The Midnight Library

Random unstructured bits ‘n' bobs from my brain, having just finished this lovely story:
- The pacing of Nora's understanding was a little bit annoying. Like, in the beginning, she just seemed a bit thick, needing the same thing explained to her countless times. But then, in no time at all, she developed this astonishing self-awareness and recovered an inordinate amount of self-worth. It was a bit whiplash-y.- The story pace is great. The writing is simple and things move along very quickly. Sometimes I love getting lost in the prose and sometimes I appreciate that the words simply escort me to the world and leave me to get lost in there.- I was enjoying experiencing each one of Nora's lives. The transition to yeah-so-then-she-basically-lived-hundreds-of-lives felt rather abrupt.- I *get* why Nora felt the best life wasn't her own and ultimately had to give it up, but I don't have to be happy about it.- I appreciate that Nora ultimately recognised that she wasn't worthless, that without her bad things happened in other people's lives, BUT the tidy ending with the glimpses of the lives she'd experienced was just a bit too saccharine.- The message of you-don't-know-what-you're-missing-if-you-check-out lesson felt really heavy-handed at the end. I don't know about you, but for me it also completely missed its mark. On the contrary, almost-suicide seems *much* more appealing now. Living hundreds of lives, seeing the world, a choose-your-own-adventure version of my own life, all in a single minute, and returning to this version of me with the memory intact of all those lived experiences? Are you kidding me? That would be amazing.

tl;dr: Definitely not flawless, but a great story and one that will stay with me for quite some time.