3.5 stars

This is an appealing book with an intriguing premise: there is a space between life and death, where all the unchosen paths of our lives are waiting to be revealed, all the what ifs and maybe I should haves.

Nora has lost the will to live. Her parents have died, her cat died, she loses her job, etc. etc. Finally one night she empties her pill bottle. She manages to not be whiny or maudlin and is a character you are hoping will come out ok.

When she regains consciousness, she is in a vast library with her old elementary school librarian Mrs. Elm. From there she reads through her Book of Regrets, and with Mrs. Elm's wise guidance, goes back to see how some different choices would have come out. Despite dealing with the subject of depression and some unhappy life events, this is not a grim book. It can be a bit pop pyschology-ish at times, but very readable. Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Regrets. We all have them. Sometimes they keep us up at night. For some, the regrets become overwhelming and ending this life seems like the only answer. Nora felt this way and attempts suicide. She wakes up in the Midnight Library where there are books with infinite lives in which each regret is erased. The shelves are full and never seem to empty no matter how many lives Nora samples. As each new tried on existence becomes a disappointment, back to the library she goes. How will she know where she should stay? What will happen to the people around her in her root life if she has never existed. A little bit lighter "Dark Matter" (Blake Crouch) with "Maybe In Another Life" (Taylor Jenkins Reid), and "It's a Wonderful Life" vibes; this new title from Matt Haig will have you pondering your own decisions and their consequences. Mindbending, but also filled with heartwarming and humorous moments. I loved it!

Thank you to Penguin Group and NetGalley for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! I've read a lot of great things about Matt Haig's work before, but this is the first book of his that I've actually read. And I'll admit that I was drawn to it because I'm a librarian and the idea of a library full of books that can alter your life's timeline is what I think a library book actually does.

Anyway, the story starts on the day that Nora has decided that life just isn't worth living. She has no close relationships and even her beloved pet has passed away and left her alone. Somehow Nora ends up in a strange library, run by her elementary school librarian. She is told that all of the books are of her parallel lives where she has made alternate decisions. To decide which life she'd like to jump into, she is told to open her book of regrets. This part actually made me stop and think because we all have regrets in life, and sometimes we don't even realize that we continue to make decisions based on those.

Amazing story and I'm adding the rest of Haig's books to my TBR pile.

Nora has nothing to live for. Orphaned, friendless, jobless, and then her cat dies? She sees no choice but suicide. But in the moment between life and death, she finds herself in the Midnight Library, where every possible iteration of her life waits for her. She flips through lives where she is a scientist, rock star, Olympic swimmer, an infinite variety of paths she could have walked, giving her philosophy degree a workout as she seeks a world where she is truly happy. But each choice has consequences. A lovely exploration of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all lives.

Magical

“Let’s be kind to the people in our own existence.”

The Midnight Library is a book about choices, regrets, and embracing life.

Nora Seed is having a really bad day. She is mugged, loses her job, blamed for other’s people’s failures, and her cat is run over by a car. She is also seriously depressed. This day is one of many bad days that Nora has experienced over the last decade of her life. She can’t take life anymore and attempts suicide.

Nora wakes up to discover that she is in the space between life and death known as The Midnight Library. Here, Nora is given the opportunity to take the paths she didn’t choose and undo her regrets. She travels into the multiverse, getting to experience her other lives. What she finds is that the grass isn’t always greener, and in order to live, one must push aside their regrets and embrace their potential.

“She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential.

There are many versions of Nora, but she finds she is the same person in every life she chooses. She might be happier, but she doesn’t have what she needs, which is love. She cannot heal until she can open up and accept the love of others, but also love herself and recognize her value.

I love Nora’s character. I felt all of her emotions, the dark, and the light. She is fragile, desperate, adventurous, a rockstar, a loving sister, a good friend, a kind neighbor, a good teacher, and, most importantly, a survivor.

This is my first book by Matt Haig and I love how he weaves in bits of magic, fantasy, and whimsy alongside Quantum physics, literature, and philosophy.

