The Midnight Library

Upon opening the new book, Nora finds herself in a pool on a beautiful Australian beach, early in the morning. By all appearances, this life appears to be much more pleasant than the previous ones. While she isn’t sure what her job is and can’t find Izzy anywhere, she feels free as she swims in the water. The people around her seem to know her name and are friendly and cheerful. As she looks for her apartment and pretends she knows what she’s supposed to be doing in this life, she looks for information about herself online. She finds a poem called Fire, written by this life’s version of herself. Nora finds this poem a bit ominous, but she tries to appreciate the more cheerful aspects of this existence as she looks for Izzy and her own home.

Nora finds her apartment and notices she has a roommate who isn’t Izzy. This roommate—a young woman named Jojo—turns out to be a conspiracy theorist and doesn’t seem to be an entirely pleasant person to be around, balking at the idea of Nora bringing a cat into the apartment. Nora asks Jojo what happened to Izzy, only to find out that Izzy is dead in this reality. She had died in a car crash while driving to Nora’s birthday party, meaning that Nora’s presence in Australia had caused Izzy’s death. Between this revelation, the sight of anti-depressants in the bathroom, and receiving a call from work telling her that she’s selling ferry tickets, Nora becomes overwhelmed and wills herself out of this version of her life.