I love Matt Haig, this is another hope filled and inspirational book from the man I go to for my mindfulness, my reminder there is always hope and to persevere. It was beautiful and as ever I think Matt could write anything and I would want to read it. Devoured in an evening, I instantly regretted it as it’s now over ! I loved the concept of the midnight library , obviously as book obsessed I was going to, but it’s so clever and original . I loved the It’s a wonderful life approach, it’s one of my favourite concepts and obviously even that Franz Kafka wasn’t the first to use the idea of parallel lives to show what might have been, but I love the fact it shows Nora what could be , rather than the world without her. Beautiful, inspiring and full of love and hope.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

I loved this story. It is beautifully written and thought provoking. The idea of parallel lives is intriguing. I thought that the ending was really good and that Nora learnt many things through her journey. This is a gem of a story that I would definitely recommend reading.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Wasn’t sure where this was going but started to really get into it as Nora’s story progresses. I’ve heard this categorised as a fiction self help book - and it really is. It’s no secret that Haig has struggled with his own mental health, going down far as almost taking his own life. And Nora Seed is struggling too, feeling that her life is falling away from her as she experiences loss after loss after loss. And she can see no way out. But after a drastic act, she finds herself in The Midnight Library (run by her high school librarian) and her adventure begins. She visits countless other lives to find the perfect life. She experiences so many different lives, loves, losses, dreams, and heartache. And it’s a voyage of discovery into the power and impact of small things and how the perception of success is flawed because it’s usually by an external measure. It’s also choc full of good philosophy references that are really deep. I could see where Nora’s story was going to end up, and I wasn’t disappointed after making her revelations. And her realisation that ending her life wasn’t because she was miserable, but because she convinced herself there was no way out. Always look for hope. Look for the small things. I think this will also warrant a second read. A great book.

If you were given the chance to try another life, which regrets would you choose to undo? This is the decision Nora Seed has to make multiple times in the Midnight Library, a place between life and death. There are several reasons why I loved this book. In previous reviews of Matt Haig books I have mentioned that I don't usually like his books, but I think this mostly Reasons to Stay Alive that I wasn't keen on. How to Stop Time, The Humans and The Radleys are all books I've thoroughly enjoyed so requesting The Midnight Library on NetGalley was a bit of a no brainer for me.Nora Seed is a philosopher at heart, having studied the subject at university. Throughout the book Nora considers beliefs different philosophers held and honestly reading it felt like being in my own brain at times. At this point my boyfriend asked if he needed to check that reading this book would be okay for me - Nora is also on antidepressants and feels like she's just going through the motions of life. (I was fine).

Through the Midnight Library Nora gets to relive several versions of her life and manages to lose some of the regrets she had as a result. Should she have married Dan? Should she have become an Olympic swimmer? Should she have continued with music? As I read I found myself considering what choices I would make if I found myself in the Midnight Library (as I'm pretty sure it would be a library for me too).

Matt Haig has written a beautiful story that I know I will come back to again and again over time.

The Midnight Library is a novel about Nora Seed, struggling with depression, she decides to end her life. After overdosing on antidepressants she wakes up in a library, a place between life and death where all of the books in the library are the infinite lives Nora could have lived if she made different choices. What would have happened differently if Nora had perused swimming to Olympic level? What if she had signed that record contract with her teenage band? What if she had married her boyfriend from university? What if she had moved to Australia with her best friend?

Haig’s melancholic writing style is something I’ve always enjoyed because despite everything he always manages to convey hope. It’s human, fragile, beautiful, relatable. Even at the darkest moments, when confronted with all of life’s regrets there’s hope and potential.

“Success isn’t something you measure and life isn’t a race you can win.”

I am so honoured to be afforded the opportunity to read Matt Haig’s newest adult fiction novel by Canongate and Netgalley.

A sincere thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley for providing me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest reviewl.

This is not my usual genre, I’m more into crime books and psychological ones too however I wanted to take the opportunity to read something from outside my norm. And I am glad I did!! Thank you for  opening up my mind to something totally different.

