Review: The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hooter: A library you land up at between life and death filled with infinite books each with a path your life could have taken.

The book 2020 deserves I feel. Matt Haig checks the boxes on a number of fronts to make this a good read and a commercial success - relatable characters, imaginable real life regrets, wishful dreams of how life could have been , life long learning/advice all of this wrapped up as a present using the ribbon of metaphorical fantasy in simple written style.

“Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices… Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”

The protagonist Nora has yet another terrible day - one too many for having the will to live [Trigger warning: suicidal tendencies] landing in this library with infinite books and her school librarian Mrs. Elm to help her make sense of it all. Borrowing a bit from quantum physics as she soon starts to make sense of this library and the infinite possibilities which make for a whirlwind of stories ( reminds me of many masters, many lives by Dr. Brian Weiss ) as she bumps into familiar characters from another life. Since she is dropped into the alternate world, she literally needs to wing it to come up to speed with this new life and the people around and that peeling of fact after fact and the realisation that follows adds to the momentum of you thirsting to know of the what ifs.

The ending whilst predictable (I will not put out spoilers) is something you look forward to wrapping the book up with. The smattering of life lessons that Nora learns through her journey hit hard on the reality we find ourselves in.

I'd give this a 4.5 because you don't want to hold too many high expectations from this book and be disappointed. It's a great way to wind up 2020 for sure.

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