This is an emotional read. Reading about a character who is in such a desperate state of mind that they attempt to take their life wasn’t easy, but the other side of this book offers a lot of love, warmth, compassion, and healing. It was surprisingly heartwarming and uplifting. Nora’s story inspired me to turn off the channel of regrets that often fill my head and embrace the here and now.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Penguin Group in exchange for an honest review.

Nora Seed has decided to die. Even this decision has complications. It seems there is space between life and death where one gets to choose another path. It is this premise that drives the story here. It is an enchanting promise of the great do over. I fell for the Librarian in charge of this second chance station. More chooses paths that push her to rethink all the slights and mistakes she has felt shaped her life. I do like the resolve in the end. Happy reading.

Loved this book! I love the setting of a library and that Nora’s high school librarian was running the place. Nora is suicidal and she is transported to the Midnight Library, where she can choose books which transport her to other lives she could have lived.

The beginning pages of this novel are some of the best I could ever imagine being written describing what depression feels like. The feeling just oozes from the page and surrounds the reader. The premise of the story is not terribly unique in allowing a person between life and death to experience what lives would have been like if different life choices were made (think "It's A Wonderful Life"). But the writing is strong, the main characters are likable, and it is filled with much wisdom about life so it works.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group/Viking for the ARC to read and review.

For all those that ask "what if I did something different?". Would you change your life if you could? Can you take the life you have and make it better? This book gives you a lot to think about!

Wow. I loved this one.

Nora is full of regret and in a deep depression. She decides to end her life, but awakens in a library. But this isn’t just an ordinary library, it’s The Midnight Library. Here on the shelves are all the parallel lives she could have lived if she made different choices in her past. She gets to “try-on” these lives and when she’s found the one that is her perfect life, she gets to stay and live.

This book was such a thought-provoking read, and makes you think about regret and also about the life you are living right now in this moment. I can’t even put into words how much I enjoyed reading Nora’s story. All I can say is you won’t regret time spent with this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Viking for a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

What are your regrets? What would you have done differently with your life? Questions that we probably ask ourselves every now and then. Great concept to explore the road not traveled.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3507792347

The Midnight Library is a quick read even if I didn't really find this compelling. Nora has had a really bad day that stems from a life of trying to gain the approval of her dad. He's gone, though, quite a while, too. But she's just stopped living, and no longer wants to live. After trying to live different lives, she discovers that she truly wants to keep on living.

The book just struck me as a "meh" experience.

As a Librarian, I have to admit that I am drawn to stories about books, libraries, and librarians. For this reason, I requested to read a copy of Matt Haig’s new novel, The Midnight Library. The novel’s premise was different from the typical romantic happy stories I usually read, but I was intrigued to give this book a chance.

Have you ever wanted to change a moment in your life? Do you have regrets that weigh you down? In how many ways do your choices set the path of your life? Would you go back to change anything if you could? “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.” Here in the Midnight Library is where we find Nora Seed. Nora, unhappy with her life, starts to explore her alternative lives. The possibilities are endless, but Nora must discover what makes a life worth living. Will she continue on her current journey or find the happiness for which she has always searched?

This novel offered insight into how we have all questioned the choices we have made in our lives. Depression and suicide are prevalent topics in this book. Nora was faced with a series of big disappointments that led her to swallow an excessive amount of pills. She felt that life had nothing left to offer, and she had nothing left to offer life. For those like me and like Nora, that have suffered from depression know the depths of sadness required to reach this point. We struggle with all of the ‘what ifs.’ This story highlights the importance of the you that you are, and you have the power to make your life what you want it to be. Almost every line of this story is quote-worthy. Haig’s descriptive language captures the essence of powerful topics that still resonate with you long after you have finished reading.

My favorite quote from The Midnight Library -

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.
Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.
We only need to be one person.
We only need to feel one existence.
We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.”
-Matt Haig, 2020

Nora Seed has no reason to live. Her life has fallen apart. No one needs her. So she commits suicide and ends up in The Midnight Library where she views her Book of Regrets and glimpses the tales of all of the paths in her life she didn't take.

