From the Bookshelf of 2025 Reading Challenge…

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

Start date: June 1, 2021

Finish date: June 30, 2021

Discussion: October 2025 Group Read

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Showing 2 of -3 topics — 104 comments total

October 2025 Group Read

Weyward: Pre-Reading Discussion
By Winter , Group Reads · 4 posts · 20 views

last updated Sep 27, 2025 11:30AM

Weyward: Reviews by 2025 Reading Challengers
By Winter , Group Reads · 1 post · 15 views

last updated Sep 21, 2025 03:59AM

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What Members Thought

Mar 09, 2021 Noel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: international, book-club, magical-reality, paperback-or-hardcover, fantasy, unreadshelf, 2021, contemporary-fiction

Someone once told me, "There are no decisions without regrets." And life is full of decisions. This book is about life, the choices we make and where they lead us and how they affect where we wind up in our journey through this life.
Nora feels like she has a crappy life. Her pet dies, she gets fired, no boyfriend, parents are dead and her brother hates her. Through the book, she has the privilege of living lives she "could have" lived had she made different choices. Would she have been better of ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Dec 27, 2020 Kristi rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-riot-tbr, reading-challenge-2020

What if you had the ability to change the things that you most deeply regretted? After a truly horrible day, Nora makes the decision to end her life and finds herself in a mysterious library run by someone who appears to be her elementary school librarian. Thus the end of her life becomes the beginning of this story.

** spoilers ahead **

This was an interesting twist on the classic “it’s a wonderful life”/multiverse concept. Nora has so many palpable regrets about her life. She could have been a c ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 15, 2021 Bakios rated it it was amazing

“Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations...”

1 like · Like · see review

Dec 18, 2020 Amy rated it it was amazing

Magic unfolds when you read a book at the right time and place in your life. 'The Midnight Library' was that book this year. While not to the extreme Nora faced, the pandemic brings to life questions about the future, our past decisions and what we need to be happy.

Nora's journey in a Sliding Doors type of scenario, she began to understand the choices she made and forgive herself for other people's decisions. Living in a world that's full of uncertainty, makes us contemplate our future. Are we Magic unfolds when you read a book at the right time and place in your life. 'The Midnight Library' was that book this year. While not to the extreme Nora faced, the pandemic brings to life questions about the future, our past decisions and what we need to be happy.

Nora's journey in a Sliding Doors type of scenario, she began to understand the choices she made and forgive herself for other people's decisions. Living in a world that's full of uncertainty, makes us contemplate our future. Are we happy, content with our decisions or is it time to shake up our stories?

From reading Haig's novel, I gave myself permission to move on and embrace life. It's OK to pursue happiness and make our lives meaningful despite difficult times. I rarely give 5-starred reviews but this story resonated with me and I stayed up until 3 am just to finish it. For anyone seeking a book that requires pulling away the curtain to see beyond the smoke and mirrors we hide behind, check out 'The Midnight Library.'

Extract:

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

...more

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Jan 19, 2021 Rachel rated it liked it

Listened on audio.

It was a solid 3.5
Interesting concept that has been played before.
But characters too one dimensional and this read like an early draft.
But overall it had potential and I quite enjoyed the audio. Some excellent quotes and it did feel very much in the spirit of It’s a Wonderful Life.
Two nit picky thinks that drove me crazy on audio.
The mispronunciation of place names.
La Jolla California was pronounced phonetically “La-Joll-a” and Cambridge University Caius College (where I myse ...more

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Feb 13, 2021 Kristen rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: magical-realism, england, audio-book, 2021

Unpopular opinion! This was like a Groundhog's Day life buffet about a character who has utterly failed to launch. I didn't hate it but I didn't find much I genuinely liked, either. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Dec 31, 2020 Natalia rated it liked it

My last read for 2020 -
Finished it with 20
Minutes to spare.

1 like · Like · see review

Feb 24, 2021 Jill rated it liked it

This was a fun read! It was quick and the story moved along easily. I didn't think the development was particularly sophisticated, however. Would make for a great YA recommendation. ...more

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