As an early birthday present, Matt bought me the Amazon Kindle Oasis. For the past year, I have been borrowing ebooks from the library, or buying Kindle books and reading them on my phone or iPad. It was a great alternative since I couldn’t visit the library and check out a book. I never minded it, but it did hurt my eyes. Plus, as Matt will tell you, I would often be sitting on the coach with a charger plugged into my iPad while reading. His solution: a Kindle. I love it.

I had plans to read a paperback from my shelf, but made a detour to use my new Kindle. I had to give it a try with a book that has been sitting in my account for some time.

Book Read: The Midnight Library
Author: Matt Haig
2021 Book Count: 14

Nora Seed’s life has never been great. It’s been disappointment after disappointment, regret after regret. It never gets better. She is alone, her cat is dead, and she lost her job. Nora just exists. Nora Seed wants to die.

She finds herself in between life and death. In between life and death is a library, full of books. The person visiting finds herself not entirely sure which way to go. The books show you an alternate reality depending on the decision you made in your life. It could be that Nora decided not to quit a band that had a shot at making it; she never gave up swimming and went on to be an Olympian; thousands of different lives depending on what decision Nora made or a regret she had at one moment in her life.

Nora could be in one life for minutes; she could be there for months. She’ll remain in her alternate life until disappointment brings her back to the Midnight Library. As she travels back and forth to the library, Nora must find out if life is worth living.

I added this book to my Amazon list a while back and figured I would get to it when I got to it. Then one day, Amazon sucked me in by giving me a five dollar credit towards this book; I bought it and kept assuming I’d get to it when I got to it. When it was time to try my Kindle, I knew this was the one I wanted to read.

The concept of The Midnight Library is intriguing. I like to think heaven is a bookstore with miles upon miles of books. I never thought the “in between” would be a library. It’s an interesting concept. I enjoyed watching Nora navigate different lives, waiting to see which one she would enjoy. Some of the lives were cringy, others were hopeful. You’ll see a good amount of them.

Some people may predict the ending early on. I was not. I didn’t peak ahead, which I have been known to do when reading, because I wanted to be surprised if I could be. When I was a good number of pages into the book, I hoped for certain outcomes. You begin to see the consistencies amongst Nora’s thoughts as her life travels. It led to me hoping for the one or two outcomes.

The Midnight Library doesn’t have many twists and turns. By the time you get so far, you’ll have a good idea what could happen. This book could have had a much darker plot line. You never encounter something so awful that happens to Nora that it turns your stomach, when that definitely could have been part of this novel. Haig doesn’t go down that path; Nora’s lives are far from perfect and have some down moments, but it could be worse.

I found The Midnight Library to be enjoyable. I liked reading about so many different possibilities. The number of them never felt overwhelming. This won’t make my top books list, but it was a quick, well-paced read that will make you think about all the possibilities and make you wonder who your Mrs. Elm would be.

Next Read: The Honey Don’t List by Christina Lauren