This book is sort of a reverse of It's a Wonderful Life. Instead of reliving a life and see all the contributions one has made, this one looks at all the things one "should have done but didn't" but in fact, maybe those things wouldn't have worked out any better and maybe even worse. I liked that message of the book and it does help when one looks back on things with regret, but as a novel, it didn't really work for me. Although, the writing is good, I was never really got to know the "real" Nora or any of her variations. Maybe if we had gotten more of the current Nora before she got to the library, I would have been more invested in her character and the outcome. But as it was, I never had respect for her or her choices or felt a reason to care for her.

In the Midnight Library, there are two books - one book for the life you've lived and one for the one you could have lived. After attempting suicide, Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library. Now she must decide which book to choose from. What if she had made different choices? Would her life have been any better? All of us have regrets, and by allowing Nora the possibility to redo her life, Haig does a brilliant job showing how we can never predict the outcomes of our choices. A thoroughly enjoyable read that intimately talks about the pain of depression and second-guessing has on our life.

If you could go back and change the some of the choices you have made in your life, would you? Would it make you happy?
Thought provoking book.

I'm halfway convinced that Matt Haig is a wizard. Each of his novels that I've read have had that magic little extra <i>something</i> that takes them from good to great. I can't adequately articulate what gives his work that "it factor", so I'll just settle for gushing about this story. In The Midnight Library, we meet Nora Seed, a completely unremarkable 35 year old, who is about to have a really awful day. After losing her cat, her job, her..... actual will to live; Nora decides that life just isn't for her any longer. She takes an overdose of her antidepressants, and anticipates the end. She will finally be free from all of the regrets and what-ifs that plague her. Only, instead of the nothingness of death, Nora finds herself in The Midnight Library, a place that exists in the between. Here, Nora will have the chance to select other lives she may have lived if she'd made different choices.

The premise of this book was enough to have me itching to get my hands on it. It's fantastic! Who among us hasn't wondered how our lives could have been if we had done things differently? Imagine the chance to try on a myriad of "might have beens".

I love that depression, mental health struggles, and substance abuse are not glossed over, but portrayed honestly and accurately. It takes one to know one, I guess. There were a few times in the story where I just wanted to grab Nora and shake her, but those were minor annoyances, not totally rising to the level of gripes. Many nuggets of life lessons are buried in this fictional story. Maybe this book just came to me at the exact right time, because I've finished it feeling a little lighter than I was when I began. So yeah, if you can't tell, I really enjoyed journeying through the many possible lives of Nora Seed, and escaping the life of Tonya for just a little while.
4.5 stars

I received a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
Thank you to Viking and Netgalley.

Nora is unhappy with her life, and due to certain events, finds herself in the Midnight Library, a place that contains an infinite number of alternate realities. As she faces the possibility of changing her life, but going back and making different choices, she also must face her own expectations and definition of what truly makes life worth living.

This was my first book by this author, although I had heard good things about him from other readers. I wasn't sure quite what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the book as much as I did.

At first, I had a hard time liking the main character and some of the other people involved in her life, but as the book went on and I got to know her better, I started to care more about what happened to her. I found her choices interesting, and liked the way she learned from each one.

I look forward to reading more books by this author.

I rarely read books about libraries. But the premise of this book, the fantastical story of a library that exists between life and death, intrigued me. The idea we have alternate lives organized as books on endless shelves seemed like a great story. I was pulled into Nora's life right from the start. Haig immerses the reader in Nora's depression, the endless disappointments and seemingly mediocre existence, culminating with the sudden loss of her pet. The story moves in a rather predictable fashion. At one point, I thought Haig had pleasantly surprised me with a new character, but not so. This was a satisfying novel with a really strong premise and a great start and middle. I can't say I was surprised at the ending, but it was solid. One can't help but be self reflective while reading this, thinking about our own regrets and paths in life. I think that was what I loved most about this novel. I wanted more from this story, but all in all a memorable read! Thanks to the publisher for this advanced copy.

I enjoyed this quirky book so much that I read it in a single afternoon. The Midnight Library filled with possible lives is a wonderful metaphor, and the ultimate goal of finding the right life resonates especially in these current times. Nora's core self grows as she experiences more and more lives, even as she starts to fear that there may not really be a next chapter. A moving and compelling read.