I apologize for another thread on this book and know that I’m far, FAR from the first to have this opinion. But I had to tell somebody that this is one of the worst books I’ve ever read—by a long shot.
Like many people here, I decided to buy The Midnight Library after a raving review from someone who claimed it to be one of the most life-changing books they’d ever read. Now, 299 pages later, I can say that this is by far one of the dullest, hollowest, most cringe-inducing books I’ve picked up in my entire life.
Out of love for the person who recommended it to me, I tried to slog through the entire thing. But after reading this passage—
Nora checked her Instagram. In this life she had 11.3 million followers. And bloody hell, she looked amazing. Her naturally black hair had a kind of white stripe in it. Vampiric make-up. And a lip piercing. She did look tired but she supposed that was just a result of living on tour. It was a glamorous kind of tired. Like Billie Eilish’s cool aunt.
—I couldn’t take it anymore. Like something written by an eighth grader, dredged up from the pits of AO3. I’ll admit that I had to skim through the final quarter to get to the ending which, just by reading description of the book, you can probably guess without suffering through what isn’t, but will feel like, a million pages of woefully bad writing.
The premise is somewhat interesting but is executed terribly. The dialogue is unbelievable and chock-full of exposition—like in poorly-scripted movies when one character remarks to their friend of a decade, “You know, my brother, Abe?”
It’s extremely repetitive—the main character, Nora, whines, chooses a new life, gets disappointed by said new life, returns to the library, receives a half-baked life lesson, repeat—to the point where it gets boring after the first few lives she lives. After the initial two go-arounds, I thought the author would switch things up and was SHOCKED to find that the formula stays the same right up until the story’s final pages.
But the worst part of this book may be Nora herself. She is wildly unlikeable, not because of the things she does, but because her personality and alleged depression lack any and all nuance. Not only is she a wet blanket—whiny, bland, and groundlessly pretentious (she was a philosophy major, so expect to read plenty of quotes from Camus, Aristotle, and whichever other great thinkers the author came across after a quick Google search for “quotes about life”)—but her so-called depression, the device that drives the story forward, is one of the most wooden, passionless portrayals of mental illness I’ve ever come across.
I read in another review that the author has experienced depression himself, leaving me even more baffled by the rushed backstory that leads Nora to her decision to commit suicide. We hear little of her thoughts beyond surface level descriptions of feeling like “she doesn’t belong anywhere” and “nobody needs her.” There is no real sense of dread or anguish. The depictions of mental illness entirely lack the profound, debilitating weight and spiraling nature of severe depression.
The Midnight Library reads like what someone who has never suffered from depression imagines it to be, and lacks all the intelligence, profundity, and complex thought you can tell the author feels they are “blessing” the readers with. I’m happy for those who felt this book was a salve for their soul. For me, it was a total and utter waste of time.
by bugseee