A wonderful, feel good adventure through the lives that could have been. I'm a huge fan of books that use string theory and allow the reader to experience the different ways in which a life can be lived.
Nora is a kind person, almost unbelievably so at times, at yet she is seldom kind to herself. Looking at her regrets, she is given the opportunity to see how life would be if she had made different choices.

I had only read a couple of pages of this book and I was instantly drawn in, and I just knew that I was going to love this book.
I've read a few of Matt Haig's books, and Mental Health is often a subject that he writes about. He writes very well and in a way that is easy to understand. His characters are often quirky. His books are refreshing different.
The protagonist Nora Seed is a person who doesn't feel that she fits into a societal norm. She doesn't know how to be happy and live her life.
I love the idea of a library where you can reassess your life. It was interesting to see how the slightest change can have a big effect on your life and on other people. This book is reminiscent of It's a Wonderful Life, but much more gritty.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It's the type of book that makes you think and question if and how you could/would make changes to your life. I found myself thinking about Nora inbetween reading it.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for my ARC

I loved this book ! I love the idea that between life and death there is a library where you can reflect on all of your life decisions and explore what would have happened if you chose a different direction in your real life. I often think if I hadn't made certain decisions where would I have ended up?? This is an easy read and deals with mental health issues , family and friends and lots of what if's... This is one of my favourite books of the year so far and makes you reflect on your own life. Fantastic book !

Nora Seed has hit rock bottom. In the course of a day, her cat is found dead, she loses her job in a music shop, the private piano lessons she teaches are cancelled and her next door neighbour no longer needs her help. Her best friend doesn't reply to her messages, she's still getting over cancelling her wedding (not helped by her ex still trying to contact her) and her brother no longer talks to her or sees her. She has nothing left to live for, no one who will miss her when she's gone and feels like she'd be better off dead. She decides to take her life and wakes up in this mysterious library, between life and death and is faced with the regrets she has about all the different decisions she had in life. She gets a chance to explore these decisions and live the life had she taken a different decision. Will she find a life she prefers or will she decide that she still wants to die?

The premise of this book is very interesting to me, I love the idea of how the slightest decision in life can drastically alter your life. Exploring all the different Noras and their lives was cool and it was fun to see the different versions Haig came up with. This element of the book kinda reminds me of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson but instead of the character reliving life from the beginning over and over, Nora gets to chose the different decisions at key parts of her life which is cool.

I do think the addition of Hugo as a character and his story line wasn't needed, I felt it made the story drag a bit and considering this is a short book that's a bit of a feat. There was also a mention of a mugging towards the end of the book, specifically saying that Nora remembers the day she lost her job, the day of the mugging, and there is no other mention of this in the book. So I was a bit lost about that, it's possible it was edited out but that mention was forgotten. This is also an ARC so there is a chance the final version has everything smoothed out properly.

Haig's own experiences with mental health really do help the story line and how Nora is feeling, it felt authentic and believable. It's not super heavy though, there are some serious topics but under Haig's guidance the overall tone is positive and hopeful. It's a fun, thought provoking if slightly predictable read. And I really got a kick out of the music shop Nora worked in being called String Theory, nerdy and punny from a music and multiverse point of view!

Nora Seed, an ordinary woman living an ordinary life in the ordinary town of Bedford, is in despair. ('Only the Sertraline stopped her crying'). She's lost her job, walked away from her own wedding, and rejected both success in a band and as a competitive swimmer ('She'd been the fastest fourteen-year old girl in the country at breaststroke...'). Now she decides to end her life but she finds it isn't that simple...

I loved the idea of this book as soon as I heard about it - a woman who, rather than vanishing into oblivion, finds herself in an in-between place, an infinite library where her possible lives are filed and she has the opportunity to consider what might have. No, it's not a new idea - I thought of the film A Matter of Life and Death, or even the ancient idea of Purgatory - but I think the fact it seems familiar just shows how intriguing, how compelling it really is. We'd all like, I think, to be able to sift over what-might-have beens, to look for The Moment when it all changed - and what better way than in a library?

