The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I am going to keep this review really really short. This book is about a woman who takes her life and winds up in a library where there are endless books with endless possibilities for alternative lives she can choose from. Sounds cool right? And while I think that is such a cool idea this book lacks creativity and I felt like I was just pushed around into different dimensions with the main character and all of her alternative lives were boring. Just simply boring. There is a point where we meet Hugo who is also jumping through dimensions and has been doing so for quite some time. I thought this would be some form of revelation for Nora or a love dynamic would blossom between them, but it almost felt like Hugo’s presence was pointless. There was no character development, no further insight into this character and his meaning in Nora’s life. Maybe I completely missed it or misunderstood, and I am dumb. Someone, please enlighten me if I am wrong. Furthermore, the ending. What was that? Pointless I’ll tell you. Nothing changed. Yes, Nora had some form of realization about her life that made her a better person, but so what? That’s life, we should all work towards being a better person to others and most importantly to ourselves. A quick point I want to make in this review is the lack of respect or attention the author gave to the topic of suicide. Throughout the story, Nora brings up the fact that she did in fact take her life, but there is no further development on this topic. It was thrown around so loosely throughout the story. I find this extremely problematic; we are talking about death, about suicide. That is the base of this book, yet the lack of respect given to such a topic is problematic. Why should a male author write about a woman’s suicide without giving it the proper space it deserves? Is that not enhancing the problem? Maybe I am just cynical and cannot read a book without reading between the lines, but the lack of deserved attention to this topic bothers me. A man, I repeat, a man writing about a woman’s life and treats it so nonchalantly. This book was all over my book feed on Instagram and I heard and read lots of reviews and good things about it so I decided to read it. I am almost shocked that no one else considers this to be an issue. What does this say about us as women? That men can take such sensitive topics involving women and make money off it. That we are so naive and moved by this book that we cannot see its issues? I am starting to think that some of the books on my Bookstagram (Instagram) feed, specifically, Fantasy books have some serious issues surrounding pain, abuse, and lack of actual love and kindness. All of the truth tends to get lost between all of the dragons, moving libraries, vampires, and alternative dimensions, that we brush abuse to the side. This then allows for men to continue writing about topics that deal with women that they have no place writing in the first place. We then are left with women who turn their cheek for a popular book. For click and baits. For followers. For content. What are the psychological effects these books have on us as women? Overall, I would rate this book a 3/10. I believe there are many issues lying underneath all of those cool books in Nora’s library that distract us from the deeper psychological issues this book deals with.