A review by michellekiara
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.75

My friend Clara recommended The Midnight Library to me (thank you Clara), and I finally picked it up thinking it might feel too much like nonfiction, which usually isn’t my thing. But I ended up loving it way more than I expected.

I’ve always been drawn to stories that question the meaning of life. One of my favorite creepypastas is The Egg by Andy Weir, and this gave me a very similar feeling. It also taps into my long-standing obsession with parallel universes (teenage me went DEEP into that rabbit hole), so this concept instantly reeled me in.

The idea is brilliant. When someone dies, they land in a kind of in-between space where they can try out all the lives they could have lived. If they find one they truly want, they can stay. Even though there’s a pretty big plot hole with this concept that never really gets addressed (probably my biggest gripe), it’s still thought-provoking and packed with little references that made me smile. Nora works at a music shop called String Theory, which made me giggle because of course teenage me once got obsessed with that too.

You can kind of tell early on where the story is going. The ending and the message become pretty clear by the first quarter of the book, so if you’re looking for unexpected twists or unpredictability, this won’t be the book for you. But the journey is what matters here. Watching Nora move through these lives, questioning everything she thought she knew, was so satisfying. If you’re kind of person who lies awake wondering what would have happened if you had done things differently, pick up this book.