The setup gives Haigh an opening to spin many stories. Nora finds herself sampling lives, dropped into the middle of things, of alternative existences she might have lived if she'd gone different ways. It's fascinating but also panic inducing - she isn't the "her" of the alternate, she's still very much the "her" of her "root life" and hasn't lived as, say, the Olympic champion of the rock goddess. Yet she's still dropped in the deep end, about to give a motivational speech to a conference or the encore to a concert in sweaty, glitter San Paulo. Even in the most mundane of existences she might emerge from the Library out and about and not know where home is, or what job she does. This succession of existences is calculated to bring out the imposter syndrome in all of us, making even the most outwardly successful lives a stressy, high-heartrate business and creating an sense of unease, of imitation, of fakery as though Nora is, literally, an interloper to herself.

Against this unsettling background, the book, as you'd expect, allows Nora a level of self-analysis, of coming to terms with past events. And as you might expect, Nora comes to understand that many of her regrets are misplaced - to know all is to forgive all, including oneself, and the added insight allowed by running through the alternates (combined with a teeny bit of omniscience from her guide through library, her old school librarian Mrs Elm) lets her come to terms with a lot of past baggage. (No details, that would be too spoiler). Some authors might leave it there, with a relatively predictable message about acceptance but Haig has, I'd say, a slightly deeper understanding and does more than give us a succession of flickering lives for Nora from which she can choose the best.

Rather, as we see her friends, family and associates through the yes of all the different Noras - women who have achieved, or not achieved different things and who therefore have very different outlooks and experiences - we get a more rounded picture of everyone, because all those people, too, are living different lives for each Nora. So there's her beloved, estranged gay brother, Joe, who in some timelines is alive, some dead. The father who pushed her into swimming, as a compensation for his own loss. Her mother, who 'treated her like a mistake in need of correction'. Ravi, her brother's best friend who's never forgiven her for pulling the plug on the band and trapping him in Bedford - a town which 'was a conveyor belt of despair' (ouch). Dan, her sometimes-husband (and sometimes not).

All of these characters gradually reveal themselves, with little digressions into their own pasts and families. They are often different from timeline to timeline but also, always the same. They impact on Nora and she impacts on them. It's not as simple and as trite) as saying, oooh, look, Nora. Look at what happens without you, what those around you lose. Instead, we get a complex, many sides and always compassionate view of a whole group of people, the different (and overlapping) narratives making this book a sort of literal hologram, a dense and four dimensional rendering of all its characters. It's a rich, enjoyable reading experience with many moments of sad - or happy - recognition.

It's also vividly, gorgeously written. At a particularly low point, when she seems to have no friends, Nora sees herself as 'antimatter, with added self-pity'. She reflects on how 'Happy moments can turn into pain, given time' and considers her existence to be 'Incomplete living and incomplete dying'. There's a sense - which we've all had I think though hopefully, most off us rarely and not for long - of separation, of distancing from life, a thing which, as I have said, is only heightened by Nora's serial immersion into versions of herself which aren't her. I have rarely seen as compelling a realisation of a character, or such sharp writing. And there is a great deal of humour here too ('In this life, she clearly had no taste.' 'Her dad belonged in a world of landlines') as well as an overall fascination with life, and with the wider world as seen by the various Noras: the whales off the coast of Australia, the raging fires around LA, which recur and recur. Seld absorbed and inward-looking its not.

In short, compelling, compassionate and a great read. I would recommend.

When I first read the premise of this book I was so intrigued to see where it would go.

Matt Haig's easy to read story makes you think about every different path your life could've taken through the eyes of the very funny Nora. While touching on mental health, family, her love life and pets, we are taken on a journey through multi-verses and encouraged to think about what really matters to us overall.

Ultimately, I thought it felt a bit flat but this could be a result of starting with such a great premise, and the difficulty to end something like this in a way that really feels like the best was derived from the base idea.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was so disappointed by this one. I first heard about it last year, and instantly put it on my TBR list - it sounded amazing and like something I would love. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to expectations at all. I was expecting it to be multi layered and dark and rich with detail and instead I felt like it was very shallow - none of Nora's alternate lives are explored in any detail, and everything felt very simple. In places, it felt like we were supposed to stop and marvel at the insight Matt Haig was putting on the page for us, and there was just nothing there for me. I did like the concept, but I kept thinking how amazing it would have been in the hands of a different writer - if David Mitchell had written this it would have been my favourite book of all time.

