🌙 The Witchling Shelf

📖 Title: The Midnight Library
✍️ Author: Matt Haig

🔮 First Impressions:
The book begins like a hush before dawn - sorrow-laced, quiet, and full of potential. The concept pulled me in immediately: a library between life and death, with books that let you live all your possible lives. It felt both gently magical and achingly human.

✨ Mood:
Midnight snow, ticking clocks, regret like fog, hope held in trembling hands

🍵 Tea Pairing:
Chamomile and vanilla with a dash of oat milk - comforting, soothing, like a soft light in the dark

🕯️ Spell Notes:
"You don't have to understand life. You just have to live it."

📚 Progress:
🖤 Started: 06 July 2025
🖤 Finished:11 July 2025
🖤 Pages turned by candlelight: as if I were walking barefoot across a field of quiet maybes

💭 Thoughts So Far / Reflections:
The Midnight Library is both a fable and a mirror. It explores depression, regret, and the idea of second chances with tenderness, asking: What if you could undo your disappointments? Would you be happier, or just… different?

Nora is a relatable protagonist, not because she’s extraordinary, but because she’s ordinary in the exact ways that hurt. Her journey through lives unlived is moving, and at times deeply comforting, though the narrative edges close to repetition in places. Still, the message shines through: even the quietest life can be meaningful.

This isn't a book that dazzles with literary tricks - it speaks softly, like a friend who’s sat with you through the dark. A balm for low moments, and a gentle push toward choosing life.

A little predictable at times, but honest and kind. I’m glad I visited the library.

✍️ Author: Erin Morgenstern

🔮 First Impressions:
From the first page, it felt like stepping into a dream made of black velvet and silver thread. The prose unfurls slowly, luxuriously, like smoke curling from a candle. I expected mystery, a touch of magic, and I found both—though not always where I was looking.

✨ Mood:
Ink and fog, clockwork roses, distant music on the wind, monochrome dreams

🍵 Tea Pairing:
Earl Grey with lavender and a curl of lemon peel—old-world and just a little strange

🕯️ Spell Notes:
"The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones."

📚 Progress:
🖤 Started: 26 June 2025
🖤 Finished: 01 July 2025
🖤 Pages turned by candlelight: a hundred shadow-draped nights under a carousel moon

💭 Reflections:
This is a novel less about plot than presence. The Night Circus invites you into its world—the Cirque des Rêves—with its scented tents, impossible illusions, and ink-sketched rivals locked in a game neither fully understands. The atmosphere is everything here: lush, immersive, and almost hypnotic.

The romance between Celia and Marco simmers quietly beneath the surface, more like a shared fate than a traditional love story, and sometimes I wished for more immediacy, more heat to match the stakes. Likewise, the shifting timelines and perspectives were elegant, but occasionally disorienting—like losing your place in a maze made of mirrors.

But what Morgenstern does best is enchantment. You don’t so much read The Night Circus as wander through it with wide eyes, brushing your fingers along its silken edges. It lingers long after the final page, like the scent of caramel and smoke on your scarf.

Not a perfect book—but a beautiful one.