You might be seeing The Midnight Library by Matt Haig popping up on summer reading lists a lot this year. It’s a popular book right now! It was a 2020 Goodreads Choice Award winner, New York Times best seller, and a Good Morning America book club pick. My book club and I recently finished reading it and we had a LOT to discuss. So is it worth reading?
I’d say so!
But also… that depends!
The last book we read took me a while to get into. Like, a couple hundred pages. The Secret Keeper had me pretty hooked from about page 10, which is always a fun thing to happen when you’re reading! But expectation didn’t quite meet reality for me with this book.
It should have come with a warning
For one, this book should have definitely come with some kind of warning about the suicide themes in it. It’s a major part of the book that hits you about 10% of the way in. We had someone in our group that just experienced a loss (like the week we started reading it). We probably would have picked a different book if we knew.
One of my group members also pointed out that when a book like this has suicide as a major plot point, there should be a number for the suicide hotline or something. I don’t think I’m giving away any spoilers in saying that at the end of the book, suicide isn’t seen as the answer to all of everyone’s problems…. but you had to get to the end of the book for it to make that clear.
How do you feel about philosophy?
Descriptions of the book made it sound like it would be heavy on philosophy. And while there were a few quotes, and a pet named after a philosopher, it wasn’t a super heavy theme in the book. Depending on your feelings about philosophy, that could be a good OR a bad thing.
How do you feel about alternate realities?
Some people have BIG feelings about things like whether there is such a thing as an alternate reality. If that’s you, that may hinder your enjoyment of this book. The book definitely operates under the presumption that there is such a thing, and it’s a large part of the plot. This doesn’t really bother me, but if that’s something that could ruin a book for you, you’ve been warned.
I did feel that the way the alternate realities was handled in the book felt a bit sloppy. There were some missed opportunities and I felt that if the author had spent some more time writing, they could have made the book a bit more interesting and intricate.
My TLDR
The Midnight Library was an easy, entertaining read that I’d recommend. It’s not something that I’d probably read again and again, but not many books are! It would make a great vacation read. Overall I liked the message that your life is worth living. But probably the book could have listed some help hotlines and maybe a trigger warning for suicide at the front.
In general, I somewhat expected a book that was more intellectual and serious than it ended up being.
Did you read The Midnight Library?
I’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment below.
