The Midnight Library is very disappointing

I finished this book few weeks ago and I just can’t get it out of my mind how bad it is.

* The main character, Nora, decides to take her life because the last 24 hours of her life wasn’t nice. Her life up until the start of the books was average at worst.
* While living the alternative life with your current memory at the current time was interesting, it ended up being a terrible choice.
* Nora never truly lived those lives because she don’t know that version of Nora. So she has done more harms to those Nora then anything. Like in her Olympic life. She left that Nora (who also attempted to take her own life) in a very awkward position. She doesn’t bother trying to understand them.
* Whole Hugo section was very unnecessary. Not once Nora was wondering who the Librarian was nor what the Library was. She was just curious about why she was there instead of being dead. Yet they throw us with pages of potential explanation. Even that was followed up half-assedly by Nora Asking Mrs. Elm “Are you God” and not getting any proper answer.
* Also, did Nora and Hugo have sex while Nora was possessing her body? Isn’t that a rape?! I reread that part multiple times and it’s just disturbing.
* Her final life felt like it was really forced to make it seem special. Like how she was in awe of seeing her daughter even though she had kids in her other lives. The explanation it gave was something like she only got to see her other kids for like a minute. Well, at this point she only saw this daughter for like a minute too, so what’s so special? Author really tried to make us feel that that life was it. But it was forced.
* Now she comes back to her OG life and get’s to talk with her brother and her friend and feel better about her life. But that just made her entire journey pointless. She sent those texts before she took all those pills, meaning they would have responded even without the Library’s help.

Like other people said, this book is written like YA book. She makes it big at anything she does. Stayed at swimming and becomes Olympic Gold Medalist. Keep studying glacial and become a glaciologist. Run a vineyard and become a successful winemaker. Even in lives she studied the same thing as her OG life, she becomes a university professor and an author. It’s honestly weird that the OG Nora couldn’t make it at anything.

Finally, as for the book that is about depression and regret, it’s very negligent to life. Nora would hijack other Nora’s body for minutes, hour, days, or weeks, and that other Nora won’t even know it. If the OG Nora leaves that life, then they just act like had some brainfart. Now, if she decides to stay, then that Nora just disappears. That’s horrifying and doesn’t fit the theme of the book. Nevermind the fact that no one’s bothered by it or even mentions this body hijacking. This could have been easily fixed by them changing this to a “what if” scenario, instead of “It is” scenario.

There’s more I can talk about this but even writing about this is very frustrating. The only good thing about this book is how easy and fast it was to read. Well, let me know what you guys think about The Midnight Library.

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by ActiveAd4980