The Midnight Library

I'm unsure whether or not to approach this book as a “Young Adult” novel and whether or not that should change how I view it, but as it stands, I'll be viewing this book the same way I would any other. My hope for this is that a teen or young person who's contemplating any form of self-harm picked this book up, read it, maybe got something from it, decided against self-harm, then read literally any of the many pieces of literature Haig pretentiously references in this book, realizes how much better that piece of literature was than this crap, and regains a wonderful outlook on life realizing there are so many better books to read than this.

This was so horribly written I'm really wondering if he had a page count he needed to reach or something. A 288 page book has never taken me under a week to read, and it really is because this writing is so overly simplistic, the characters so uninteresting, the narrative style so redundant that a 10 year old could read this in the same time I did. I have no idea how this book has so much acclaim, there's so much wrong with this book, and since it's been a long time since I read something I really didn't like, I'll even break it down!

This is some of the worst writing I've encountered, so many moments in this novel where it actually feels like Haig is breaking the fourth wall to tell the reader something, there is little that the characters or setting do to help the reader infer any further meaning, rather Haig simply has Nora say philosophical (a word that sounds so trite now after reading this book sadly) mumbo-jumbo to account for that he just doesn't know how to portray her grasping deeper meaning, and in turn help the reader to become Nora and share her journey. Pair that with a plot line that on the surface should be engaging, but handled by Haig becomes incredibly repetitive (Reading about Nora constantly asking people in her various lives what's happening or pretending to not be alien to the timeline was so grating that it distracts from the point he's trying to make, which he of course then compensates for by directly spoon feeding the reader what he's trying to say.) And speaking of repetitive, he seriously repeats himself so much in this book, Nora explains her cat's name/nickname multiple times, he uses the same Thoreau quote I think 3 times, and to read him continuously name drop philosophical authors over and over induces a headache in me as I think about it. There is also SO much empty space in this book lmao, like seriously he had to have had a page count he wanted to hit because I've never encountered a book that felt so lazy. There's seriously a page that's just four lines in a song he already dedicated a chapter to earlier, that I wish I didn't have to read again. All this not even to mention the ending of the book can be inferred maybe 30 pages into the novel, and makes the inane journey that proceeds even more cringingly annoying.

I would also like to say, since he references The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath at least 3 times in this book, (The Plath quote that begins the book, Nora seriously explains a major analogy from the Bell Jar that no doubt inspired this book, and later Nora just straight up has a copy of it in one of her realities.) Please if anyone reads this review please go just read that book instead of this. Haig basically wants you to do the same, he pretty much overtly tells you this in the book with how overt he is in saying he just got the idea for this book from Bell Jar. Seriously it's a much better book and is much more insightful than this drivel.

At the end of the day however, this book was refreshing because it helped me realize that the more challenging books I've been reading are very much worth it. I was also wondering if I'm struggling with perhaps reading comprehension or something since I was finding it hard to truly lock into more challenging stuff like To The Lighthouse, but no, that's simply an intricately written novel, while this is a 45 year old British guy who spends 288 pages poorly disguised as a 35 year old woman named Nora Seed just to tell you he knows the names of a lot of philosophers and you probably shouldn't kill yourself.