The Midnight Library

Consider me conflicted about this book. In a lot of ways, it was strong throughout, but I felt like I was back in my early creative writing workshops where there will be a story that seems to want to say something, then falls apart at the denouement.

I loved the premise and the set up. There was power in what happened and led Nora to the Midnight Library, where she's met by her childhood librarian who embraced her during one of the most stressful moments of her life. She's forced to look through her “Book of Regrets” and then navigate alternative realities throughout the library, with each book a different life an alternative her was leading, or thusly, alternative lives she could lead if she chose to.

Like I said, the set up for this is fantastic and pulled me in. Yet somehow, over the span of the mid-section of the book, it was starting to lose me. Still a somewhat breezy read that went fast, something about it felt... trite?

Seeing what Nora could have been and her self-actualizations was great, but as the book wore on there was an increasing sense of something missing from her story. There wasn't a lot the author was saying about her trauma and lived experience beyond “well what if she wasn't depressed and worked harder? She could be ANYTHING!”