Book Review: The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver

Rating: ☆☆☆
Audience: Contemporary romance
Length: 369 pages
Author: Josie Silver
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: March 3rd, 2020
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

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.

LACKED PLOT.

I had such a hard time reading this book. Not because of the nature of it, but because it lacked a lot more substance to bring the story home.

This book hurt. I feel like anyone with a significant other will attest to that. It’s not a light read. Grief, depression, devastation, all topics on this scale are discussed. I wanted to connect more to the characters and lives of everyone, but never quite got there.

It was unique to have two different worlds Lydia could live in while she was working through her grief, but I also feel this really hindered her. It slowed everything down and rather than watching her move forward (at her own pace) it felt like everything was held back. I thought a handful of sub-plots weren’t necessary and didn’t fit in with the narrative.

And the ending, I was wishing the entire time that that wouldn’t happen. Then it did, and I felt conflicted? I thought the writing was engaging enough to give hope to the end, even if I may not be completely on board.

I don’t have a lot to say towards this. I think it will hit hard for some and be a miss for others. And while it was a miss for me, it didn’t detract from the pain I know I would feel it something like this happened to me. Everyone does grieve in their own ways and while I may have struggled with this book, I think it brought up a lot of good topics and talking points that could be discussed with others.

Overall audience notes: