Gosh this was beautiful. I think Matt Haig could write about watching paint dry and I’d want it.

This book is so well thought out and so *human* and so empathetic. This book is a study in empathy, human emotion, desperation, loneliness, love, family, community, self loathing, self refection, self respect and mental health.

There is no filler in this book, nothing to skim-read or gloss over. It all matters and everything adds to the story and your experience. Nora is so likeable and relatable. We’ve all experienced poor mental health in varying degrees, even if it’s just feeling a bit ‘meh’, and so Nora is automatically someone we can read and understand and feel for.

Matt has such a personal experience with poor mental health and depression and a clear understanding of how it can make you feel (and it’s different for everyone). This is an honest book about how bad things can be, it doesn’t belittle depression of hopelessness or suicide, it respects it but handles it delicately in a way that isn’t overwhelming.

It is also a book about hope and how perception, good mental health and seeing others’ perspectives can make the world flip on its head and seen a different place.

I adore the general concept of the midnight library as a place and a plot. That we can contain multitudes in an infinite universe and all this can be within us and all be influenced by the smallest of choices and decisions, is amazing, overwhelming and somehow comforting with the way that Matt writes it.

I’m so grateful for this book and think everyone should read it. It is a book that takes you out of your own head whilst making you feel understood. It has so much heart, feeling and empathy and is written with an emotional intelligence that is unparalleled.

TW: please remember that this book does have an emphasis on suicide and poor mental health and although dealt with very respectfully and delicately, please keep your own MH in mind when reading this & take care.
Other TWs: cancer and death by cancer, adultery, pet death, loneliness, sibling death by suicide, death by car crash, alcoholism, addition, self harm.

Thank you so much to Canongate and NetGalley for my gifted eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.