This is a quieter kind of read that has a sweet story about the self-discovery of two friends who are struggling to live through loss, trying to let go and struggling to move on. I appreciated how sensitively the topic of grief was handled and how the author was able to show how Lydia and Jonah deal with their grief differently. I also enjoyed the unique premise, which allowed its main character Lydia to slip into a dream-like state to see what her life would have been like had her fiancé not died suddenly. A cool concept, for sure.
But ... (sadly, there's a but) for a book dealing with grief, it lacked that emotional element for me. The story lagged a lot in the middle and I had a hard time connecting with Lydia emotionally. She was fine, but a bit bland. What did surprise me is that I could get behind a dream-like alternate universe concept but had a hard time believing the idea that Lydia could take 3 months off work, return to work for a couple of months and then take off on vacation last minute for a month without losing her job. I just couldn't wrap my head around that bit of reality.
Overall, this was a unique read that ends on a sweet (but predictable) note but fell somewhere within the 'good but not great' category for me.
My Rating: 3 stars
Author: Josie Silver
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Type: Hardcover (384 pages)
Source: Local Public Library
Publisher: Ballantine
First Published: March 3, 2020
Opening Line: Most of life's defining moments happen
unexpectedly, sometimes they slide past you
completely unnoticed until afterward, if at all.
Book Description from GoodReads: Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They'd been together for more than a decade, and Lydia thought their love was indestructible.
But she was wrong. On her twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident.
So now it's just Lydia, and all she wants to do is hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life--and perhaps even love--again.
But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened.
Lydia is pulled again and again across the doorway of her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there's an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there's someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.
Written with Josie Silver's trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life's crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
But she was wrong. On her twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident.
So now it's just Lydia, and all she wants to do is hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life--and perhaps even love--again.
But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened.
Lydia is pulled again and again across the doorway of her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there's an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there's someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.
Written with Josie Silver's trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life's crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
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