I started reading this book because I saw it won Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction in 2020. The book follows Nora Seed who after having so many bad experiences and feeling unneeded, decides to give up on life. She finds herself in The Midnight Library, where she can experience the infinite possibilities of how her life could have been.

This book takes the “what-if” style of thinking to the extreme, similar to Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. This book is just Dark Matter but trying to find personal happiness rather than being more plot-heavy. I do think I enjoyed Dark Matter more than this book, but they are ultimately different things.

The book is okay, but I wouldn’t describe it as good or great. It’s a pretty fast read because of the simple style of writing, so I finished it in 2 days. It’s an enjoyable way to spend some free time, but I’m not sure how it won the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction to be honest.

The main character studied philosophy in her main life, so throughout the book, tidbits of philosophy are just dumped. Usually it’s a bit on the nose with a lot of telling and not showing. It’s a little much if you start quoting the Robert Frost’s overused, and often misunderstood, The Road Not Taken poem. With all of the quotes to Thoreau and Plato, I was hoping for a reference to Jorge Luis Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths, which preceded the many worlds interpretation the novel relies on.