Audrey Burges - The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone

A woman learns to expand the boundaries of her small world and let love inside it in this sparkling and unforgettable novel by Audrey Burges.
From her attic in the Arizona mountains, thirty-four-year-old recluse Myra Malone blogs about a dollhouse mansion that captivates thousands of readers worldwide. Myra's stories have created legions of fans who breathlessly await every blog post, trade photographs of Mansion-modeled rooms, and swap theories about the enigmatic author. Myra herself is tethered to the Mansion by mysteries she can't understand-rooms that appear and disappear overnight, music that plays in its corridors.
Across the country, Alex Rakes, the thirty-four-year-old scion of a custom furniture business, encounters two Mansion fans trying to recreate a room. The pair show him the Minuscule Mansion, and Alex is shocked to recognize a reflection of his own life mirrored back to him in minute scale. The room is his own bedroom, and the Mansion is his family's home, handed down from the grandmother who disappeared mysteriously when Alex was a child.
Searching for answers, Alex begins corresponding with Myra. Together, the two unwind the lonely paths of their twin worlds-- big and small-- and trace the stories that entwine them, setting the stage for a meeting rooted in loss, but defined by love.

Comment: This book was published in the beginning of 2023 and the idea of it caught my attention. Recently, it was mentioned in a conversation with a friend and we decided to buddy read it, especially because it would have magical realism content, something we tend to both like in novels.

Myra Malone is a recluse, or hermit, living in a house in Arizona and she has been doing so since a car crash when she was five, which caused the death of her step grandmother and her own physical scars, made her too afraid to deal with others. She has inherited a miniature house, which seems to eb magical to her sometimes and she has blogged about the house and all the little things of and in it, which surprisingly got many followers. 

However, real life has become problematic and Myra and her mother are close to lose the house, so her publicist and friend Gwen has devised a way to help with finances, and that is how Alex Rakes learns about the blog, about the miniature house which resembles his family house perfectly. How can this be and how are they linked, those are the questions...after he contacts Myra, their connection seems to become much stronger with time, but what if Myra never feels ready to see Alex face to face...

This is actually a sweet and sad story equally. There are good and cute moments/situations and others which made me feel a little sad and a little disappointed in how they were developed. I think the story, overall, is quite intriguing, but I can't be certain I appreciated the several elements together that much...

The premise is not original, but the development can be seen as such, considering the element of the miniature house. In a way, that miniature works as a replacement for the real house, where Alex lives. The story is told from his and Myra's POV, as well as chapter in the past where the focus is on Willa, Alex's grandmother and, as far as I could tell, the person linked to the house and the miniature. I couldn't quite get if she was a witch or something like it, or how exactly her connection with the house made it accept or not certain things.

In fact, this is one of the things I feel wasn't as well developed as I hoped, because I wish we could  have understood better, or had more information on how the magic worked and why and how did it start, why Willa or why this way... all these possible details were not explained. I can accept that part of the allure of the novel is this lack of definition, this "magic" in the air, but since other elements weren't as strong either, in my opinion, this seemed to not be that good as well.

Myra is a hermit and we can understand that it's a mix of sadness and pain and physical scars. I kind of imagined that part of her character evolution would be for her to get past this or to discover that falling in love with Alex, her own journey could have a different meaning and her world didn't have to be only about the miniature and her house. I suppose this ended up being a way to see the end of the book (there is an HEA) but the path until there was not convincing to me. I feel the romance was very obviously set up and not as romantic as it could.

Alex is a much more intriguing character to me. He has a rocky relationship with his father (who was not welcomed in the house and who never had a good relationship with Willa, his mother) but came back to help, since his father is ill. To me, these details and how they were constructed seemed to place things in a very interesting direction, in terms of how the connection with Myra could play out, but after a few scenes here and there, I admit I started to become more and more distracted and after a while it felt as if everything was confusing and not much pay off was being given to counterbalance.

The end is quite predictable, with a few other things before that to increase the drama. Again, not much is really explained, some things are alluded to, others we can infer, but while I can understand the magical realism content and vibe, I feel not enough was explained. Plus, after a lifetime being a hermit, I feel not enough attention was given to the process of Myra accepting others, especially Alex, and while their relationship makes sense in this story, it was still a bit too whimsically done for my romantic taste.

All things considered, I feel this story could have gone a bit further in emotion and romance, perhaps if the author could have chosen to direct things into a different path. This is subjective, of course, but I feel this didn't end up being as romantic or, well... magical, as it seemed it could be.

Grade: 6/10