What if there was a place where everything wrong in your life could be fixed?

Corporate trainer Jake Palmer coaches people to see deeper into themselves—yet he barely knows himself anymore. Recently divorced and weary of the business life, Jake reluctantly agrees to a lake-house vacation with friends, hoping to escape for ten days.

When he arrives, Jake hears the legend of Willow Lake—about a lost corridor that leads to a place where one’s deepest longings will be fulfilled.

Jake scoffs at the idea, but can’t shake a sliver of hope that the corridor is real. And when he meets a man who mutters cryptic speculations about the corridor, Jake is determined to find the path, find himself, and fix his crumbling life.

But the journey will become more treacherous with each step Jake takes.

** spoiler alert **

I was prepared to give this book three stars until I got to the end. I’ve come to a point in my life where there are some lines that I can’t cross, and this book crossed one.

Let’s start with my initial review: the book was just too cheesy for me. EVERYONE was a philosopher — it didn’t matter how minor the character, they all had deep, poetic observations about life. Except, of course, the main character. He’s clueless.

Then there are his “friends.” I struggled to understand why they were friends. And I struggled to understand how Jake managed to befriend so many people who could all know what’s best for him, and they could all do it by looking at him. Everyone could look at his face/in his eyes and know exactly what he needed.

For this, I was willing to give the book three stars and chalk it up to “this just isn’t my kind of book.” What I can’t overlook, however, is the misleading understanding of who we are in Christ.

My interpretation of the book is this: we’re all okay. We’re good enough because of who we are, who God created us to be.

Except the Bible doesn’t say that.

If we were good enough, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus. We aren’t good enough, brave enough, or strong enough, but God in us is. This book seems to say that you need to accept yourself. God says to accept him. THEN we are to be transformed into his likeness. We’re not to stay where we are/who we are because we aren’t enough.

If this was a general market book, I’d chalk it up to worldly beliefs/understandings, but this book suggests that God just wants us to accept ourselves. That’s a misleading statement and one that doesn’t fit with scripture. For that reason, I can’t actually recommend this book to anyone.