Matt Haig

The Midnight Library suspends a woman between life and death in a library where every book is a life she might have had if she had chosen otherwise, and lets her go and live in them.

Haig has written openly about the breakdown and near-fatal depression he went through at twenty-four, first in Reasons to Stay Alive, and that account is how many readers arrived at the novels. The Humans reaches similar ground from outside, narrated by an alien who finds people ridiculous and then cannot bring himself to leave. The books are designed to console, which is exactly what some readers want and what others find too tidy.