I waffled between 4 and 5 stars for this book because the writing is honestly makes this one of the best and most compelling pieces I’ve read in a long while and one of the only books to make me both laugh out loud and openly cry over the course of the story. Nora is a highly relatable character to anyone who has ever suffered from suicidal ideation and deep depression that makes you feel stuck and her journey hits close because of it.

However, the last half of the book, while still highly enjoyable and beautiful to read, does start to become more of the tone of self-help books as others have mentioned, and some of the messages could have been given in less of a straight forward way while still having the same impact. The fact that Nora had to learn that she just needed to want her life and to live badly enough to escape the library was obvious about two lives in and some of the meandering she does to get to that realization made it feel like the book was going for a higher page count rather than actually adding to the story. This comes down to poor editing rather than poor writing, though, and so I would still highly recommend this book just for the witty and heartfelt prose alone.