Books like The Midnight Library
What should you read after Matt Haig’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Matt Haig
- 2020
- 304 pages
- Contemporary fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Midnight Library
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe House in the Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune
The same job done more charmingly: a rule-following bureaucrat sent to inspect an orphanage of magical children and gently talked out of his own small life.
- Quick and comforting
- An ending that lifts you
- Depression handled kindly
- Fantasy, no philosophy
Great matchThe Humans
Matt Haig
Haig again, same register: an alien wearing a mathematician's body works out what human life is actually for, and reaches roughly the conclusion you'd hope.
- Gentle philosophy
- An ending that lifts you
- Quick and comforting
- A comic sci-fi framing
- Before the Coffee Gets ColdBest for gentle philosophy
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi
A Tokyo café where you can travel back for exactly one cup's worth of time and change nothing at all — four small stories about making peace instead.
- Quick and comforting
- A high-concept premise
- Gentle philosophy
- Flat, translated prose
Best for depression handled kindlyEleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
A woman whose weekends are vodka and no phone calls, walked slowly back toward other people — loneliness written kindly and funnily, with no metaphysics required.
- Depression handled kindly
- An ending that lifts you
- Quick and comforting
- Realist, no high concept
Best for the lives you didn't liveLife After Life
Kate Atkinson
Ursula Todd dies and restarts her twentieth century over and over, and Atkinson does the alternate-lives idea with far more craft and far less consolation.
- The lives you didn't live
- A high-concept premise
- Quick and comforting
- Long and demanding
Worth a look — with a warningThe Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
If you want the honest account rather than the consoling one: Plath on the same despair from inside it, with no library and no second chances offered.
- The lives you didn't live
- Depression handled kindly
- An ending that lifts you
- No comfort anywhere in it
What should you read after The Midnight Library?
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune — the same job done more charmingly: a rule-following bureaucrat sent to inspect an orphanage of magical children and gently talked out of his own small life.
If what stayed with you was gentle philosophy, read The Humans by Matt Haig instead: haig again, same register: an alien wearing a mathematician's body works out what human life is actually for, and reaches roughly the conclusion you'd hope. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is the other strong option — a Tokyo café where you can travel back for exactly one cup's worth of time and change nothing at all — four small stories about making peace instead.
Loved something else?
Start from any book and we’ll build the list around your reasons.
Find my next book →NextBook is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. We earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t affect which books we recommend or how we rank them.
More “what to read next” lists
- Books like 1984
- Books like 2312
- Books like A Clockwork Orange
- Books like A Darker Shade of Magic
- Books like A Gentleman in Moscow
- Books like A Little Life
- Books like A Man Called Ove
- Books like A Memory Called Empire
- Books like A Wrinkle in Time
- Books like All Systems Red
- Books like All the Bright Places
- Books like Altered Carbon