The First Draft

I’m going to go ahead and put it out there- this book’s storyline focuses on a main character who is struggling with mental health. It’s not a huge spoiler, so I think it’s important to note that she does attempt to commit suicide. FOR THAT REASON- this book may not be for everyone.

When I first started reading The Midnight Library, it was honestly because if the whole library idea. I love libraries. The idea of a library hidden in some in-between place was fascinating to me, and I was 100% here for it.

I mentioned it above, but the main character of this book struggles with mental health. The Library appears to her after a suicide attempt, when she is in the “in-between” of life and death.

The library is obviously full of books, but they aren’t the kind of books you’d find at your neighborhood Barnes & Noble (RIP Hastings).

These were different storylines of her life- and since she had made it to the library, she could go through them. Literally.

With the help of a guide- hers appeared as someone she used to know- she could jump into a different life and try it on for size. If she liked it, she could stay for as long as she wanted, OR until something started to feel wrong about it. Even if she liked it when she got that feeling she would be ripped from that book and brought back to the library.

As she goes through these different lives, she slowly starts to realize that a “perfect life”, the life she’d wished she had, didn’t exist. The “perfect life” where she wasn’t alone, or her brother still loved her and her best friend still talked to her- those lives still came with problems.

Eventually she realizes she didn’t have it quite as bad as she thought. She starts to miss the life she threw away, and as she does, the library around her starts to crumble.

Anyway. I’m not going to give you the whole story. But it’s safe to say I thought it was pretty interesting! It was a new take on a pretty common lesson, and overall I thought it was a well-told story. For my Goodreads users, I gave it 5 stars. I’d say it’s a soft 5 or a solid 4.