Midnight Library book review

The concept
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a heartwarming story about a woman who finds a unique library that allows her to revisit moments from her past. The story is told with humour and warmth, and the characters are incredibly relatable.

It offers readers the chance to explore alternate lives they could have lived. It's a chance to see how your life could have been, and to learn from your regrets.


My personal takeaway
We all have regrets in life - from career choices to personal choices. We all stand at some pivotal point where we have to choose, and moving forward, we all think about the other opinion we left behind.

I never proposed to my first love, the girl I liked in my first year of engineering thinking that our friendship would no longer exist if I expressed my feelings. I did not prefer to do one more year long term coaching for GATE, thinking that it would slow down my career by one year.

I'm almost 30 now and I've lived long enough to have my own “book of regrets”. The multiverse-regret mindset can sometimes encourage us to dwell on what could have happened or what didn't happen, rather than being content with the present moment.

This way of thinking can keep us from being truly happy. Maybe it's better to focus on what we do have, rather than what we don't have, in order to find contentment. By reading the stories of this protagonist, you may come to realize that you wouldn't have changed anything after all.

Some flaws:
The premise is delightful and reflective enough, but I also have to say that the execution heavily failed to live up to the concept, it gets predictable at times and the author's choices of character arc are questionable.

As one of the Reddit users pointed out
  • What happens to the version displaced by her arrival in the new life?
  • How will the original version deal with the unexplained amnesia for hours or weeks when she returns?
  • How can someone judge the quality of life when they have none of its memories and will be all at sea when they get there?

The Midnight Library is a perfect read for anyone who needs a little reminder that life is worth living.

Also, I would recommend watching the movie "Everything Everywhere All at Once". It's eccentric to the concept of a "book of regrets" and does a good job of making the point that peace is less about taking the right path and more about working together to achieve equilibrium.

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