What a wonderful premise........picking a life to live a different way. This was a beautiful and touching novel. I do enjoyed it!

The book opens by telling you how much time is left before the protagonist dies. It's an intriguing premise: to be able to relive a life based on whatever choice you could have made in the past. What regret would you like to revisit and wouldn't you want to know how that one turned out?
Perfect book to read in quarantine times and life crisis periods. It's rife with philosophical ruminations and many will resonate with anyone in that liminal state in life (living/dying, quitting/moving on etc) or those who carry so many regrets they could write a book about it.
It took a while for me to warm up to the book. It's a short book (288pages) and a quick read but I was getting impatient with the build up to getting to the library at midnight part. Once the adventure began to happen, I was hooked. There is a predictability to the story but I didn't expect this to be a deep, life-changing book. It is, however, a good book to read if you want to feel a bit hopeful about humanity, especially if the current social, political, and economic situation hasn't depressed you completely.
Thanks to #netgalley for the advanced reader copy.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3453143951

This was a lovely escape that also made me think about life in a different way. While I did not relate with the main character in most ways, I enjoyed her journey. I recommend this book!

Wow! Thought proviking book about the lives you've could have led and regret. At the beginning of the book Nora is struggling with depression, unfulfulling work, failed relationships, both familial and romantic. She decides to take her life. Instead of dying, she goes to the Midlight Library where "every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived." And so begins Nora's journey.. Will she take another path entirely or stay put? This book really hit home for me.

The ending was a little predictable but this was one of the best self-help disguised as fiction books that I have ever read. I have enjoyed all the books I have read by Matt Haig.

Although I was skeptical about the premise, I found it intriguing. Nora has many chances to discover what is really meaningful in her life and has the opportunity to examine the choices she did or did not make. The ending was surprising, but perhaps not.

"The Midnight Library" is a well-written novel about how our choices, big and small, can have a major impact on our lives and the things that we sometimes regret doing--or not doing--are what make life unique.

Did you ever wonder how your life would have turned out if you had taken a different path? The Midnight Library exists for all of us who have pondered their life choices. Nora has decided she is finished with her unhappy life and ends up in the library run by her favorite school librarian ( a true delight). She is able to choose any book and experience the life that would have happened had she chosen it. When that life becomes unsatisfactory - poof! she is back at the library to choose another. A delightful romp of "what ifs" and the characteristic Matt Haig trip down the rabbit hole. This will appeal to readers of other marvelous Haig stories as well as OONA OUT OF ORDER and ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

I read the whole thing last night and I’m still digesting it. Nora’s life has gone horribly wrong and she’s got no hope left when she tries to kill herself and winds up “in-between.” The author makes the whole situation with multiverses seem feasible and we watch her go back several times, having made different decisions from the ones she thought had ruined her life. Each time she returns to the library, or in-between, she has fewer regrets until finally she is full of hope and wants to return to her life so that she can live through it instead of skipping meaningful years.

What if you could be given a second chance at a life that you didn't think possible? What would the in-between look like for you?

Nora Seed has been dealt a bad hand in her life... everything that she wanted to do, never came to fruition and now she decides to end it all. However, her end is really her beginning as she arrives at the Midnight Library. The librarian is her old high school librarian, who offers her a chance at understanding her regrets and offers a unique opportunity: live past lives... alternate opportunities that could've been taken. And the journey begins for Nora, trying past and present lives like someone tries on their wardrobe before breakfast. Along the journey, Nora sees possibilities while experiencing love, life, and heartbreak. Having come to terms with regret and understanding what she truly wants and needs, she soon realizes that she does indeed wants to continue living.

This book is dark and deals with some heavy themes but which of us hasn't been down the rabbit hole of regret, missing opportunities because of fear or just being unsure of oneself thinking about, if only.

Recommended read!!

I loved this book, my second Matt Haig book that I was lucky enough to have read via NetGalley! I love how Haig plays with time, with memory, and with the yearning that we all have to live the best possible life we can. This certainly gave me a lot to think about, and also made me feel hopeful for us all...

I can only hope that The Midnight Library is a literal description of what the afterlife is. I love the idea that a person could choose to go back and modify the smallest decisions made in their life... and who knows what that might lead to? At a certain point in the book I was fearful that Nora might settle in what seemed life a beautiful life but, to me, still felt as though she was living for someone else. Each life Nora thought might be the best showed her time and again that to live fully she needed to put herself first. The personal growth apparent in Nora's story is reason enough to read this book.

Such a lovely premise, and a wonderful journey to follow. There's a little bit of Nora Seed in all of us, as all of us wish we could have a few do-overs. I was engaged from the get-go, and couldn't put this one down.

THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY is Nora’s portal between life and death. After attempting suicide, Nora ends up in the infinite library and learns that she will have the opportunity to see what her life would have been like if she had made different choices, and she can sample as many different lives as she wants. In one life, she is an Olympic medalist, in another a researcher in the Arctic, and in a third, a seemingly happily married woman with a child. Predictably, in the end, Nora realizes that her “root” life, the one she was desperate to leave, is actually where she should be; she just needs to change her perspective.
Feelings of regret are universal, and I think we’d all like to see how our lives would be different if we’d done things differently, so I hope the midnight library does exist. I thoroughly enjoyed living all of Nora’s lives, even though I inevitably kept thinking about my own regrets. I was a little disappointed that the end was so pat and convenient, but I still thought it was a great read.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Nora makes a decision to end her life and finds herself faced with the lives that she could have lived if she had chosen a different path. She forgives herself and her regrets.

This is a powerful book. I love Nora,and I love the message of the novel.

Author Matt Haig is always interesting to me, even if his books are not as excellent as I anticipate. THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY comes close to perfect; it is inspired from a Sylvia Plath quote and begins with our heroine attempting suicide. It’s not actually a dark beginning but, rather, a quest for an understanding of what constitutes a decent life. What would a book of regrets look like and how would it frame a life? Haig enjoys borrowing ideas from other authors, artists, philosophers and poets and turning them inside out in his pursuit of a good tale. I appreciate his efforts and enjoy the material immensely. What would a life look like if a ‘no’ had been a ‘yes?’ I thought the ending especially well done. Somehow, for all the bells and whistles, there seemed to be missing some essential spark that would have lent magic to the whole endeavor. This was almost perfect. I can’t wait to see what he writes next. Don’t miss this book; it is really quite good. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

I enjoyed this book and zipped right through it. First of all it has a library and librarians love books with libraries. Secondly who doesn't have regrets and wonder what life would be like if you had made different choices. I do all of the time. It was a little bit of the movies "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Family Man" at times, but I still liked it. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

I was given early access to this title through NetGalley . First of all, I want to say that I loved this book! I was so drawn in by the story line that I finished it in a day. This book is the story of a British woman named Nora who is struggling with depression. Early on in life, Nora seemed to have so much potential. She was on track as a young teen to be an Olympic swimmer. When she decided to give that up due to the associated pressures, she took up piano. She and her brother started a band but just as the band was starting to experience success and was offered a recording contract, she quit. Two days before she was supposed to get married, she called off the wedding. In the few months previous to the start of this story, her mother passed away. When Nora's cat dies, her depression overcomes her, and she decides she does not want to live anymore. She takes an overdose of her anti-depressants and when she awakes, she finds herself in a seemingly endless library. The only other person in the library is her former school librarian, Mrs. Elm, who had always taken a special interest in Nora. She tells Nora that all of the books in the library are the infinite lives Nora could have lived based on different choices Nora could have made. This library is a place between life and death where Nora can choose to look back on her regrets and see how her life would have been if she had pursued other paths in life. If she decides she wants to live and finds a path that would ultimately make her happy she could choose to stay in that version of her life.

This book was very thought-provoking and relatable. How many of us have wondered how life would have been different if we had made different choices along the way or thought that we would surely be happier if only we had (fill in the blank)? Having the chance to erase regrets is certainly a tempting topic to explore. As I was reading and really enjoying the story, I knew that the ending of the story would be crucial to my ultimate rating of this book. I am happy to say that it did not disappoint!

The Midnight Library is an intriguing story about the choices we make, our perception of our lives and our choices, and regrets. It begins on a dark note, and we are told the character we are first introduced to, Nora, has decided to kill herself. What follows is a countdown of the events that lead her to this decision over the course of a week, but really her regrets and sadness go back much further. Then, Nora is given a chance to start over in the Midnight Library, and can see how her life would have turned out had she made different choices. The lives she can sample are infinite, as choices are also infinite. Nora goes on a remarkable journey of self discovery.

As always Matt Haig writes about depression with clarity and a way of breaking mental illness down in a way that is easy for anyone to understand, but this book does not focus all that much on depression despite the fact that Nora is initially depressed and suicidal. Rather, the book's focus is much more philosophical in nature, and allows the reader to consider his or her own life choices, and how these help define our lives as much as our personalities do.

This is an intriguing and lovely book.

I don't know what I was really expecting from this book, but it was not what this book is. There are definitely some sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism notes in this book. I do like all those things but this one was just different for me. In some ways it reminded me of Erin Morgenstern's new book of this library where alternate things can take place.
It does get you thinking about life and all the alternate realities and what ifs. This book definitely left me thinking and being appreciative of the good things in life I have.