Book · 2020
The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig
A suicidal woman finds a library between life and death where every book is a different version of the life she could have lived.
What does Reddit think of The Midnight Library?
r/suggestmeabook drives almost the entire conversation here — 559 of 582 mentions — and what it says is unusually harsh for a book this recommended. The top-voted takes call the writing basic, the plot predictable, and the message unoriginal, with one commenter reaching for the line "a self help book crossed with the worst Hallmark movie of all time" (↑364). Another (↑195) pairs it with A Little Life on a list of books they regret reading, and a third (↑151) reduces it to one word: "Ugh." That's not universal. A lower-voted comment (↑163) says the book gave a reader "a new perspective of life" they needed. r/printSF barely registers at 17 mentions, r/Fantasy at 6. Mentions peaked in 2021 at 154, the year after release, then settled into the 60-100 range through 2025 — steady traffic, cooling enthusiasm.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · regret and alternate lives
- · suicide and mental health
- · self-help disguised as fiction
- · cosmic multiverse premise
Common praise
- + One reader credits the book with giving them "a new perspective of life" they said they still needed (↑163).
- + Readers keep it on comfort-read lists paired with The Poppy War and The Vanishing Half, treating it as an easy palate cleanser.
Common criticism
- − The top-voted comment in r/suggestmeabook calls the writing basic and the plot predictable, with the message "unoriginal" (↑416).
- − Another comment reduces it to "a self help book crossed with the worst Hallmark movie of all time" (↑364).
- − A third reader calls the premise interesting but the execution "fake and contrived," saying the protagonist never landed (↑192).
- − One commenter lumps it in with The Silent Patient and delivers a two-word verdict: "Ugh" (↑151).
Who it's for
Reach for this if you want a low-commitment, high-concept novel about second chances and don't need the prose to work overtime. If you've already burned out on "what if I'd made different choices" plots, r/suggestmeabook's top comments suggest you'll find the execution thin rather than fresh. Fans of self-help lit dressed as fiction won't mind the didactic turns; readers who want the multiverse premise handled with genre rigor should look toward r/printSF's harder sci-fi instead, where this book barely registers at 17 mentions.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for The Midnight Library?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“The Midnight Library. The concept of the library itself was interesting, but I found the writing very basic, the plot predictable, and the message unoriginal.
“The Midnight Library. Pretty much just a self help book crossed with the worst Hallmark movie of all time.
“The Midnight Library
“The Midnight Library
“Midnight Library is definitely up there. I hated that book. I think a little life takes it for me though. That book is just one giant trigger fest disguised as literature.
“The Midnight Library. It just felt so fake and contrived. The main character did not interest me at all.
“Right off the top of my head: 1. The Midnight Library (seriously needed to read this to get a new perspective of life that I desperately needed and still need) 2. The Poppy War (so excited to read the rest of the trilogy!) 3. The Vanishing Half
“The Midnight Library. Hated it. The Silent Patient. Ugh.
Convinced? Pick up The Midnight Library
Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with The Midnight Library — counted from the comments, not curated.
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
A physicist gets abducted into a box that opens onto every version of the life he could have lived, and has to find his way back to one.
Piranesi
Susanna Clarke
A man alone in an endless house of statues and tides slowly realizes he isn't who the House says he is.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
An envoy is sent alone to a planet where everyone is genderless most of the month, and he has to unlearn who he assumes is in charge.
The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
A handmaid is assigned to breed for a fertility-collapsed theocracy and starts plotting her way out.
The Blade Itself
Joe Abercrombie
Nine-Fingers the barbarian just wants to survive one more winter, but a torturer's investigation and a prince's war have other plans.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
A minor bureaucrat rewrites history for a living until the Party decides his private thoughts are the real problem.
The Midnight Library — frequently asked
Is The Midnight Library worth reading?+
Depends on your tolerance for message-forward fiction. r/suggestmeabook's top comment (↑416) calls the writing basic and the plot predictable, and a close second (↑364) calls it "a self help book crossed with the worst Hallmark movie of all time." It still gets recommended constantly — 559 mentions in that sub alone — so plenty of people pick it up anyway.
Why does Reddit seem to hate The Midnight Library?+
The loudest voices in r/suggestmeabook object to the premise being smarter than the execution: predictable plot turns, an unoriginal message, and dialogue that reads like a self-help book (↑364). One reader (↑195) put it in the same "hated it" bucket as A Little Life. The backlash reads as a reaction to how hard the book was pushed, not a total rejection — it still racked up 582 mentions across seven years.
Is The Midnight Library sad or hopeful?+
The premise is grim — a woman decides to end her life and finds herself in a library of alternate versions of it — but Reddit treats the tone as Hallmark-adjacent rather than bleak. That's actually the criticism: readers wanted the material to sit with the darkness longer instead of resolving into a tidy self-help arc.
What should I read instead of The Midnight Library?+
If the criticism about thin prose lands for you, r/suggestmeabook threads that mention this book also surface The Silent Patient and A Little Life in the same "didn't work for me" breath (↑195, ↑151) — worth knowing those get lumped together as overhyped rather than as fixes for the same problem.