Books Like The Midnight Library
Looking for another story about regret, second chances and finding a reason to keep going? These novels and one classic of nonfiction share The Midnight Library's warmth and its big what-if questions.
Jim's Picks
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
by V.E. Schwab
A Man Called Ove
by Fredrik Backman
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
by Gail Honeyman
Anxious People
by Fredrik Backman
The House in the Cerulean Sea
by TJ Klune
The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell
Man's Search for Meaning
by Viktor E. Frankl
Why Each Pick
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
- Another woman given a supernatural chance to escape the life she was handed. Addie makes a bargain in 1714 to live forever, and the price is that everyone she meets forgets her. Like Nora, she has to work out what makes a life matter. Schwab's novel is longer, at 444 pages, more romantic and more melancholy, moving between three centuries and present-day New York.
- A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
- Shares The Midnight Library's subject, a person who has decided life is no longer worth living, and its gentle humor. Ove is a grieving, grumpy widower whose plans keep being interrupted by the young family next door. There is no magic; the change comes through ordinary neighbors and small kindnesses. Content note: suicide attempts are part of the story, handled with warmth.
- Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
- For readers who connected with Nora's loneliness. Eleanor lives by a rigid routine in Glasgow, with almost no human contact, until a small act of kindness to a stranger draws her into a friendship. Like Haig, Honeyman treats depression and trauma seriously while keeping the tone hopeful and often funny. It is grounded and realistic, with no fantasy element.
- Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
- A comic novel about people at the end of their rope, which is closer to The Midnight Library's theme than its farcical premise suggests. A failed bank robber takes a group of strangers hostage at an apartment viewing, and each turns out to be carrying private despair. Backman's message is close to Haig's: small kindnesses can keep a person going. It deals openly with suicide.
- The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
- A gray, by-the-book life opened up by an unexpected journey. Linus is a lonely caseworker sent to inspect an island orphanage for magical children, and the assignment slowly shows him another way to live. It shares The Midnight Library's comfort and kindness but is lighter and more whimsical, with a found-family story and a gentle romance.
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- A short fable about choosing a life, at 197 pages, for readers who liked The Midnight Library's philosophical side. A shepherd boy follows a dream across the desert in search of treasure and learns to listen to his heart. Coelho's answer differs from Haig's: The Alchemist believes in one destined path, while Nora discovers there is no single perfect life.
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- The most ambitious take on the idea of many lives. Six stories from the nineteenth-century Pacific to a distant future are nested inside one another, linked by recurring echoes. Like The Midnight Library, it asks how one life connects to others and how small choices ripple outward. It is far more complex and literary, at 528 pages, and asks for patience.
- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- The nonfiction pick. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived Nazi concentration camps, argues that people cannot always avoid suffering but can choose how to respond and find meaning in it. The Midnight Library dramatizes a similar idea through Nora's journey. It is a short, serious book of 184 pages, and the camp chapters are harrowing.
What to Read After The Midnight Library
If the premise of trying out other lives appealed to you, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Cloud Atlas both play with that idea on a grand scale, one as a romance and one as a literary puzzle. If Nora's journey from despair back toward life was what stayed with you, A Man Called Ove, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Anxious People are the closest matches, all grounded in everyday life, funny and kind.
If you wanted comfort, The House in the Cerulean Sea is the warmest book on the list. If you liked the philosophy, the conversations about regret and what makes a life worth living, The Alchemist offers a fable-like counterpoint, and Man's Search for Meaning is the real-world book on the subject, written by someone who tested his ideas in the worst circumstances imaginable.
A Note on Difficult Themes
The Midnight Library opens with Nora deciding to end her life, and several books here also deal with suicide, depression or grief. A Man Called Ove, Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine all address these subjects directly, though each handles them with humor and moves toward hope. Man's Search for Meaning describes the Holocaust in unsparing detail.
For a lighter read, The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Alchemist are the gentlest choices. The Alchemist is also the shortest pick, at 197 pages, close to The Midnight Library's 288. Cloud Atlas and Addie LaRue are the longest and slowest. Anyone struggling with thoughts of suicide can call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.