If only I had another book to read. I finished reading this book in 3 days?! Who am I? That’s a personal best for me. I honestly could have finished it in 2 days but I took a break. I wanted the book to last one more day.

Anyways, this is another book I judged by its title and cover. I thought the book was going to be like the movie, ‘Night at the Museum’ but instead of a museum, it’s a library. I thought the main character would jump into storylines.

Well, it kinda was but it was different and not what I expected. The book is about Nora Seed and how she is unhappy with her life at the moment. One bad thing after another in just one day to the point that she was fed up and decided to take her own life. In doing so, she wakes up in a place between life and death that looks like a library, called the midnight library. She meets Mrs. Elm who helps Nora to face her regrets and gives her the opportunity to see different lives of hers if certain regrets didn’t exist.

It’s a very interesting read because who wouldn’t want to go back and undue a regret and see the future it would have led to. Nora gets to experience all these different futures but she also comes to learn that every life is not perfect. There can’t be happiness without sadness. Her life might have turned out great but she comes to realize she also effected the lives of those around her.

Before I would ponder of the mistakes I have made in my life and do wonder how different things could be now. I use to wonder what would have happened if I would have taken that full time manager job years ago. I didn’t end up taking it because my husband and I decided we wanted to start a family. Zelda was born a year later. I knew in my heart if I took that manager job, I wouldn’t have had Zelda and that’s a little scary to imagine.

It’s okay to wonder of the ‘what if’s’ but not dwell on it too much that you start disliking your actual life. The decisions we made is what led us where we are today.

I am going to spoil a part of the book so warning! Skip the next paragraph if you don’t wanna know.

Nora has a cat named Voltaire, she calls him Volts for short. When she gets home, she finds out from her neighbor that Volts is dead on the side of the street. Nora thought she was a horrible pet owner and felt it was her fault Volts died. When she’s in the midnight library, she ask Mrs. Elm to show her a life of her being a good pet owner. She gets there and realizes she’s in her apartment and everything is the same like her actual life. Voltaire is in her bed but he was dead. Nora didn’t understand why take her to a life that Volts is dead. Turns out, out of all the lives Voltaire had, the best one was being with Nora and Volts died of a heart condition in her bed. Nora was never a bad pet owner. When her neighbor found Volts on the side of the street, he assumed he got ran over but it’s possible he collapsed and died because of his heart condition. So Volts had this heart condition and it was only a matter of time before he passed away. Nora is still sad that Volts is no longer alive but is happy to know she gave him the best life.

When Triforce died, I felt horrible and I was beating myself up on being a bad cat owner. My friends have reached out to express their condolences and love. My husband said, “Just like Voltaire, I think you gave Triforce the best life. You rescued her from the streets and gave her much love and care.” It was a touching thing to say.

I enjoyed the book very much and I’m sadden that I finished it so soon. There are lessons to be learned:

1. Some stuff you can’t control
2. There can’t be happiness without sadness, it’s a part of life
3. There’s a bright side to things and it’s up to us to see things in a different light.