There is plenty to enjoy from Matt Haig's The Midnight Library. Nora is a reasonably likable protagonist who, despite being on the verge of suicide, has had many opportunities in life.

We know she had many interesting opportunities because, in the instant of her death, she is given the chance to experience how those opportunities may have played out had she made a different decision. In short, she could have been a rock star or a philosopher or glaciologist or a competitive swimmer or the wife of a fiancé she abandoned two days before the wedding. These chances are given to her one book at a time in The Midnight Library, a place where people who have died revisit their smallest and biggest regrets.

Haig does a decent job at helping us understand this somewhat extraordinary underachiever (given she passed on many extraordinary opportunities) and a fun romp around the pop-science of multidimensional living. But he falls a bit short in that the plotting is surprisingly linear, forcing us to follow along for a reveal that pretty much happens midway through the book (or sooner) without many other reveals (aside from a proof of concept). The result is reading about a character who could be interesting if she ever wanted something interesting, but she never really does. For some, her life lesson might even be to appreciate the mediocrity of the life she decided to end at the onset.

Sure, The Midnight Library has its moments, but it might be good to know going in that those moments aren't necessarily leading up to some revelation. Those moments, and the consequences of each, might be all there really is ... which, I suppose, some might argue is the point of this feel good story that may hit right for the time (but definitely isn't timeless).