This month’s book club pick was Matt Haig’s, The Midnight Library. The short, magical realism story follows Nora Seed, a mid 30’s adult who has plenty of regrets and wishes she had done things differently…only then could she have been happier…she claims.
She finds herself in the Midnight Library after overdosing and discovers that she has now been given the opportunity to live the life or lives she always wanted to see if that is in fact what was missing from her current life.
I am typically a huge fan of magical realism books… but this one felt more like a self help pamphlet disguised as fiction. The topic mentioned in the book is sensitive in nature and I’m sure to the right person a story like this might be more meaningful…. but even then, I felt a certain….disconnect as a reader, the story being told, and the author’s knowledge on this sensitive topic. As an issue, it felt a bit reductive; as a story, it felt 100% roadmapped and disingenuous…
I do think it was a cool idea and something that could have been explored a little more. The story was rather plain and from the start, as the reader, everything was pretty predictable…
Still, OK book. A loose 3/5.