TL;DR
Overall rating: 3/5
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 304 pages
One-sentence summary: A depressed and desperate woman is given the chance to live all of her other, possible lives after she attempts suicide in her root life.
Tough topics: suicide, death, depression and other mental health disorders
Read-alikes: The Five People You Meet in Heaven, A Long Way Down, The 7-1/2 Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle
Available formats: Audio only
If you're a sucker for stories of redemption like The Kite Runner, A Christmas Carol, or It's a Wonderful Life, then you will definitely enjoy The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig. In it, 30-something protagonist Nora is losing her battle with depression and "decides to die." She ends up in a mysterious library, where she is given in the opportunity to visit an infinite number of her other, possible lives, and perhaps change the choices she regretted making in her root life.
Less than halfway through the book it becomes pretty clear how the story is going to end, which is okay. It's the journey to that ending that makes for an interesting book, right? Still, the book could probably stand to be a few chapters shorter than it is, since it makes its main point early on.
Haig handles Nora's depression and suicide sensitively, and the concept of getting to explore all the directions you didn't take in life is very thought-provoking. This would be a great book to read and discuss with friends!
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