One of the things I love about Matt Haig’s books is the way you can just slip right into them so easily. You just feel so comfortable reading them you just don’t want to put them down and this one is just the same. The moment you pick up this book you feel like you know Nora already. This book is an easy read but it is also incredibly clever and beautifully written. It is in parts funny, in parts sad, but 100% life affirming. I think most people have a little bit of Nora in them but which one is another thing...

Between life and death there is the Midnight Library a place where you get to look at your regrets and and pick the life that suits you best. Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library and with the help of an old friend starts to address everyone of her regrets to find her perfect life but before time runs out which life will she choose.

Firstly my thanks to Canongate Books and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. Publication date 20th August 2020.

Nora Seed is at the lowest point in her life. Her parents are dead, her brother no longer speaks to her, her best friend has moved to Australia and she has just lost her job. She sits in her dingy flat and decides she has no reason to carry on living. She takes an overdose.

She ‘wakes up’ in a library. The librarian is her old school library teacher, Mrs Elm, who was always very kind to her. Mrs Elm explains this is the midnight library which exists between life and death; where every possible alternative life can be tried out to see if there is one Nora wishes to carry on living. Nora is handed her ‘book of regrets’ where she can read everything she has regretted in life. Perhaps she can choose a life where she can alter that decision she now regrets.

We are taken along with Nora to experience many of her alternate lives.

Will she find one she is happy with and decide to carry on living before time starts to move on and the library disappears forever?

Anyone who has read or knows of Matt Haig will know of his struggles with anxiety and depression. He makes no secret of the fact he almost took his own life. This is a man who knows life can get better and it is never too late to change your future.

There are many paths we can take in life and we must not focus on the grass being greener. We need to make the most of and enjoy the life we are living.

I’m going to give this book my 5 star rating. I have to admit that I almost gave up on it until around 10% in as the beginning is really very depressing. But please bear with it. Don’t stop reading. Finish it and it will be a book which stays with you for a very long time. I know the moral of the story will certainly stay with me and I will be recommending this book.

PS have tissues to hand if you tend to be emotional! I went through a few.

'"Between life and death there is a library," she said. "And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices...Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?'"

Nora is in her mid-thirties and thoroughly unsatisfied with her life. When a neighbour finds her cat on the side of the road, so begins the last few hours in which Nora wants to live. After an attempt to take her own life, she wakes up in The Midnight Library, where she will have the chance to change her life.

I'm a huge Matt Haig fan and as soon as he announced the title for his new book, I couldn't wait to read it. The Midnight Library did not disappoint.

I devoured this in one sitting, completely engrossed in Nora's story. It was heartbreaking, real, relatable and so easy to read. The writing style is also perfect, Matt Haig is a brilliant storyteller.

The concept of being able to fix your regrets and see where those choices would have left you is so interesting. The subject of suicide is also handled incredibly delicately.

The Midnight Library is a wonderfully uplifting novel that everyone should read.

A huge thank you to Cannongate Books for the chance to read this title in exchange for an honest review. I'll definitely be pre-ordering a signed copy and singing it's praises for a while to come!

After attempting suicide, Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, a place in-between life and death. Here, every library book shows an alternative reality where she made different choices in life. She can undo her breakup, change her career, travel the world, repair her relationships with her family, become a successful musician/Olympian/parent. Nora travels through her parallel lives in search of fulfilment, in search of what it is that truly makes life worth living. It’s an interesting, yet terrifying premise. Would you want the chance to do things differently and see how your life would turn out?

The Midnight Library is another absolute treasure from Matt Haig, a brilliant, vital and poignant read- by far the best book I’ve read this year. For anyone feeling the weight of regret or feeling a bit restless and lost in life at the moment, I can’t recommend this enough.

What an interesting read - it's basically a fictionalised self-help book, and I don't think I've ever read anything like that before! I've heard great things about Matt Haig's writing and have been meaning to read something of his for a really long time. I follow him on Twitter and he's just the most wholesome person ever, very open about his own mental health struggles and extremely supportive of everyone else's journey.

I remember spotting The Midnight Library on a list of forthcoming books and I completely fell in love with the concept: a woman finding herself in a mysterious library between life and death where she is able to experience an infinite amount of parallel lives. I'm also a massive fan of Groundhog Day type stories like The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The First Time Lauren Pailing Died so this seemed absolutely perfect for me.

I really enjoyed Nora's journey through her parallel lives and the lessons she had to learn one way or another. My heart broke for her so many times! I know it's cheesy to say things like "what IS happiness?" but this book really makes you wonder. Is it money, love, family, fame, a good career; is it a mixture of these? Is it even possible to have it all or must I wholeheartedly commit to just one? If so, which one??

Minor existential crisis mid-read but I made it to the end! Would highly recommend :)
Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate for the ARC, longer review posted on Goodreads.

‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig, lives up to and, dare I say, exceeds the incredible standard we’ve come to expect from his previous work. This book gives a person stuck between life and death the opportunity to relive lives that could have been by selecting a book from ‘The Midnight Library’.

This book explores a concept similar to that of ‘If Only’ by Melanie Murphy, but is given a unique twist. Matt Haig is a mental health advocate, and so effortlessly weaves the narrative of this into his fiction; more so in this book than perhaps any of his others.

This book not only takes you on the journey of Nora, the incredibly relatable protagonist, but it also twists your own mind to think what could have been if you had made different decisions, but in the best possible way.

With twists and turns, some serious character development, and the writing style of Matt Haig, I can’t help but recommend this book to absolutely any reader.