The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Content Tags: Alcoholism, Self-Harm, Suicide
This book is an exploration of parallel universes when you (or in this case the main character, Nora) are between life and death. Reviewing regrets from your "root life" and making adjustments to try and locate your best life.
TW: Suicide. This is touched on a few times throughout the book and Nora's journey through the multiverse - suicide attempts, references to self-harm scars, and anti-depressants. (Alcoholism is also mentioned and discussed a couple of times.)
The concept for this book sounded very intriguing to me, even though this is a bit outside my usual wheelhouse with the sci-fi ish element. The way the author integrated the sci-fi elements worked well without being too overwhelming or confusing or trying too hard. Overall, even though it was the main element, the focus wasn't so much on how The Midnight Library worked, but rather on why it worked. It was interesting and enjoyable witnessing the different ways Nora's lives differed and remained the same as she tried to locate her best life and also how she grew throughout the process.
I will say it was a bit odd to me to have the lead be a woman when the author is a man, but maybe that's because I more regularly read books with multiple leads or books written by women or non-binary folks. It wasn't bad per say... though there were a lot of comments about how "healthy" or "unhealthy" she looked/felt that I think could've been removed or modified. Almost all of them were comments actually about her fitness or energy levels and, as she was being inserted into lives she didn't have any information about, she couldn't have actually known her health status.
Random aside, the author is British, so the vernacular and writing style was a bit different than I'm used to. Nothing bad about that, just different.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and it was a quick and easy read. I predicted the ending fairly early on, so if you don't like predictable outcomes then maybe don't read this book.
Now, for closing remarks (aka questions):
Is this book overrated or underrated?
I don't know about the actual "rating" of this book, but I will say this is the first book I've checked out from the library that had more than a few copies in the system (this one has 14 copies in circulation) and happens to be the first book I checkout that had a male author. And the book was not better than the other books I've checked out (except for maybe The Night and Its Moon). So in terms of library options for checkout, it is overrated.
Did the book strike you as original?
I've never heard of this concept or storyline before, so to me it seemed original.
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