Going into this book, I knew it had the potential to be preachy.  After all, it’s a book whose main character is struggling with her life and is given the opportunity to change it to almost anything she wants.  Immediately, you know that there’s going to be an attempt at being deep, at having sincere lessons or insights thrown in the reader’s direction.

But somehow, I didn’t care by the end of the book.  Nora, the main character, did have a tendency to be frustrating at the beginning, but I have a feeling that if I had been struggling with the types of mental issues that she had, I would find truth in the way that her situation was described.

Ultimately though, the little sprinkles of insight, of awareness that came with each choice she made resonated with me.  Like “Maybe even the most seemingly perfect intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same.  Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty.” Or, “I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths…But maybe there are no easy paths.  There are no paths. … Every second of every day we are entering a new universe.  And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.”

So yes, this book was preachy.  Very much so.  Possibly even a little saccharine.  Ultimately, I don’t care.  I enjoyed reading it, and I was just a little sad that it had ended, if only because I wanted to linger a little longer.