My Rating: 4 starsHappy New Year to all!
For my first read of the new year, I decided to start with an ARC of a book that normally wouldn't be up my alley in terms of genre, but the premise of the story interested me enough that I wanted to give it a try. I'm honestly glad I did because I ended up enjoying this one way more than I thought I would.
"Once upon a time, there was a house." Such an appropriate first sentence for a story that has both a fairy tale feel and a mysterious house as a central character. Myra Malone came into possession of the Minuscule Mansion (essentially an antique miniature dollhouse but with no dolls) when she was six years old and since then, she became its meticulous and thoughtful "caretaker", dedicating her life to the Mansion's maintenance and upkeep such as mending broken furniture, decorating rooms with themes during holidays, etc. Now 34 years old, Myra has been living a reclusive life in her family's cabin in Arizona ever since surviving a car accident when she was a child and spends most of her time in the attic tending to the Mansion as well as writing about her experience. Through the encouragement of her only friend (and former neighbor) Gwen, Myra begins to share her writing via blog posts and soon amasses a huge following that numbers in the hundred thousands. Meanwhile, in Virginia, Alex Rakes, who works for his family's custom furniture business, encounters a couple looking to recreate one of the Mansion rooms — when they show him pictures of the room from Myra's website, he is shocked to discover his own bedroom mirrored back to him in miniature scale. Hoping to find out what is going on, Alex starts up correspondence with Myra and as they begin to share their respective stories as well as slowly unravel the mystery behind the Mansion, they end up going down a path that neither of them expected.
I found this story enchanting and delightful. Even though there are tragic and sad things that occur, these are handled in a thoughtful manner that doesn't diminish the seriousness of the events, while at the same time, maintaining a lightheartedness to the story that made this a compelling but by no means heavy read. I loved the bits of humor sprinkled throughout the story, especially in the excerpts from Myra's blog posts as well as in the dialogue between the characters. Speaking of the characters…yes, the main narrative revolves around how Myra and Alex ultimately fall in love, but this was so much more than just a love story — this was also a story about friendship and family, about hope and resilience and overcoming tragedy, about loneliness and finding a sense of connection — most centrally though was the theme of remembrance and how we carry the memories of people and places with us, even when the physical manifestation of them are gone.
This is one of those books that doesn't fit nicely into a particular genre — some may consider this a fantasy, others may categorize it as contemporary fiction with magical realism elements (I lean toward the latter). Whatever the category though, I appreciated the uniqueness and charm of the story, which was evident in the fact that, even though some scenes were a bit too "cutesy" for my tastes and the "mystery" part was obvious from the get go, I still found this book irresistibly hard to put down. This was also an instance where reading outside of my usual comfort zone paid off and it's an experience I definitely recommend. The ARC I read also had an excerpt from the author's next book, which is scheduled to come out in 2024 — it sounds just as charming and I look forward to reading it!
Received ARC from Berkley via NetGalley.
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