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Books like The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library follows Nora Seed to a library between life and death, where every book is a different life she could have lived. These six books bring more second chances, what-ifs and hard-won hope, from fiction to memoir.

Books to read next

  • The Humans

    Matt Haig

    An alien takes the place of a Cambridge mathematician and starts to see human life with fresh eyes, in a funny, tender novel by the same author.

  • Reasons to Stay Alive

    Matt Haig

    The author's memoir of depression and recovery, honest and often funny, and a nonfiction look at themes the novel shares.

  • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

    V.E. Schwab

    In 1714 France, a young woman makes a bargain to live forever and is forgotten by everyone she meets, in a sweeping, melancholy fantasy.

  • Life After Life

    Kate Atkinson

    Ursula Todd is born in 1910, dies, and is born again, living her life over and over as the century moves toward war.

  • Replay

    Ken Grimwood

    A 43-year-old man dies of a heart attack and wakes in his 18-year-old body in 1963, with a chance to live his life again, in a 1980s classic of the do-over.

  • The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

    Rachel Joyce

    A retired man sets out on foot to post a letter to an old friend who is dying, and keeps walking, in a gentle novel about regret and kindness.

How to choose

Choose by the part of Nora's journey you want more of. For the idea of living your life again, Replay and Life After Life are the two closest, and Life After Life is the more literary, set partly in wartime. If it was the warmth and humor, try The Humans, by the same author. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is lush and romantic, and Harold Fry is a quieter story about a second chance at kindness. Reasons to Stay Alive is nonfiction. The Midnight Library and Reasons to Stay Alive both deal with depression and suicidal thoughts, and Life After Life includes war and violence, so check content notes if those are hard for you.

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