The Midnight Library by Matt Haig // Book Review

Be Warned: There Might be Spoilers Ahead!

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

⭐

A couple of years ago I watched a YouTuber who focuses on books and does book reviews talk about The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and when she talked about the premise I thought: That sounds right up my alley! What’s not to love about it? I mean, you’ve read the above synopsis. It sounds like it should be great, right? I remember going to Barnes and Noble, finding this book, and skipping happily back to the car ready to go home and get started reading.

I was sorely disappointed.

I hate the idea of doing negative book reviews. It makes me feel like a real jerk, talking badly about a piece of art that someone worked really hard on. My general philosophy is that if I don’t like something, I just won’t talk about it. But, I realized after I thought about it, my reviews really wouldn’t mean anything at all if I wasn’t willing to talk about what I don’t like too.

This could very well end up being a super unpopular book opinion, but I really struggled to get through this book. I like to read outside my genre as much as the next person. I believe that, as a writer, reading outside the genre you typically write in is a smart move: it teaches you the techniques used in other genres that you can bring to your own. This is a contemporary novel, and contemporary novels tend to be very character-focused and less plot-focused, and I like novels like that. Some of my favorites are contemporaries.

This book will not be one of them.

The Midnight Library is essentially just It’s a Wonderful Life with extra steps and less Christmas. It’s a cute concept—I’ll be the first to admit that if I was in a It’s a Wonderful Life situation, my hub of other lives would also be a library, and that was why my not liking the story was so disappointing.

I struggled to connect with Nora at all. To me, all she did was nit-pick every life she tried out (except, okay, the polar bear thing is a solid deal breaker and I’m in agreement with her on that one) and just be a sad-sack the entire book. Frankly struggled to get through the book at all. I promised myself, though, that I would finish it and I did.

I’m sure that maybe this is just a matter of personal taste, because I’ve heard a lot of other people talking about how much they loved the book. I, however, am not one of those people and will not be picking up The Midnight Library again.

I hope you guys found this review helpful (and not too mean! 😭 I really tried being honest without being cruel!) and I’ll see you in the next post!