The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

This Book Changed How I See Regret, Purpose, and Life — Here's Why You Need to Read The Midnight Library

 

 

“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”

 

There are books you like, and then there are books that change you.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig belongs to the second category.

If you’ve ever wrestled with regret, wondered “what if?”, or carried the weight of missed chances, this novel hits where it hurts—and heals.

The Midnight Library made me reflect on my own life in a way few books ever have.

 

Genre: Philosophical fiction meets contemporary fantasy with a twist of mental health realism.

 

What’s The Midnight Library About?

Right between life and death, there’s a library.

That’s where Nora Seed finds herself after a failed suicide attempt—caught in a liminal space where she can try out every possible life she could have lived, had she made different choices.

Each book on the shelf is a doorway into another version of herself.

But as she jumps from life to life, chasing the versions of herself she thinks she should’ve been, she starts to understand the truth about regret, happiness, and the meaning of life.

 

Who Is Nora Seed?

Nora is not your classic protagonist.

She’s deeply flawed, lost, and painfully relatable.

At the start of the book, Nora is empty.

Her life feels like a string of disappointments: she’s estranged from her brother, her cat has died, her music career ended before it started, and she’s walked away from relationships and jobs that once meant something.

Every decision feels like a mistake, and the guilt is paralyzing.

 

 

 

So when she decides to end her life it’s not because she hates living, it’s because she believes she’s wasted her chance to live it right.

She’s not asking why life is hard—she’s asking what’s the point of continuing to try?

That desperation, that slow erosion of hope, is something many people carry in silence.

Nora just… gives up. 

This book doesn’t glorify suicide. It explores the slow, numbing ache of regret and the collapse of hope.

It's deep.

 

“That was how she had felt most of her life...just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret.”

 

 

The Journey Through The Midnight Library

Each book Nora opens is a portal to a life she almost lived. 

She lives out dreams she abandoned: Olympic-level swimming, rock stardom, academic achievements, romantic love, rural peace.

And in each one, she’s haunted by the reality that every gain comes with a different kind of loss.

These lives force Nora to confront her own assumptions.

 

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She thought she ruined her life by quitting music, but when she lives out that “perfect” path, she finds herself hollow and numb.

She believed staying with a former partner would’ve made her happy, but that version of herself is stuck in a miserable, stagnant life.

Even the lives that look perfect from the outside carry their own griefs, pressures, and limitations.

Each life offers something she thought she wanted, but none of them are quite what she imagined.

The more lives she lives, the more she realizes that regret is often based on illusion—and that even in a “better” life, there’s still pain, still uncertainty, still herself.

 

What Nora Ultimately Learns

After experiencing dozens of lives and carrying their emotional weight, Nora finally understands: she was never broken.

She was just disconnected from the value of her own existence.

It’s not that life has to be extraordinary. It just has to be lived.

When she wakes up in the hospital after her suicide attempt, there’s a subtle but powerful shift: the same old neighborhood that once felt lifeless and gray suddenly looks alive. Not because the world has changed, but because she has.

 

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She sees beauty in the mundane.

She realizes that just being alive—being able to feel, to choose, to connect—is a gift.

The Nora at the start of the book was full of shame, stuck in the past, disconnected from herself.

The Nora at the end doesn’t have all the answers, but she wants to try.

She’s not chasing a perfect life anymore. She’s choosing her life—messy, uncertain, but beautiful.

 

The Midnight Library Worth The Read?

This isn’t a trendy “feel good” book. It’s a raw, honest, emotionally intelligent story that confronts one of the hardest human truths: regret.

It’s deeply philosophical without being pretentious.

It speaks to that universal part of all of us that wonders if we’re living the “right” life.

It reminded me that no one has a perfect life. That every choice comes with a trade-off.

That life is never about erasing regret—it’s about forgiving yourself, learning from it, and moving forward anyway.

The Midnight Library is a reminder that it’s never too late to choose life.

Until my next read,

Marianna ♥

 

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