The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library

By: Matt Haig

I think everyone has regrets of some sort big or small. Nora Seed however gets the chance to live all the lives she could have in an effort to save the one she doesn’t want anymore.

Matt Haig’s The Humans is one of my favorite books period and the synopsis of this one just spoke to me. I couldn’t even wait for a stateside release. Had to preorder from book depository.

Totally worth it.

Nora Seed is one of those people good at everything; champion swimmer, great musician, smart as a whip only every choice she’s made has seemingly amounted to a small life in an apartment, no real friends, no relationship with her brother just her and her cat.

She’s seemingly okay with it until the cat passes on and the loneliness and regret get too much. Nora tries to commit suicide and instead of dying winds up in the midnight library a place in which she can pick up a book and slip into all those “could have been” lives, fix those regrets and even live some she never knew were a possibility.

The book starts off really sad and heartbreaking. I hate it when pets die. And much like reality when Nora’s down is when every one wants to pile on so definite trigger warnings for suicide here.

But I think Matt Haig is just one of those writers like Taylor Swift. We’re just on the same wave-length.

I liked Nora. I liked the idea of the library. I liked her other lives. I think Haig keeps a good balance here to because while Nora’s comes to see that there would have been issues and regrets in those lives as well there’s a good alternation between big huge regrets and just the niggling feeling that something isn’t right.

Sometimes making a choice for someone in one world means they die in that world and aren’t even there. Other times it’s just a case of realizing a relationship wasn’t going to work anyway.

And polar bears are scary.

I also loved the message that you can always take a different path, that the bigger life is not always the better happier life and everyone can change the world of the people around them. Just keep living.

Recommend: Yes.