants to spend his life helping the broken, he is not without his own faults. This is good because no human is ever without faults and that is what makes us human. However, Hale made me want to just yell at him! He seems to abandon Willa in her time of need, he seems to want to keep a hold on her yet push her away at the same time. Things have to be on his terms so that he seems to be controlling her just as Blake is trying to. There is a major decision that Hale just doesn’t discuss with Willa that is pretty important when you want to marry someone, and he simply tells her that if she doesn’t agree then he can't pursue a relationship with her. Yet Willa can seem selfish too, because she is so dead set on discovering her missing memories.I won't give away the ending, but I will say that while it was a happy one, I didn’t want either of the men for Willa. I wanted her to realize that she was depending on the men for her self-worth and her decisions. Even though she was a Christian, I wanted her to become a stronger one and do something useful with Muir House, perhaps later finding a different man, perhaps not. All in all, I enjoyed this book, and would heartily recommend it to any woman. less

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