Books like The Midnight Library

If The Midnight Library stayed with you, these share its feel: love, hope and memory. Each comes with a real page, so you can tell in a minute.

About The Midnight Library · Matt Haig

1.Normal People

Sally Rooney, 2018

Also love and longing. Two teenagers who ignore each other in public begin a secret intimacy that follows them through school and university, where class and misreading keep reshaping love.

Everyone is so convinced of his attraction to Miss Neary that sometimes he starts to doubt his own instincts about it. What if, at some level above or below his own perception, he does actually desire her? He doesn’t even really know what desire is supposed to feel like. Any time he has had sex in real life, he has found it so stressful as to be largely unpleasant, leading him to suspect that there’s something wrong with him, that he’s unable to be intimate with women, that he’s somehow developmentally impaired. He lies there afterward and thinks: I hated that so much that I feel sick. Is that just the way he is? Is the nausea he feels when Miss Neary leans over his desk actually his way of experiencing a sexual thrill? How would he know?

Excerpt from Normal People, Sally Rooney, Crown 2018. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
2.One Day in December

Josie Silver, 2018

Also love and longing. A decade of near-misses and December chances, told through two people who meet at a bus window and cannot quite forget each other.

No! No! Oh God, don’t you dare drive away from this stop! It’s Christmas! I want to yell, even as the bus pulls out into the traffic and gathers pace, and outside he is breathless standing in the road, watching us leave. I see defeat turn out the light in his eyes, and because it’s Christmas and because I’ve just fallen hopelessly in love with a stranger at a bus stop, I blow him a forlorn kiss and lay my forehead against the glass, watching him until he’s out of sight.

Excerpt from One Day in December, Josie Silver, Dell 2018. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
3.The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V.E. Schwab, 2020

Also memory and longing. A girl who cannot be remembered makes a bargain with the dark—and then meets a boy who does.

Last night, she told him hers was Jess. She lied, but only because she can’t say her real name—one of the vicious little details tucked like nettles in the grass. Hidden barbs designed to sting. What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind? She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided—a memory, a photograph, a name.

Excerpt from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab 2020. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
4.Layla

Colleen Hoover, 2020

Also love and longing. A couple retreats to the inn where they fell in love, and something there begins to come between them.

I much prefer the idea of going all in. I’ve always wanted someone I could instantly click with and then just fucking drown in.

Excerpt from Layla, Colleen Hoover 2020. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
5.Defy Me

Tahereh Mafi, 2019

Also longing and love. A YA sci-fi romance about a girl whose touch is lethal, the boy who loves her anyway, and the fight to reclaim their own memories.

I want to remember to celebrate more. I want to remember to experience more joy. I want to allow myself to be happy more frequently. I want to remember, forever, this look on Aaron’s face, as he’s bullied into blowing out his birthday candles for the very first time.This is, after all, what we’re fighting for, isn’t it?A second chance at joy.

Excerpt from Defy Me, Tahereh Mafi 2019. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
6.The Selection

Kiera Cass, 2012

Also love and longing. A low-caste girl is entered in a royal competition for the prince’s hand, where televised courtship, real feelings and rebellion collide.

I hope you find someone you can’t live without.I really do. And I hope you never have to know what it’s like to have to try and live without them.

Excerpt from The Selection, Kiera Cass 2012. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
7.Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami, 1987

Also melancholy and memory. A Tokyo student is pulled between a fragile girl from his past and a loud, alive girl in his present. Memory, desire, and grief, set to Beatles songs.
8.The Night We Met

Abby Jimenez, 2025

Also love and longing. A love so consuming it feels dangerous, and the quieter question underneath: can you build a life with someone who changes the weather in you?
9.The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy, 1997

Also longing and memory. A Kerala childhood, a damp family house, and twins who share one grammar of memory; a novel about the small things that decide who may love whom.
10.Yesteryear

Caro Claire Burke, 2026

Also love. A sharp, funny novel about the performances women give—at church, online, in marriage—and what it costs to keep the smile in place.
11.Dear John

Nicholas Sparks, 2006

Also love and longing. One summer, a soldier and a college student fall in love; the years apart ask whether love can survive distance and duty.
12.All the Bright Places

Jennifer Niven, 2015

Also hope and love. A boy who can't stop thinking about death and a girl who can't stop thinking about the sister she lost meet on a ledge — and dare each other to find reasons to stay.