So, Nora is in a limbo of sorts, between life and death. She has lots of regrets and has made lots of bad decisions.

In the midnight library, she is given moments in her life which would have changed had she made different choices. All Nora has to do is choose a book and she is thrust into that alternate reality.

Nora has the choice to stay if she is happy, but the lure of a happier life is always there.

I loved this book which I thought was so meaningful. There is something about this story that stays with you.

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices.

If I had to summarise The Midnight Library, I'd describe it as The Butterfly Effect meets It's A Wonderful Life, set within an episode of Doctor Who.

There were so many things I liked about this book. It has short chapters and the writing flowed easily. The main character, Nora, had enough depth that I felt invested in her life.

It also made me reflect on my own life and how different things might or could have been if I had made one choice differently. I think it's a book that will stick with me for a while.

This was the first book I've read by Matt Haig, but I'd definitely like to read some of his previous novels.

The only reason I couldn't give it 5-stars is because I thought certain parts were a little predictable.

CW: suicide, depression, death

Thank you to Netgalley and Canongate for the copy of this novel.

Matt Haig is a truly inspiring author.

Every book of his that I read, I come away with a real sense of enlightenment.

The Midnight Library is no exception.

We follow Nora as she works her way through various versions of her lives, as she too becomes enlightened. Gaining a different perspective to certain events and moments in her life.

This is a story that is beyond meaningful, one that can make you open your mind a bit more and allow you to consider things in a way that you may not have been able to acknowledge before.

If I could it rate it more than 5 stars I would.

This was a beautiful, hopeful book about life’s possibilities and the negative power of regret. As ever, Matt Haig perfectly addresses the human condition in his latest novel. I loved the fact that each person’s ‘between life’ would be different depending on them: a library, a video game store...It almost reads like a manifesto for modern life - in the best way.

This is my first time reading anything by Matt Haig, and I'm so glad I did. This was the perfect book for this moment in my life.

The Midnight Library is a new take on one of my favorite story tropes. The overall arc of the book is one of healing from depression, and it does it by having the character Nora Seed, look at all the decisions, big and little, that she has regretted in her life, that she thinks have led to her current state of depression and despair, and see what her life would be like if she changed one of those decisions.

There basically was not one thing I did not like about this book:

*I liked the process and journey that Nora goes through, and the overall structure of the book.
*I liked the short chapters, short chapters can really help with the pace of a book.
*I really liked Nora as character, and as someone who has gone through similar processes and problems, I found her really relatable.
*I really liked the themes that the book explored and how it reached the conclusion it did.

There's actually so much I would love to say about The Midnight Library, but I feel to go into more depth risks revealing spoilers. This book helped teach me to hope again, and to see a way through to my own healing.

It's a beautiful story that perfectly depicts a journey from depression through to finding a place of healing. Wonderfully told, and written with such warmth and love, I couldn't put it down and finished it in a day.

As soon as I heard about this book I knew I had to read it. I love reading books set in libraries, or to do with books, and I was excited for this one. While I did enjoy elements of this story, primarily the basic concept, it wasn't my favourite library related book

This book follows Nora in the space between life and death which, for Nora, materialises as a library of infinite different parallel lives she could have lived if she'd just changed one decision along the way. Nora gets the chance to live many of these parallel lives, in the hopes of finding something worth living for

I find a lot that I read books where I love the concepts but the execution doesn't thrill me completely. Perhaps my expectations were too high for this one, but it all just fell a bit flat for me

I considered dnfing this at about 30% but I'm glad I pushed through. I liked a lot of the lives explored in the second half and thought the lessons learnt by Nora, while a little heavy-handed, were worthwhile and thought-provoking

I don't think Matt Haig's writing style and humour work 100% for me, but if you're a fan of his work I think you'd really enjoy this one too

Nora Seed's life could have taken many different directions; She might have been an Olympic swimmer, a Rock Star, a mother. When, in her thirties, she attempts to take her own life she gets a chance to experience these lost lives.

Although this book felt like one I had read before (the concept is a little overused) it was enjoyable and I flew through it.

Thank you, #NetGalley and Cannongate for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.